advance his praise and commendation, and readier (if I may say it without offence) than he that found fault with me. And Hall (as ye know) wrote but of a few kings, and began where Froissard left; and so neither his Chronicle is mine, nor mine his. Now, as touching John Harding's Chronicle that Stow hath, which he saith doth much differ from that which was imprinted under his name by me, I grant it may well be so; for I have, at this time, a Chronicle that beareth the name of John Harding, written in the Latin tongue in prose, that I am sure John Stow never saw, and though he did, yet And it may I doubt whether he understand it. well be, that one man may write at two times two books of one matter, and yet the one of them not to agree with the other, as Stow himself hath done, who in his later summary of Chronicles, differeth clean from his first, neither agreeing in matter nor years, and yet (as he saith) they are both Stow's Chronicles. And it may also be, that there were more John Hardings than one, and so all may stand well together, and no fault committed by me. Thus much for answer of the faults. And here to make any further declaration of the order of my book, it shall not need; for in the second page thereof are expressed the particulars of the same. And I have joined hereunto an exact table, for the ready finding of any matter herein contained, most heartily praying the gentle reader, that where he shall find me to have committed any error, that there he will gently interpret ine, or amend the same, and so for this time I end. Farewell. 1 Notwithstanding this vindication of himself, the charge of Stow against him appears to be well founded. Nicholson observes: "A great borrower from this Hall was Richard Grafton, who (as Buchanan rightly observes) was a very heedless and unskilful writer; and yet he has the honour done him to be sometimes quoted by Stow and others." It may be added, that all our more modern compilers have occasionally resorted to him for authority. ELIZABETII. In this important reign, so glorious to intellect and national pride, protestantism was restored, and with it much of civil and religious freedom. The Bible was now once more accessible to all; and every man re-assumed the privilege of judging for himself in matters of faith. The religious sects, rendered torpid by the noxious influence of Mary's envenomed 'spirit, revived and enlarged their numbers; and among these, we trace the rise of the puritans, of famous memory. The spirit of levelling, inherent in human nature, now powerfully reinforced by the equalitarian principles and examples of christianity, rendered the opulence and splendor of an ecclesiastical hierarchy odious to the middling and lower classes of society, who, in their zeal to abolish catholic corruptions, perhaps injudiciously proscribed all ceremoni |
