Upon Saturday the 13th of May, news was brought that his Majesty would be at Cambridge that night, and that in the way he meant to hunt a buck; so at two of the clock the School-bell and St. Mary's-bells rung to call the University together. The Vice-chancellor set the Scholars towards Spital-end; they reached to the Armitage St. Ann1; and above them up the Town to Trinity College the Bachelors of Arts; then the Gentleman-fellow Commoners; then the Senior Regents and Non-regents; then the Doctors, who stood in Trinity College-gatehouse. His Majesty came from Thetford, whither the buck led him, and where awhile he had rested himself, and so came about four of the clock; the Scholars all saluted him with Vivat Rex!' Mr. Mayor and his Fraternity stood on the hill by the Spital-house, where Mr. Mayor, without either state or reverence, when his Majesty came right against the place where he stood, stepped to his coach-side, and then kneeled down, and delivered his Majesty a fair pair of perfumed gloves with gold laces, and the Prince another; telling his Majesty their Corporation was poor, and not able to bestow any matter of value upon his Majesty, and therefore invited him to accept of those; which his Majesty took, and gave him his hand to kiss; and so he took his horse, and rode before the King's Mace-bearer, with his mace over his shoulder, and the rest of his company leaving him, or lacking by him, which needed not, for he had his two footmen, tired in watchet saye, with work-velvet jackets, and the arms that the red-coats wore at the fairs sewed to them. His Majesty made no stay till he came at Trinity College-walk, where he and the Prince and his Nobility alighted their coach; and being within Trinity College, against the first rails, Dr. Gwynne 3, Deputy aliàs potuisset in suspitionem duci, ne perinde trono suo atque cathedrá submoveri debuisset!'" This makes a good story; but some allowance must be made for exaggeration. That Dr. Roberts should have fainted as well as Mr. Cecil (see p. SS), is very improbable; besides, if such had been the case, Mr. Tabor would not have failed to have noticed it. Mr. Cecil's indisposition may, indeed, have been the foundation of the whole. Of whom before, in p. 49.

'Qu. Hermitage?

i. e. lackeying by him, attending him as lackeys.

Owen Gwynne, D. D. had been elected Master of St. John's College in 1612; he now supplied the place of Bishop Harsnet as Vice-chancellor, and soon after succeeded him in that office. Mr. Baker, in his MS. Collections, vol. I. p. 239, speaking of the King's Visits to Cambridge, says: "Dr. Harsnet, Master of Pembroke, and Bishop of Chichester, was then Vice-chancellor, who received all the marks of his Majesty's bounty and favours. That any great notice was taken of Dr. Gwynne, I have not read; but he made his court so well to the Vice-chancellor, that he was employed by him in his absence, wherein he acquitted hsmself to that advantage, that he was chosen Vice-chancellor the year after." Dr. Gwynne succeeded Dr. Laud as Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Prebendary of

87

COMEDY OF IGNORAMUS, ORATIONS, AND SERMONS, AT CAMBRIDGE, 1615. Vice-chancellor, made an Oration to him, giving him thanks for his love to them, that he was pleased again so suddenly to come to them again, and highly extolling his Majesty and his virtues. The Vice-chancellor and Heads kneeled whilst this Speech was delivering, and the King stood, and Prince and Nobility by him; and then, the Speech ended, his Majesty went towards his lodge; and then, about the middle alley, the Orator made another Oration; which ended, the King and Prince and Nobility went to their lodgings. Then the Vice-chancellor took order for the placing of the University and strangers, not Actors, at the lower end of the stage; the Doctors, in a place next the stage; the Regents and Non-regents, in gowns, in the body of the Hall; other strangers, according to their qualities, upon the scaffolds; the upper end of the Hall, beyond the stage, was wholly reserved for the King and Prince's followers, and for the Courtiers. About eight of the clock the Play began, and ended about one; his Majesty was much delighted with the Play, and laughed exceedingly; and oftentimes with his hands and by words applauded it.

On Sunday, May 14, at nine of the clock, there was a Sermon in St. Mary's ; at half an hour past ten the King went to Trinity Chapel, where he heard prayers and an anthem, and then a Clero [Concio ad Clerum] in Trinity, made by Mr. Simpson', of Trinity, which was an hour and half long, which seemed too tedious to his Majesty; and therefore he shewed some distaste, not of the Clero, for it was well and learnedly performed, but that the Preacher had no care to prevent tediosity, he being wearied over night. The Clero ended, there was another anthem sung and prayers, and then his Majesty went to dinner; at three a Sermon in St. Mary's, before divers of the Nobility. After dinner, about four of the clock,

Buckden in 1622, and dying in June 1633, was buried, says Willis, in his College Chapel, without any

monument.

'Edward Simpson, D. D. son of a Rector of Tottenham of the same names, was born there in 1578, educated under Camden at Westminster School, elected to Trinity College in 1596, and admitted Fellow in 1601. He was domestic chaplain to Sir Moyle Finch; incumbent of a church in Cambridge; Rector of Eastling, Kent; and Prebendary of Corringham in Lincoln Cathedral. He died in 1651, aged 73. He was the author of "Cronicon Catholicon ab exordio mundi," and other learned works, for which, and further particulars of his life, see Chalmers's Biog. Dict. Two portraits of Mr. Simpson, prefixed to two editions of the Chronicon, are noticed by Granger.

2 By Mr. Fletcher, of Trinity, as appears by a side-note in the MS. Another informs us that the Earl of Rutland was this day Swordbearer.

his Majesty went to Mr. Butler', with his Nobles; the Sheriff Aldered, of Foulmere 2 was very officious, and took upon him his office before his Majesty, which discontenting the University, the Vice-chancellor, upon notice given him, informed my Lord Chamberlain, who, from his Majesty, discharged Aldered, and told him it was his Majesty's pleasure he should not carry himself then as a Sheriff, for he had no power or authority in the University; and so he slunk aside, and took his place behind, and so whilst his Majesty was with Butler, where he stayed near an hour. After that his Majesty went to supper.

"On Monday, May 15, there was a Congregation at seven, where good order and decorum was observed, and these orderly admitted:

[Here follows in the original a considerable blank, for the names of the persons who took Degrees.]

"Then about ten the Vice-chancellor and whole Senate of Doctors, Regents, and Non-regents, and those of the Nobility in order, attended the Vice-chancellor to Trinity College; the Regents first, two and two, in state to Trinity Chapel, where they seated themselves, and thither came the King and Prince, and heard the Act, which was learnedly performed 3. At the end, Mr. Cecill, the Moderator, began to destroy their pleasure; he fainted the night before, and that morning, being sickly, fainted, and was carried out dead; but after a quarter of hour recovered again. The Act ended, the King went to dinner; and he had made known how he was contented, suddenly departed.

So, after

"The Mayor, when he came into Trinity College, was put before the Beadles, and the Vice-chancellor went next after them, and so next before the King; and when the Mayor went out, he went without Serjeant or show of his mace."

The following Lines, which Mr. Hawkins supposed to have been spoken at the second representation of Ignoramus as a kind of introductory Prologue, describe many circumstances of the King's present Visit:

The celebrated Physician, of whom before, pp. 25, 59.

• Edward Aldred, Esq. of Fulmere near Royston, was this year Sheriff of Cambridge and Huntingdonshires. The same active Gentleman, says Lysons, procured from James I. a new Charter for a market at Fulmere; but it soon declined, and was of short continuance.

Against this line in the original is the following memoranduin: "Sword-bearer this day to and from the act, Lord Walden."

DE REPETITA CANTABRIGIA:

SIVE, DE ADVENTU REGIS AD MUSAS SECUNDO LIBER LICENTIATUS.

DAVUS DROMO in Laudem Autoris.
Vides ingenium mirè profundum,
Adventum pariens Regis secundum.

On the 20th of May, Mr. Chamberlain wrote thus to Sir Dudley Carleton: "On Saturday last the King went again to Cambridge, to see the Play Ignoramus, which hath so nettled the Lawyers, that they are almost out of all patience3,

' Dr. Gwynne, see p. 86. "Nothing," observes Rapin, "could be more diverting to the King. The Civil Law, or the Laws made by the supreme authority of the Roman Emperors, appeared to him of much greater value

and the Lord Chief Justice, both openly at the King's Bench, and in divers other places, hath galled and glanced at Scholars with much bitterness; and there be divers Inn-of-Court Men have made rhymes and ballads against them 2, which than the Common or Statute Laws; and he could not forbear now and then to speak of these last with contempt." The Civil Law was more suitable to his notions of Regal Authority, and to his love of subtle disputation. In 1609, when engaged on the question of "Prohibitions" (see vol. II. p. 210), James quarrelled with Coke, and openly avowed these sentiments. The wisdom of Cecil steered him out of the difficulty; but soon after he expressed them still more fully to the Parliament, as is related by Arthur Wilson. As early as 1603, the Author of "Advertisements of a loyal Subject to his gracious Sovereign, drawn from Observations of the People's Speeches" (printed in Somers's Tracts, vol. II. p. 144), thus addressed him: "It is said that your Majestie purposeth to alter the manner of Government, and that fault was found with the Common Lawe and Customes of England, and especiallie our Trials by oath of Twelve men, which is without doubt the beste and equalest course, and in itselfe leste capable of corruption. Every alteration, even in a privat familie, much more in Kingdomes, breedeth hurts. Doubtles there be abuses even in the Courts at Westminster, and chiefly in the arbitrarie Courts; but yet hade your Majestie but once purified a feawe of the cheifest officers, howe suddenlie would your Majestie with one experience, give the highest allowance to our Common Lawes and Statutes, which bee ever filled with the occurrents and natures of the People of this Kingdome."

'Sir Edward Coke has been supposed to be particularly alluded to in some passages of Ignoramus. This would not be offensive to the King. Sir Edward repeatedly incurred the Royal displeasure. An instance has been referred to in the last note, and many are mentioned by Wilson. In one of his Parliamentary Speeches he termed the King's prerogative" a great overgrown monster;" and while he presided in the King's Bench, he even had the boldness to insinuate that the Common Law of England was in imminent danger of being perverted.

• Several performances of this description have been noticed in p. 75. The wrath of the legal profession did not, however, entirely evaporate in empty song. "The lapse of two years," remarks Mr. Hawkins, "was not sufficient to eradicate the remembrance of the supposed injury; and one of their body, at that distance of time, thought proper, in the course of his profession, to notice with a proportional degree of asperity both the Comedy and the University." This person was Robert Callis, of Gray's Inn, Esq. who, when Lent Reader at Staple Inn, in 1617, stated a supposititious Law Case, in order to determine in which of six persons the right existed of presentation to a Church; and in the argument introduced Sir Ignoramus, a Clerk, presented to it by the University of Cambridge, who was described as being "egregiè illiteratus." This was published in 1648 as a quartò pamphlet, intituled, "The Case and Argument against Sir Ignoramus of Cambridge, by Robert Callis, of Gray's Inn, Esquire, afterward Serjeant-at-Law, in his reading at Staple Inn, in Lent 14 Ja. R." In the "Intentio nominum et interpretatio eorum," prefixed to this Case, is this paragraph: "5. Sir Ignoramus, intended for the University Catacoustichon, a general noted coxcomb, a resemblance of the actor which they bestowed on the Inns of Court, Ignoramus." And at p. 22 the Author says: "I now proceed to the title of the University of Cambridge, and of their inglorious Clerk, Sir Ignoramus; which is the fifth point of my Case. No Inn-of-Court or Chancery man need wonder wherefore I styled the University's Clerk by the name of Sir Ignoramus; for