THE LIFE OF

HUGH LATIMER.

CHAPTER I.

BISHOP LATIMER'S FATHER-THE FAMILY FARM-BLACKHEATH- DRAWING THE BOW EDUCATION --THE MERRY MONK-CANDLE AND CROSSES-PERFORMANCE OF THE MASS.

A

PASSAGE in Bishop Latimer's first sermon before King Edward the Sixth, delivered March 8, 1549, has furnished his biographers with their entire stock of information respecting his birth and parentage. "My father was a yeoman and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm (on which he paid a rent) of three or four pound by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tiled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep; and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able and did find the

king a harness, with himself and his horse, while he came to the place that he should receive the king's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went unto Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to preach before the king's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pound, or twenty nobles (portion) a piece; so that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor. And all this he did of the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pound by year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor."

The engagement at Blackheath to which the preacher refers was that in which an army of Cornish rebels who had marched to the city of London were defeated. This took place in 1497. From this date and the comparison of those of other events in his life, we may assign the date of his birth, about the year 1491. He was a native of Thurcaston, in the county of Leicester.

His father, as we have seen, rented a small

DRAWING THE BOW.

15

farm. He is spoken of by Fox in the Book of Martyrs as having been held "in right good estimation." He wisely trained his son in the athletic exercises then in vogue. "In my time," another sermon of the divine informs us, "my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to learn me any other thing and so I think other men did their children. He taught me how to draw; how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows bought me, according to my age and strength; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger; for men shall never shoot well unless they be brought up in it. It is a goodly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much commended in physic."

The careful father made good provision for the mind as well as the body of his son. He determined that the boy should receive a liberal education. Hugh was placed in the town-school at the age of four years, in due time promoted to that of Leicester, and at the age of fourteen entered Christ's College, Cambridge.

The student became noted during his collegiate course for his strict attention to instruction and regularity of life. He was not, however, deficient in the cheerful vivacity which was the natural product of his vigorous youth, and which he retained to the close of his life. A little incident which he narrates in one of his sermons furnishes pleasant proof of his sympathy with humor. "There was," he says, "a merry monk in Cambridge in the college that I was in, and it chanced a great company of us to be together, intending to make good cheer and to be merry, as scholars will be merry when they are disposed. One of the company brought out this sentence, Nil melius quam lætare et facere bene' - there is nothing better than to be merry and to do well. vengeance of that bene,' quoth the monk; 'I would that bene had been banished beyond the sea; and that bene were out it were well, for I could be merry, but I love not to do well.""

6

'A

Latimer was elected a fellow of Clare Hall at nineteen, and at twenty took his degree. His father's liberality seems to have been continued during the whole course of his

CROSS AND CANDLE.

17

studies. There is a curious proof that it was greater than could be expected from the yeoman's means, in a story told by Latimer in one of his sermons in illustration of the superstitions prevalent in his youth.

"I was once," he says, "called to one of my kinsfolk (it was at that time when I had taken my degree at Cambridge), I was called, I say, to one of my kinsfolk, which was very sick, and died immediately after my coming. Now, there was an old cousin of mine, which, after the man was dead, gave me a wax candle in my hand, and commanded me to make certain crosses over him that was dead; for she thought the devil should un away by-and-by. Now, I took the candle, but I could not cross him as she would have me to do, for I had never seen it before. She, perceiving I could not do it, with great anger took the candle out of my hand, saying, It is pity that thy father spendeth so much money upon thee;' and so she took the candle, and crossed, and blessed him; so that he was sure enough."*

Latimer, immediately after receiving his

Froude's History of England. Lond., ii. 97.