St. Paul's school, and then at
"Westminster[19] school (in which I was sometime an vnprofitable
Grammarian vnder the reuerend father, master Nowell, now deane of
Paules)." And again of the Deans of the see of London (or St. Paul's), "I
will deliuer in like sort the names of the deanes, vntill I come to the
time of mine old master now liuing in this present yeare 1586, who is none
of the least ornaments[20] that haue beene in that seat." He was at both
universities.[21] When speaking of Cambridge and Oxford, he says--

"In all other things there is so great equalitie betweene these two
vniuersities, as no man can imagin how to set downe any greater; so
that they seeme to be the bodie of one well ordered common wealth,
onlie diuided by distance of place, and not in freendlie consent and
orders. In speaking therefore of the one, I can not but describe the
other; and in commendation of the first, I can not but extoll the
latter; and so much the rather, for that they are both so deere vnto
me, as that I can not readilie tell vnto whether of them I owe the
most good will. Would to God my knowledge were such, as that neither
of them might haue cause to be ashamed of their pupill; or my power
so great, that I might woorthilie requite them both for those
manifold kindnesses that I haue receiued of them."[22]

He must have graduated at Oxford first, for in 1569 he proceeded to the
degree of Bachelor of Divinity at Cambridge under a grace[23] which calls
him M.A. of Oxford of seven years' standing.[25] He was before this,
Household Chaplain to Sir Wm. Brooke, Lord Cobham, to whom he dedicated,
as we have seen, his _Description of England_, and who gave him the
Rectory of Radwinter in Essex,[26] to which he was inducted on February
16, 1558-9, and which he held till his death. On January 28, 1570-1, he
became a pluralist,[27] and obtaind the vicarage of Wimbish in Essex,[28]
but resignd it in 1581, his successor being appointed on the 16th of
November in that year. Between 1559 and 1571 he must have marrid Marion
Isebrande, "daughter to William Isebrande and Ann his wife, sometyme of
Anderne, neere vnto Guisnes in Picardie, and whome" (he says in his Will,
referring no doubt to the sometime suppos'd unlawfulness of priests'
marriages) "by the lawes of god I take and repute in all respectes for my
true and lawfull wife." By her he left issue,[29] one son Edmund, and two
d