aving brought our Richard Hooker from his birth-place, to
this where he found a grave, I shall only give some account of his
books and of his behaviour in this Parsonage of Bourne, and then give
a rest both to myself and my Reader.

His first four books and large epistle have been declared to be
printed at his being at Boscum, anno 1594. Next I am to tell, that
at the end of these four books there was, when he first printed them,
this Advertisement to the Reader. "I have for some causes, thought it
at this time more fit to let go these first four books by themselves,
than to stay both them and the rest, till the whole might together
be published. Such generalities of the cause in question as are here
handled, it will be perhaps not amiss to consider apart, by way of
introduction unto the books that are to follow concerning particulars;
in the mean time the Reader is requested to mend the Printer's errors,
as noted underneath."

[Sidenote: "Ecclesiastical Polity"]

[Sidenote: The Pope his reader]

And I am next to declare, that his Fifth Book--which is larger than
his first four--was first also printed by itself, anno 1597,
and dedicated to his patron--for till then he chose none--the
Archbishop.--These books were read with an admiration of their
excellency in this, and their just fame spread itself also into
foreign nations. And I have been told, more than forty years past,
that either Cardinal Allen,[25] or learned Dr. Stapleton,[26]--both
Englishmen, and in Italy about the time when Mr. Hooker's four books
were first printed,--meeting with this general fame of them, were
desirous to read an author, that both the reformed and the learned of
their own Romish Church did so much magnify; and therefore caused
them to be sent for to Rome: and after reading them, boasted to the
Pope,--which then was Clement the Eighth,--"That though he had lately
said, he never met with an English book, whose writer deserved the
name of author; yet there now appeared a wonder to them, and it would
be so to his Holiness, if it were in Latin: for a poor obscure English
Priest had writ four such books of Laws, and Church-polity, and in a
style that expressed such a grave and so humble a majesty, with such
clear demonstration of reason, that in all their readings they had not
met with any that exceeded him:" and this begot in the Pope an earnest
desire that Dr. Stapleton should bring the said four books, and,
looking on the English, read a