the church,
he pressed him to enter into holy orders, but he being resolved to
qualify himself the better for the sacred office by studying divinity,
and the learned languages deferred his entering upon it three years
longer, during which time he made a vigorous application to these
branches of knowledge, and was then ordained both deacon and priest,
by Dr. John King, then bishop of London. Presently after he was
appointed one of the chaplains in ordinary to his Majesty, and about
the same time attending the King in a progress, he was created Dr.
in divinity, by the university of Cambridge, by the particular
recommendation of that Prince[5] His abilities and industry in his
profession were so eminent, and himself so well beloved, that within
the first year of his entering into holy orders, he had the offer of
fourteen benefices from persons of quality, but as they lay in the
country, his inclination of living in London, made him refuse them
all. Upon his return from Cambridge his wife died, and his grief for
her loss was so great, that for some time he betook himself to a
retired and solitary life: Mrs. Donne died in the year 1617, on the
seventh day after the birth of her twelfth child. She left our author
in a narrow unsettled state with seven children then living, to her he
gave a voluntary assurance, that he would never bring them under the
subjection of a step-mother, and this promise he faithfully kept. Soon
after the death of his wife, he was chosen preacher of Lincoln's-Inn,
and in the year 1619 appointed by King James to attend the earl of
Doncaster, in his embassy to the Princes of Germany, and about 14
months after his return to England, he was advanced to the deanery of
St. Paul's. Upon the vacancy of the deanery, the King sent an order to
Dr. Donne, to attend him the next day at dinner: When his Majesty sat
down, he said, "Dr. Donne, I have invited you to dinner, and though
you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of a dish that I
know you love well; for knowing you love London, I do therefore make
you dean of St. Paul's, and when I have dined, then do you take your
beloved dish home to your study, say grace there to your self, and
much good may it do you[6]." Soon after, another vicarage of St.
Dunstan in the West, and another benefice fell to Dr. Donne. 'Till the
59th year of his age he continued in perfect health, when being with
his eldest daughter in Essex, in 1630, he was taken ill of a fever