edral turned into a
barrack, and his palace into an ale-house, dying shortly before
the Restoration, in 1656, at the age of 82. Bayle thought him
worthy of a place in his Dictionary, but he is still worthier of
a place in our memories as one of those great English bishops
who, like Burnet, Butler, or Tillotson, never put their Church
before their humanity, but showed (what needed showing) that the
Christianity of the clergy was not of necessity synonymous with
the absolute negation of charity.

Davies, too, Marlowe's early friend, rose to fame both as a poet
and a statesman. But he began badly. He was disbarred from the
Middle Temple for breaking a club over the head of another law
student in the very dining-hall. After that he became member for
Corfe Castle, and then successively Solicitor-General and
Attorney-General for Ireland. He was knighted in 1607. One of the
best books on that unhappy country is his _Discovery of the true
causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, nor brought under
obedience of the Crown of England until the beginning of Her
Majesty's happy reign_ (1611), dedicated to James I. His chief
poems are his _Nosce Teipsum_ and _The Orchestra_. In 1614 he was
elected for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and he died in 1626, aged only
57. Yet in that time he had travelled a long way from the days of
his early literary companionship with Christopher Marlowe.

The Church at the end of the sixteenth century assuredly aimed
high. At the time the above books were burnt, it was decreed that
no satires or epigrams should be printed in the future; and that
no plays should be printed without the inspection and permission
of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London! But
even this is nothing compared with that later attempt to subject
the Press to the Church which called forth Milton's
_Areopagitica_; there indeed soon came to be very little to
choose between the Inquisition of the High Commission and the
more noxious Inquisition of Rome.

Near to the burnt works of the previous writers must be placed
those of that prolific writer of the same period, Samuel
Rowlands. The severity of his satire, and the obviousness of the
allusions, caused two of his works to be burnt, first publicly,
and then in the hall kitchen of the Stationers' Company, in
October 1600. These were: _The Letting Humour's Blood in the
Headvein_, and, _A Merry Meeting; or, 'tis Merry when Knaves
meet_; both of which subsequently reappe