ajestie,
Whom no uncleannes may approachen nie;
Or that all men, which anie master serve,
Good garments for their service should deserve;
But he that serves the Lord of hoasts most high,
And that in highest place, t' approach him nigh,
And all the peoples prayers to present
Before his throne, as on ambassage sent
Both too and fro, should not deserve to weare
A garment better than of wooll or heare.
Beside, we may have lying by our sides
Our lovely Lasses, or bright shining Brides:
We be not tyde to wilfull chastitie,
But have the Gospell of free libertie."

But his weapon is double-edged, and he had not much more love for

That ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace.

The first prescription which the Priest gives to the Fox who desires to
rise to preferment in the Church is to win the favour of some great
Puritan noble.

First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise
Your selfe attyred, as you can devise,
Then to some Noble-man your selfe applye,
Or other great one in the worldes eye,
That hath a zealous disposition
To God, and so to his religion.
There must thou fashion eke a godly zeale,
Such as no carpers may contrayre reveale;
For each thing fained ought more warie bee.
There thou must walke in sober gravitee,
And seeme as Saintlike as Sainte Radegund:
Fast much, pray oft, looke lowly on the ground,
And unto everie one doo curtesie meeke:
These lookes (nought saying) doo a benefice seeke,
And be thou sure one not to lack or long.

But he is impartial, and points out that there are other ways of
rising--by adopting the fashions of the Court, "facing, and forging, and
scoffing, and crouching to please," and so to "mock out a benefice;" or
else, by compounding with a patron to give him half the profits, and in
the case of a bishopric, to submit to the alienation of its manors to
some powerful favourite, as the Bishop of Salisbury had to surrender
Sherborn to Sir Walter Ralegh. Spenser, in his dedication of _Mother
Hubberd's Tale_ to one of the daughters of Sir John Spencer, Lady
Compton and Monteagle, speaks of it as "long sithence composed in the
raw conceit of youth." But, whatever this may mean, and it was his way
thus to deprecate severe judgments, his allowing the publication of it
at this time, shows, if the work itself did not show it, that he was in