ons;[24] and therefore, if your Grace can judge me worthy of
such a favour, let me beg it, that I may perfect what I have begun."

[Sidenote: Rector of Boscombe]

[Sidenote: Prebend of Salisbury]

About this time the Parsonage or Rectory of Boscum, in the Diocese of
Sarum, and six miles from that City, became void. The Bishop of Sarum
is patron of it; but in the vacancy of that See,--which was three
years betwixt the translation of Bishop Pierce to the See of York, and
Bishop Caldwell's admission into it,--the disposal of that, and all
benefices belonging to that See, during this said vacancy, came to be
disposed of by the Archbishop of Canterbury: and he presented Richard
Hooker to it in the year 1591. And Richard Hooker was also in the
said year instituted, July 17, to be a Minor Prebend of Salisbury, the
corps to it being Nether-Haven, about ten miles from that City;
which prebend was of no great value, but intended chiefly to make
him capable of a better preferment in that church. In this Boscum he
continued till he had finished four of his eight proposed books of
"The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," and these were entered into the
Register-Book in Stationers' Hall, the 9th of March, 1592, but not
published till the year 1594, and then were with the before-mentioned
large and affectionate Preface, which he directs to them that seek--as
they term it--the reformation of the Laws and Orders Ecclesiastical
in the Church of England; of which books I shall yet say nothing more,
but that he continued his laborious diligence to finish the remaining
four during his life;--of all which more properly hereafter;--but at
Boscum he finished and published but only the first four, being then
in the 39th year of his age.

He left Boscum in the year 1595, by a surrender of it into the
hands of Bishop Caldwell: and he presented Benjamin Russell, who was
instituted into it the 23rd of June in the same year.

[Sidenote: Rector of Bishops-bourne]

The Parsonage of Bishop's Bourne in Kent, three miles from Canterbury,
is in that Archbishop's gift; but, in that latter end of the year
1594, Dr. William Redman, the Rector of it, was made Bishop of
Norwich; by which means the power of presenting to it was _pro ea
vice_ in the Queen; and she presented Richard Hooker, whom she loved
well, to this good living of Bourne, the 7th July, 1595; in which
living he continued till his death, without any addition of dignity or
profit.

And now h