pension and hopes were at an end.
He, therefore, retired to his fellowship in a state of disappointment
and despair, which his biographer has endeavoured to express in the
deepest strain of plaintive declamation. "He was deprived of all his
support," says Graunt, "stripped of his pension, and cut off from the
assistance of his friends, who had now lost their influence: so that
he had nec praemia nec praedia, neither pension nor estate to support
him at Cambridge." There is no credit due to a rhetorician's account
either of good or evil. The truth is, that Ascham still had, in his
fellowship, all that in the early part of his life had given him
plenty, and might have lived like the other inhabitants of the
college, with the advantage of more knowledge and higher reputation.
But, notwithstanding his love of academical retirement, he had now too
long enjoyed the pleasures and festivities of publick life, to return
with a good will to academical poverty.

He had, however, better fortune than he expected; and, if he lamented
his condition, like his historian, better than he deserved. He had,
during his absence in Germany, been appointed Latin secretary to king
Edward; and, by the interest of Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, he was
instated in the same office under Philip and Mary, with a salary of
twenty pounds a year.

Soon after his admission to his new employment, he gave an
extraordinary specimen of his abilities and diligence, by composing
and transcribing, with his usual elegance, in three days, forty-seven
letters to princes and personages, of whom cardinals were the lowest.

How Ascham, who was known to be a protestant, could preserve the
favour of Gardiner, and hold a place of honour and profit in queen
Mary's court, it must be very natural to inquire. Cheke, as is well
known, was compelled to a recantation; and why Ascham was spared,
cannot now be discovered. Graunt, at a time when the transactions of
queen Mary's reign must have been well enough remembered, declares,
that Ascham always made open profession of the reformed religion, and
that Englesfield and others often endeavoured to incite Gardiner
against him, but found their accusations rejected with contempt: yet
he allows, that suspicions and charges of temporization and
compliance, had somewhat sullied his reputation. The author of the
Biographia Britannica conjectures, that he owed his safety to his
innocence and usefulness; that it would have been unpop