at it only proves their willingness to
raise charges against them. Of one bishop they tell us, that
after declaring he was poor, and what expenses he had been at,
as Paul's church could bear witness, shortly after hanged four
of his servants for having robbed him of a considerable sum.
Of another, who cut down all the woods at Hampstead, till the
towns-women "fell a swaddling of his men," and so saved
Hampstead by their resolution. But when _Martin_ would give a
proof that the Bishop of London was one of the bishops of the
devil, in his "Pistle to the terrible priests," he tells this
story:--"When the bishop throws his bowl (as he useth it
commonly upon the Sabbath-day), he runnes after it; and if it
be too hard, he cries _Rub! rub! rub! the diuel goe with
thee!_ and he goeth himself with it; so that by these words he
names himself the Bishop of the Divel, and by his tirannical
practice prooveth himselfe to be." He tells, too, of a parson
well known, who, being in the pulpit, and "hearing his dog
cry, he out with this text: 'Why, how now, hoe! can you not
let my dog alone there? Come, Springe! come, Springe!' and
whistled the dog to the pulpit." One of their chief objects of
attack was Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln, a laborious student, but
married to a dissolute woman, whom the University of Oxford
offered to separate from him: but he said he knew his
infirmity, and could not live without his wife, and was tender
on the point of divorce. He had a greater misfortune than even
this loose woman about him--his _name_ could be punned on; and
this bishop may be placed among that unlucky class of authors
who have fallen victims to their _names_. Shenstone meant more
than he expressed, when he thanked God that he could not be
punned on. Mar-Prelate, besides many cruel hits at Bishop
Cooper's wife, was now always "making the _Cooper's hoops to
flye off_, and the bishop's tubs to leake out." In "The
Protestatyon of Martin Marprelat," where he tells of two
bishops, "who so contended in throwing down elmes, as if the
wager had bene whether of them should most have impoverished
their bishopricks. Yet I blame not _Mar-Elme_ so much as
Cooper for this fact