third earl of Huntingdon of the family of Hastings died about the
same time. By his mother, eldest daughter and coheiress of Henry Pole
lord Montacute, he was the representative of the Clarence branch of the
family of Plantagenet; but no pretensions of his had ever awakened
anxiety in the house of Tudor. He was a person of mild disposition,
greatly attached to the puritan party, which, bound together by a secret
compact, now formed a church within the church; he is said to have
impaired his fortune by his bounty to the more zealous preachers; and be
largely contributed by his will to the endowment of Emanuel college, the
puritanical character of which was now well known.

Richard Fletcher bishop of London, "a comely and courtly prelate," who
departed this life in the same year, affords a subject for a few
remarks. It was a practice of the more powerful courtiers of that day,
when the lands of a vacant see had excited, as they seldom failed to do,
their cupidity, to "find out some men that had great minds and small
means or merits, that would be glad to leave a small deanery to make a
poor bishopric, by new leasing lands that were almost out of
lease[119];" and on these terms, which more conscientious churchmen
disdained, Fletcher had taken the bishopric of Oxford, and had in due
time been rewarded for his compliance by translation first to Worcester
and afterwards to London. His talents and deportment pleased the queen;
and it is mentioned, as an indication of her special favor, that she
once quarrelled with him for wearing too short a beard. But he
afterwards gave her more serious displeasure by taking a wife, a gay and
fair court lady of good quality; and he had scarcely pacified her
majesty by the propitiatory offering of a great entertainment at his
house in Chelsea, when he was carried off by a sudden death, ascribed by
his contemporaries to his immoderate use of the new luxury of smoking
tobacco. This prelate was the father of Fletcher the dramatic poet.

[Note 119: Harrington's Brief View.]

Bishop Vaughan succeeded him, of whom Harrington gives the following
trait: "He was an enemy to all supposed miracles, insomuch as one
arguing with him in the closet at Greenwich in defence of them, and
alleging the queen's healing of the evil for an instance, asking him
what he could say against it, he answered, that he was loth to answer
arguments taken from the topic-place of the cloth of estate; but if
they would urge