. The version still exists in manuscript, and is
executed with some spirit, and not inelegantly, in the old measure of
fourteen syllables.

Parker's "_Nolo episcopari_" is supposed to have been more than
ordinarily sincere: in fact, the station of metropolitan must at this
juncture have been felt as one of considerable difficulty, perhaps even
of danger; and the stormy temper of the queen afterwards prepared for
the prelate so much of contradiction and humiliation as caused him more
than once to bewail his final acceptance of the highest dignity of the
English church.

With all her personal regard for the primate, Elizabeth could not always
refrain in his presence from reflections against married priests, which
gave him great pain.

During a progress which she made in 1561 into Essex and Suffolk, she
expressed high displeasure at finding so many of the clergy married,
and the cathedrals and colleges so filled with women and children; and
in consequence she addressed to the archbishop a royal injunction, "that
no head or member of any college or cathedral should bring a wife or any
other woman into the precincts of it, to abide in the same, on pain of
forfeiture of all ecclesiastical promotion." Parker regarded it as his
duty to remonstrate with her in person against so popish a prohibition;
on which, after declaring to him that she repented of having made any
married bishops, she went on to treat the institution of matrimony
itself with a satire and contempt which filled him with horror.

It was to his wife that her majesty, in returning acknowledgements for
the magnificent hospitality with which she had been received at the
archiepiscopal palace, made use of the well-known ungracious address;
"Madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, and so I
know not what to call you; but howsoever I thank you."

But these fits of ill-humor were transient; for Parker learned the art
of dispelling them by submissions, or soothing them by the frequent and
respectful tender of splendid entertainments and costly gifts. He did
not long remain insensible to the charms of rank and fortune; and it
must not be concealed that an inordinate love of power, and a haughty
intolerance of all opposition, gradually superseded that candor and
Christian meekness of which he had formerly been cited as an edifying
example. Against that sect amongst the clergy who refused to adopt the
appointed habits and scrupled some of the cerem