ably lessened, "urging that it was good for the world to have
few preachers, that three or four might suffice for a county; and that
the reading of the homilies to the people was enough." But the venerable
primate, so far from consenting to abridge the means of that religious
instruction which he regarded it as the most sacred duty of a protestant
church to afford, took the freedom of addressing to her majesty a very
plain and earnest letter of expostulation. In this piece, after showing
the great necessity which existed for multiplying, rather than
diminishing, opportunities of edification both to the clergy and the
people, and protesting that he could not in conscience be instrumental
to the suppression either of preaching or prophesyings, he proceeded to
remonstrate with her majesty on the arbitrary, imperious, and as it were
papal manner, in which she took upon herself to decide points better
left to the management of her bishops. He ended by exhorting her to
remember that she also was a mortal creature, and accountable to God for
the exercise of her power, and that she ought above all things to be
desirous of employing it piously for the promotion of true religion.

The event showed this remonstrance to be rather well-intended than
well-judged. Indignation was the only sentiment which it awakened in the
haughty mind of Elizabeth, and she answered it by an order of the
Star-chamber, in virtue of which the archbishop was suspended from his
functions for six months, and confined during the same period to his
house. At the end of this time he was urged by Burleigh to acknowledge
himself in fault and beg the queen's forgiveness but he steadily refused
to compromise thus a good cause, and his sequestration was continued. It
even appears that nothing but the honest indignation of some of her
ministers and courtiers restrained the queen from proceeding to deprive
him.

At the end of four or five years, her anger being somewhat abated, it
pleased her to take off the sequestration, but without restoring the
primate to her favor; and as he was now old and blind, he willingly
consented to resign the primacy and retire on a pension: but in 1583,
before the matter could be finally arranged, he died.

Archbishop Grindal was a great contributor to Fox's "Acts and
Monuments," for which he collected many materials; but he was the author
of no considerable work, and on the whole he seems to have been less
admirable by the display o