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JAMES PILKINTON' TENTH MASTER,

ADMITTED JUL. 20TH, 1559.

WE are now come to a new state of things and a period very different from the last. Upon queen Mary's death the old frame was irrecoverably overturned, bishop Fisher's statutes were again abrogated and the king's statutes revived and came in force. Whilst Dr Bullock held his post 5 in college in the new reign, things were in some confusion, and there seems to have been a mixture of the old and new constitution, according as parties or interests declined or prevailed; after the visitation came on, all matters were soon adjusted.

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A citation was issued out for this visitation June 21 an. reg. 1o, by William Cecil and Anthony Coke knights, Matthew Parker and William Bill D.D., Walter Haddon and William Maye LL.D., Thomas Wendey M.D., and Robert Horne and James Pilkington S.T.P., her majesty's 15 commissioners to that purpose, whereby the day was fixed on the 7th of July following. All ordinary jurisdiction, all elections and other business was inhibited, so that James Pilkington having been admitted master July 20th, 1559, it must have been done by the act or with the consent of 20 the visitors, and having been one of the visitors himself and so well and duly qualified for the mastership, it was no hard thing to make him master.

1 James Pilkinton was son of Richard P. and Alice Hassall, which said Richard died an. 1o. reg. Mariæ, leaving George P. his heir. Ex officio armorum.

In December 1550 he was pre

sented by the king to the vicarage of Kendal Westmoreland, which he resigned the following year.

2 Citatio pro visitatione instituenda 7° Jul. 1559. MS. Drs. Gale.

At this visitation, as several regulations were made in particular colleges, so there were statutes given to the university, which continued in force till the year 1570 Sept. 24, when they were altered and enlarged into the form they 5 now stand in and such regard was had to the master in the visitation, who was one of their number, that the elections were left to him; for the same month, after the visitation was over, he held an election by permission of the visitors', and Richard Longworth the master's countryman Io was one of the first fellows that was chose.

This Mr Pilkinton was then only B.D., for so he is styled in several public instruments, and yet in other instruments being styled S. Th. professor, either a bachelor of divinity was capable of that title, or he was a professor 15 of divinity in the university. And so, I suppose, he was, for though he has not a place amongst our professors, yet in his epitaph he is styled in academia S. T. professor disertissimus, and in Bucer's Scripta Anglicana3 he is said to be in theologia professor regius.

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He was very well qualified for that employment, for besides that he bore a part in the disputation at the visitation at Cambridge under king Edward, whilst Bucer was at Cambridge, he did voluntarily read in public upon the Acts of the Apostles, wherein by the testimony of that 25 learned man he acquitted himself both learnedly and piously: and Young himself, who does not agree with Bucer in many things, yet falls in with him in his testimony of Pilkington's learning, who was then president of the college and commenced B.D. an. 1551. It does not 30 appear to me, nor are there any traces of it upon our public register, that he was ever doctor of divinity; for though in one of Joscelin's catalogues in the British Antiquities he has the title of Th. D., yet in the other catalogue, reprinted in the second edition of that work, he is degraded

1 Regr. coll.

2 Particularly in the queen's sanction of Trinity college statutes dat. Mar. 29 an. reg. 2da. He is there styled B.D.

3 P. 940. In Arthur Goldyng's translation of the burning of M. Bu

cer, printed an. 1562, Mr James Pilkinton is said to be the queen's reader of the divinity lecture. And so in Fox's Martyr., edit. ma. · P.

1555.

4 Buceri Script. Angl. [p. 808 ] 5 Regr. acad.

to bachelor of divinity, a correction that would not easily have been made without a reason. And to speak the truth, there seems to have been too much of ceremony in this degree to have been agreeable to our learned professor after his return from exile, where he was a companion and of 5 the same congregation with John Bale, who never cared to return to his bishopric, though he returned to England, no more than bishop Coverdale' would do, who was out of love with the habits, as appeared very plainly at the consecration of archbishop Parker.

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It can never be forgot that it was under this master and his brother that Thomas Cartwright, William Fulke, Percival Wiburn, Leaver the younger, etc. sprung up, who were all fellows under them and infected the college with an almost incurable disaffection, and laid the seeds of our 15 succeeding divisions. If his letter to the earl of Leicester, wrote after he was bishop of Durham, were really his, a man would have as hard an opinion of him, as he seems there to have of the ceremonies: or if the letter to the brethren published in the Register under his name, were of 20 his composing, where the habits or vestments are styled popish rags, and the roundness of a man's head is made an objection to the squaring of his cap, one would yet have harder thoughts of him; but as the former letter has been quoted by the puritans, so I have always suspected that 25 the Register was published by the papists, though it contains a collection of puritanical pamphlets, and therefore I am slow in believing every thing that is heaped up in that collection. It is plain the print is foreign, and the design looks as if it were contrived by an enemy; and yet 30 so far we may suppose the charge to be true, that he was a favourer of the party, otherwise there could be no ground or pretence to fasten such letters upon him.

There is one thing said of him in the British Antiquities, which I do not very well understand; in Joscelin's 35 Catalogue, of both editions, the degree or order of the several bishops is put down, and all of them are said to

1 Milo vero Coverdallus non nisi toga lanea talari utebatur. Ordo consecr. Matthei archiepi, Cant.

2 Dat. Octobr. 25 an. 1564. 3 Parte of a Register containing sundrie memorable matters, p. 19.

have been presbyters, either secular or regular, only Pilkington (and with him Bullingham) is said to be, min. secu., which unless it means a minister', I do not know what to make of it. He was a friend of Bale and Bul5 linger, and that possibly may explain some particulars of his life and conduct.

He continued master here after he was bishop of Durham seven or eight months. What he did in that see is foreign to my purpose; he died at his castle at Auckland 10 Jan. 23, 1575, aged 55 years, and was buried in the cathedral church of Durham the 24th of May following, after he had sat in that see fourteen years, ten months and twenty-three days. Robert Swift, his chancellor at Durham and scholar in the college, gave him a monument 15 with an epitaph yet extant.

He left several books to the college library in number forty-five, a catalogue whereof is at the end of Vatablus' Bible, and if we may guess at his studies from his books, he was most versed in our modern Protestant divines, such 20 as Musculus, Brentius, Bucer, Bullinger, etc. Other books he gave to the public library an. 1574 in number only twenty, but to do him right, they were much the more valuable collection.

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Books of his own composing were, A Commentary 25 upon Aggeus and Abdias, Lond. 1562. After his death came out an Exposition' upon certain chapters of Nehemiah, with a preface by John Fox and an appendix by Rob. Some D.D., two men of known inclinations. John Bale says, he had expounded both the Epistles of St 2 Simler. vit. Bullinger. [Tigur. 1575. p. 28.]

1 Minister is a word the bishop delights in. The seven angels in the Revelation are with him the seven ministers of the seven congregations or churches; and so in other places in his Exposition of Aggeus, chap. 1, vv. 12, 13, etc. [fol. O 8 v°.]

"In the late dayes of popery, our holy Byshops called before them all suche as were made Ministers wythoute suche greasyng, and blessed them with the Popes blessing, anoynted them, and then all was perfit." Chap. 2, v. 1c, etc. [fol. Aa. iii.]

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Peter and had then Solomon's Ecclesiastes under his hands, but these, I suppose, were never published. He has likewise published a tract of the causes of the burning' of Paul's church, etc.; but had he outlived the plumber that burnt that church by his carelessness, he would have 5 known the true cause by the poor man's own confession. Papist and Protestant had been charging that judgement upon one another, and did not know it was the effect of accident. I can never turn that book without thinking I have somewhat before me of John Bale, it is so full of 10 warmth and zeal: Young himself his fellow collegian has not escaped the furious strokes and lashes of his pen, under the character of one of their pertest lustye yonge princockes,... and this lusty yonker, who would have turned Bishop Cranmers boke into latin, yea and maried to (as was nedefull) 15 if the good kinge had lived a while longer; which, I believe, was more than the good bishop could be well assured of. There is likewise printed amongst Bucer's Scripta Anglicana a sermon of his in Latin at the restitution of Bucer and Fagius. Of the two letters which have been charged 20 upon him I have spoke already.

Such were his works of learning. His work of charity was a school founded at Rivington in Lancashire, the seat of his family, and so far he left the patronage to the college, that the governors should present two to the 25 society, honest men and good scholars-that have profited well in logic and philosophy and in the knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues-such as love pure religion and be haters of popery and superstition-out of whom the master and seniors shall choose one, as upon examination 30 they shall think fit. And if the governors do not choose

1 Lond. 1563, then supposed to have been burnt by lightning. [fol. E. v.]

2 P. 940.

Regr. liter. fol. 431, 432.

4 That have continued at their studies four years diligently in one of the universities, of the age of 24 years at least, that have taken degree in the schools, and have good testimony of their learning and honesty

of the college where they have continued.

Statutes of Rivington school inter archiva; which statutes are grounded upon queen Elizabeth's letters patent dat. an. reg. 8°. and upon an act of parliament of the same date, and were enrolled in the chancery of the duchy of Lancaster an. Eliz. 38. [Printed, with a life of Pilkington, by J. Whitaker. Lond. 1837. 8vo.]

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