Life of Matthew Parker (Strype, 1821)/Introduction
THE INTRODUCTION ; CONTAINING THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE .
My purpose in this undertaking is, according as matters The Author's purhave occurred to me, to display the Reformation of this pose. Church of England, and the transactions accompanying it, as they began and were carried on, next under God and Queen Elizabeth, by the influence , wisdom, and conduct of Archbishop Parker : but with a more especial eye unto his life, actions, manners , and conversation , in his high and holy function . He succeeded the next but one to the ever memorable Cranmer and Pole Archbishop Cranmer ; Reginald Pole, Cardinal, being the immediate intervening Archbishop, who immediately followed the said predecessors to Parker. Cranmer in this transcendent charge and honour, and was the great instrument made use of for the reconciling and subjecting of this Church and kingdom to the Papacy ; and lived but sixteen hours after his royal mistress Queen Mary ; she dying in the morning, and he at night.
Of him designing to say something elsewhere, I shall refrain my pen from any discourse concerning him in this place ; it being my intent to treat only of such of our Archbishops as were reformed.
Nominated Queen Elizabeth being at her first access to the Crown to by the nominate a fit person for the metropolitical see of Canterbury, Queen to succeed. now void, it was resolved, that he that should fill this chair in this critical time should be a person that might govern the province with great prudence and moderation, and (Popery being abandoned) might promote the true religion by persuasion and gentleness, rather than by other sharp and rigorous methods. Therefore, in that plentiful choice of learned and godly men of sound religion, that then beyond expectation appeared, after long and serious deliberation with her counsellors, she pitched upon MATTHEW PARKER, Doctor in Divinity, as the best qualified in all respects for that office : and whom she knew from her childhood ; having been chaplain to Queen Ann Bolen, her mother, King Henry VIII . her father, and King Edward VI . her brother, successively. The distriMy accounts which I have to make of this most reverend but ion of the work. Father, and of divers ecclesiastical affairs that fell out during 2 his Primacy, I shall digest under four distinct portions of time : the first whereof shall be from his youth to his consecration ; and the fifteen years and some months following, (that is, from his consecration to his death, ) being distributed into three equal portions, shall complete the three other parts. In the writing of which, I humbly implore the aid and conduct of the Spirit of truth and peace.
Source: John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821), Vol. I. Text transcribed from the Google Books scan; spelling and punctuation as in the original.
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