J. HYGDEN, president of Magdalen College, 1516; prebendary of York, 1524; dean of Cardinal Wolsey's Foundation, first called Cardinal College; died, 1532. [He took the degree of D.D. January 29, 1513; was elected president of Magdalen about the 17th of December, 1516; resigned that charge Nov. 6, 1525, and was appointed dean of CARDINAL COLLEGE. On the disgrace of Cardinal Wolsey, in October, 1529, his college lapsed to the King, and was kept by him until 1532, when he founded it again upon the same site, though on a less princely scale, by the name of "KING HENRY THE EIGHTH, HIS COLLEGE." Dr. Hygden was nominated the first dean of this foundation also, but he did not long survive the change: He was buried in the chapel of Magdalen College, where he had founded a perpetual exhibition for eight students; a fact recorded on his monument, which also states him to have died January 13, 1532-3. His name frequently appears in the Oxford annals as one of Cardinal Wolsey's commissioners for the suppression of heretical opinions in the University.-Fasti Ox. i. 38; Hist. and Antiq. ii. 23. 31. 33 and 53; iii. 315. 332. 422. 428 and 437.]

2 J. OLYVER, dean of King Henry the Eighth's first Foundation, called King's College; master in Chancery, 1547; died, 1552. [A civil lawyer of very great eminence; D.C.L. of Oxford, June 23, 1522, and admitted one of the college of advocates at Doctors' Commons, November 11, in the same year: In 1527, he is found to have resigned the rectory of St. Mary Mountlow, London, and, in 1529, was made vicar of Minster, in the Isle of Thanet, by the abbot and convent of St. Augustine, at Canterbury. In 1530, he was, says Wood, "an

active man, and one of the commissioners for the depriving of Heth (Heath), Bishop of Worcester, and Day, Bishop of Chichester." He was employed on various other commissions of importance; in 1540, he was, with some other lawyers, consulted by the Convocation which decided against the validity of Henry the Eighth's marriage with Anne of Cleves. He was one of the two lawyers attached to Lord Northampton's embassy to France in 1551, when that nobleman carried over the Garter to the French King, and proposed a marriage between Edward the Sixth and the Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of that monarch. Strype gives the warrant for his pay of four marks a day during this employment. In this year too he was employed in the commission which deprived Bishop Gardiner of the See of Winchester. He succeeded Dr. Hygden as dean of Christ Church in February, 1532 3; and Wood asserts that he also succeeded him as prebendary of York, but, according to Willis, this is not correct. He did, however, hold a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Salisbury.

The foundation at Christ Church was again changed by Henry VIII., in 1545, when the dean and canons gave up all their lands, revenues, &c., to the King, and obtained instead a yearly pension. Dr. Olyver's pension amounted to £70.

Dr. Olyver died in London, in the civilians' college at Doctors' Commons, about May, 1552; and is supposed by Willis to have been buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.-Fasti Ox. i. 60. 94; Hist. and Antiq. iii. 429 and 437; Willis's Cath. Surv. i. 176, ii. 438-9; Newcourt's Rep. i. 463; Strype's Memorials, I. i. 560, II. i. 473, II. ii. 199. 244; Dr. Coote's Sketches of the Lives of English Civilians, 18.]

B

W. BENSON, the last abbot of Westminster, and first dean; died, 1549. [Called also Abbot Boston, from the place of his birth, but when he became dean he assumed his family name: he had been abbot of Burton on Trent, and became abbot of Westminster, 1533, and was the first stranger who had succeeded to that Office since 1222. His selection for it was probably owing to bribes given to officers of the king's household; and other traits are related of his character which show that he was not over scrupulous in such matters. During his presidency there were two important exchanges of land between the king and the convent, by which the latter, besides parting with the advowson of Chelsea rectory, and some meadows near the Horseferry, alienated Covent Garden: On the 16th of January, 1539-40, the monastery itself was given up to the king by the abbot and twentyfour monks. Benson died in September, 1549, and was interred in the Abbey, near the Vestry.] -Vide Widmore's Westminster Abbey, 126-33.

2 A. NOWELL (see Redman), prebendary of Westminster 1551 and 1560; dean of St. Paul's, 1561; canon of Windsor, 1594; principal of Brasenose College, 1595; died, 1601. [Dean Nowell was a Lancashire person, sent to school at Middleton, in that county, and thence removed to Brasenose College, Oxford, as it is said, at the age of 13; took the degrees of B.A. in 1536, and of M.A. 1540. He was chosen fellow of his college, and "grew very famous for religion and learning." In 1553, he was honoured in a remarkable manner by being returned to Parliament for St. Looe, Cornwall, but was not allowed to sit, as being represented as a prebendary of Westminster in the Convocation. In 1554 he was deprived of his stall at Westminster, and narrowly escaped with his life; for, as Fuller says, "whilst Nowel was catching of Fishes, Bonner was catching of Nowel;" a timely warning was given him while engaged in that amusement, and he fled to Germany. On his return, after the accession of Elizabeth, he was made archdeacon of Middlesex, 1560, and, in that year, again appointed to a prebendal stall at Westminster, which he held till 1564. He was also rector of Saltwood, Kent, 1560, and of Much Hadham, Herts, from 1562 to 1589. He was nominated likewise to a stall at Canterbury, and held another at St. Paul's, from 1559 until 1588.

Dean Nowell was prolocutor of the celebrated convocation for settling the ritual and doctrine of the Church of England in 1562.

In 1589, the Queen gave him the next presentation to a canonry in Windsor, but it did not fall vacant until 1594. On the 1st of October,1595, he was actually created D.D., at Oxford; he resigned

1540.

John Adams.

1543.

Alexan. Nowell2.

1540.

Odnell Hayborne.

the headship of Brasenose, December 4, 1595, having only held it since the 6th of September. After he was settled in the deanery of St. Paul's, he became a frequent and " painful preacher," and "for thirty years he preached the first and last sermons in the time of Lent before the Queen, wherein he dealt plainly and faithfully with her, without dislike," except, indeed, on one occasion, when she called aloud to him "to retire from that ungodly digression, and to return to his text." He died on the 13th of February, 1601-2, and was buried in St. Paul's, where, "a comely monument" was erected to his memory.

Strype gives the following account of Nowell's method of education :-" When he was master of Westminster School, he brought in the reading of Terence, for the better learning the pure Roman style. As it was said of Dr. Barnes, that he brought in that author and Tully into his college of Augustin's at Cambridge, instead of barbarous Duns and Dorbel; and one day every week Terence gave way to St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles; which he read in Greek to such of his scholars as were almost at man's estate; whereof he had a good number. Whereby he prepared himself in some way for the teaching of God's people in his church whereunto he had directed his intent since he was sixteen years old."

Thus it is to this eminent divine that Westminster owes that instructive and classical recreation, so peculiar to herself, the annual representation of one of Terence's Plays-a custom which Queen Elizabeth rendered obligatory by an express statute,-" quo juventus

tum

actioni tum pronunciationi decenti melius se assuescat," as the queen herself expressed it, when she enforced its observance every Christmas, by a penalty on those who should cause its neglect.

The strong feeling of the great body of Old Westminsters in favour of this ancient custom, when a proposal was made for abolishing it, was embodied in a petition to the Dean, presented by the Marquis of Lansdowne, in 1847, and the ready concurrence of all the authorities connected with the school in the prayer of that petition lead to the sanguine expectation that there will not again be any attempt to interfere with an institution established under such pious and learned auspices,-interwoven, as it were, with the very foundation of the school,-and which has had its share in contributing to the credit and character it has so long enjoyed.

Dean Nowell was the author of several learned theological works. His Catechism was one of the books which the Convocation ordered to be studied in the university, to "preserve the scholars from the heresy of Romanism." He left a bene

faction to Brasenose for thirteen scholars, to be chosen from the Free School of Middleton, in Lancashire. His picture is in the hall, and in the library, at Brasenose; in each he is represented with the emblems of his favourite pastime in his hand, and over each is the following inscription :"Alexander Nowellus, Sacræ Theologiæ Professor, S. Pauli Decanus, obiit 13 Febr. Anno Dom. 1601, R.R. Eliz. 44, an. Decanatus 42, Etatis suæ 95; cum neque oculi caligarent, neque aures obtusiores, neque memoria infirmior, neque animi ullæ Facultates victa essent-Piscator Hominum."

When rector of Hadham, he used to indulge in this amusement in the river Ash,-of which Dr. Sandys, Bishop of London, had given him the custody, and to distribute to the poor the fish which he caught.

There is also a portrait of him in the Bodleian, to which he was a benefactor. -Ath. Ox. i. 716-19, Fasti i. 102. 112 and 272; Hist, and Antiq. ii. 193, Part ii. 922. 954, and iii. 360. 365. 369-70. 372; Newcourt's Rep. i. 49-50. 82. 215. 226; Widmore's West. Abbey, 135. 220. 221 and 227; Strype, i. 473; Burnet's Ref. ii. 253; Clutterbuck's Herts, iii. 401; Fuller's Church Hist. iii. 167, Book x.]

R. COX, master of Eton school; [chaplain to the king]; prebendary and archdeacon of Ely; dean of Osney, near Oxford, 1543; chancellor of Oxford University, 1547; high almoner to the king, and preceptor to [the Prince of Wales, afterwards] King Edward VI., 1540; canon of Windsor, 1548; dean of Christ Church (being King Henry the Eighth's second foundation), 1546; dean of Westminster, 1549; bishop of Ely, 1559; one of the compilers of the Liturgy, and one of the reviewers of it in Queen Elizabeth's reign; died, 1581. [A native of Buckinghamshire, of low extraction; educated at Eton, whence he was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1519, and took the degree of B.A. In 1525, he went to Oxford, and was appointed a Junior Canon of Cardinal Wolsey's college, and, in the same year, incorporated in the degree of B. A., at which time, we are told, he was esteemed an excellent scholar; he was licensed to proceed M.A., Feb. 8, 1525, and did do so in an act celebrated July 1526. About this time, he was known to have imbibed the doctrines of the Reformation, and, for that cause, was compelled to leave Oxford. A little while after this he took refuge at Eton, where, we are told, "by his diligent instruction the boys profited much." He was incorporated at Cambridge in the degree of M.A., which he had taken at Oxford. In 1535, he proceeded B.D. at Cambridge, being then chaplain to Goodrich, Bishop of Ely. In 1537, he proceeded D.D., and, in 1543, did supplicate that he might take his place among the Doctors of Divinity at Oxford,

though he was not regularly incorporated in that degree until June, 1545. He was appointed archdeacon of Ely December 4, 1540, and, September 10, 1541, first prebendary of that cathedral; he held both these benefices until his de-, privation in the reign of Queen Mary;--was prebendary of Sutton, one of the richest prebends in Lincoln Cathedral, from 1542 to 1547, in which year he alienated it to the crown; he did the same by the rectory of Harrow on the Hill, to which he was presented in 1544. In 1543, he was designated for the new Bishopric which Henry VIII. intended to create at Southwell. He resigned the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, November 14, 1552, and was exempted from the duties of Vice-Chancellor. During Queen Mary's reign he suffered for his adherence to the Reformation, and was imprisoned from the 5th to the 19th of August, 1553, after which he retired to Frankfort, where he became leader of the party in favour of the English Liturgy of Edward VI. against John Knox. He returned to England on the accession of Elizabeth, and supported the Queen in her retention of the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, and was by her nominated the principal disputant in a conference to be held with the Romish clergy. In June, 1559, he was elected Bishop of Norwich, but was translated to Ely before his consecration.

He was nominated a privy councillor about the year 1547.

Bishop Cox died July 22, 1581, and was interred in Ely Cathedral. He was a very learned man, but one of great worldliness. He surrendered the beautiful cathedral of Osney, besides the other preferments mentioned before, to Henry VIII., and, indeed, according to Willis, he alienated, without scruple, to the crown, the richest portions of the benefices which he held ; there was hardly one which was not the poorer for his occupancy: Yet, Fuller asserts that he "commendably continued in his See, whatever causeless malice hath reported to the contrary."

He had a great hand in framing the first Liturgy of the Church of England, and in reviewing it in the reign of Elizabeth; but Strype says that he "liked its original form but little." He also translated the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Romans, and was the author of many other works in print; and a list of six, which he left in MS., is given by Dr. Bliss.

A stigma, which it would require many good deeds to wipe off, attaches itself to his name, as he was one of the most active of those who, in their zeal against Popery, destroyed with ruthless hands the ancient MSS. in the libraries at Oxford. He is also noted as the first person who brought a wife into Christ Church. He left by his will charitable bequests to the poor of various places. -Ath. Ox. i. 468-9 Fasti Ox. 69. 72. 119 and