290 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
keen intellect and devoted life of the great French Reformer
had fastened on some of the finest minds and most powerful
statesmen in France, Scotland, Holland and Switzerland,
as well as on many of the greatest Englishmen of the day,
brought down on the preacher a cautionary rebuke from the
Primate Whitgift, but apparently did not otherwise affect
Harsnett prejudicially, since his fellow townsmen, the Bailiffs
and Council of Colchester, appointed him Headmaster of the
Grammar School in March 1587 ; but learning, rather than the
"painful trade" of teaching, was then his ambition and his
destiny was to rule men rather than boys, so he resigned after
18 months' experience, and returned to Pembroke, having vainly
endeavoured to secure the appointment of a successor, who
also enjoyed the recommendation of the powerful puritan states-
men, our Recorder, Sir Francis Walsingham.
No doubt the young divine, play-fellow and lifelong friend
of Sir Thomas Lucas, was present at St. John's when the Earl
of Leicester was feasted there in December 1584, on his way to
the Netherland, at the head of a gallant band which included
that fine Elizabethan scholar and courtier, the translator of
Plutarch's Lives, Edward North, who had married the widow
of Harsnett's old patron, Dr. Bridgwater.
In 1592 Harsnett was elected Junior Proctor of his University,
and in 1596 he again came forward as a champion of liberal
views in support of Peter Baro, Lady Margaret professor of
divinity, who had criticized adversely Whitgift's Calvinistic
Lambeth Articles. His colleagues were those two eminent
Anglican Divines, Lancelot Andrewes, Master of Pembroke,
an Essex worthy, whose devotions still keep the affections of
English Churchmen, and John Overall, afterwards the learned
Bishop of Norwich.
Harsnett was now appointed Chaplain to Richard Bancroft,
Bishop of London, and later Primate, whose genius and states-
manship fixed the hitherto wavering policy of the English
church on the lines it has ever since retained. From him Harsnett
received rapid promotion as Prebendary of St. Paul's and Arch-
deacon of Essex, with a. succession of livings, Chigwell, Shenfield,
Hutton and Stisted, held, according to the bad custom of the
day, in plurality, though not all at one time. It is not probable
that he acquired much experience as a parish priest in view of