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Rh in his office, and how the young couple lived during the next few years it is difficult now to explain. One friend came speedily to his rescue, Mr. Francis Wolley, who offered him an asylum at his house at Pyrford, near Guildford. Here he seems to have continued to live till the summer of 1604, about which time he was prevailed upon to make another attempt to obtain employment at court. He removed from Pyrford accordingly, and appears to have found his next place of refuge with his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Grymes, at Peckham, where his second son, George, was born in May 1605 (Parish Reg. of Camberwell). Next year he removed to Miteham, where several of his warmest friends resided; and that small house which tradition declared he had occupied there was still standing, and used to be pointed out as 'Donne's house,' less than fifty years ago (1888). He continued to reside at Miteham for at least five years, and here four more children were born. During this period he was in constant attendance upon the chief personages who frequented the court of James I, and found in many of them warm friends, who were not slow in rendering him substantial help when his necessities were pressing upon him. His most generous patron and friend was Lucy, countess of Bedford [see ], at whose house at Twickenham Donne was a frequent visitor, meeting there a brilliant circle of wits and courtiers such as have rarely assembled at any great salon in England. Meanwhile Donne had obtained some footing in the court, though apparently receiving no office of emolument. He had attracted the notice of the king and was kept in occasional attendance upon his majesty. The young man's musical voice, readiness of speech, and extraordinary memory made him acceptable at the royal table, where he appears to have been called upon sometimes to read aloud and sometimes to give his opinion on questions that arose for discussion. The king became convinced that here was a man whose gifts were such as were eminently suited for the calling of a divine, and in answer to such applications as were made to him to bestow some civil appointment upon the young courtier only made one reply, that Mr. Donne should receive church preferment or none at all. As thought James I so thought one of his most favoured chaplains, Thomas Morton [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Durham. As early as 1606 Dr. Morton had entered the lists as a controversialist against Father Parsons in his 'Apologia Christiana,' a work which much irritated his opponents and provoked more than one reply. The book exhibited a very unusual familiarity with the recent theology of the ultramontane divines and an intimate knowledge of the contents of treatises then very rarely looked into by Englishmen. It has long been forgotten, as has its more elaborate successor, Morton's 'Catholic Appeal,' but no one who should be at the pains to compare it, and the long list of authorities cited and quoted in its crowded pages, with Donne's 'Pseudo-Martyr' and 'Biathanatos' could have much doubt that Morton and Donne must for years have worked in close relations with each other, or could avoid a strong suspicion that Morton owed to Donne's learning very much more than it was advisable, or at that time necessary, to acknowledge in print. Morton, however, was not ungrateful to his coadjutor and friend, and when in June 1607 James I bestowed upon him the deanery of Gloucester, he took the earliest opportunity of pressing upon Donne the advisability of taking holy orders, and then and there offered to resign in his favour the valuable living of Long Marston in Yorkshire, the income of which he said was equal to that of his deanery. But Donne could not get over his conscientious scruples to enter the ministry of the church; he firmly declined the generous offer and went on for five or six years longer, hoping and hoping in vain.

Men's minds were at this time all astir upon the question how to deal with the English Romanists and how to meet the challenge which had been thrown down by Bellarmine and other writers who, as advocates for the papal view of the situation, insisted that the oath of allegiance to the king of England could not be taken with a safe conscience by any one in communion with the church of Rome. The king threw himself into the controversy, and while Bishop Andrewes engaged Bellarmine at close quarters in his 'Tortura Torti,' James I met the great canonist from a different standpoint and produced his 'Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance' simultaneously with Andrewes's great work. Both books were published in 1609. Neither produced the effect desired. The recusants stubbornly refused to read them, refused to take the oath, accepted the consequences, and, encouraged by the praises of their party, loudly proclaimed themselves martyrs. One day at the king's table Donne threw out a new suggestion, 'There are real martyrs and sham ones: these men are shams.' James I in a moment saw the point: it was a new line to take with the recusants. Donne was ordered to work out the new idea and to put it in the form of a book. They say it took him no more than six weeks to write. The 'Pseudo-Martyr,' as he named it, was published in 4to, 1610. It is to be presumed that he 