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 croft's recommendation he was appointed one of the king's chaplains, and in 1606 became dean of Gloucester, and, on the nomination of his former patron, Lord Eure, the lord president, member of the council of the marches. On accepting the deanery he offered to resign the living of Long Marston in favour of Donne, then in great straits through his ill-advised marriage. He hoped thereby to induce Donne to take holy orders (, Life of Donne;, Eccl. Biography, iii. 634-6). The offer was gratefully declined ; but Morton still pressed on his friend the desirability of his undertaking the ministerial office (Life, by J. N[], p. 100). In the same year he visited Oxford, where he was received with great honour, and admitted to an ad eundem degree on 12 July. On this occasion he made the acquaintance of some eminent theologians, such as Dr. John King [q. v.], afterwards bishop of London; Dr. Reynolds [q. v.], president of Corpus ; Dr. Airey [q. v.j, provost of Queen's ; and Daniel Featley [q. v.] In 1609 James I transferred him to the deanery of Winchester. Here he was welcomed by Bishop Bilson [q. v.], who conferred on him the living of Alresford. At Winchester he became the intimate friend of Dr. Arthur Lake [q. v.], then master of St. Cross, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells, and of Dr. John Harmar [q. v.], head-master of Winchester school, and other scholars and theologians of repute. In 1610 he preached the sermon ad clerum at the opening of Convocation. When in London he lodged at the deanery of St. Paul's, with Dr. John Overall [q. v.], in whose house he enjoyed the society of Isaac Casaubon [q. v.], who became his intimate friend; of Scultetus, Diodati, Du Moulin and foreign scholars (cf. Casauboni Epistolæ, ed. 1709, Nos. 735, 751, 787, 802, 1048, 1050). On Casaubon's death in 1614 Morton caused a monument to be erected to him in Westminster Abbey at his own cost. Among his associates at a later period were Frederick Spanheim of Leyden, and Marco Antonio De Dominis [q. v.], archbishop of Spalato, whose high-flown pretensions to be regarded as the restorer of the unity of the church he seems to have estimated at their real worth (, Life, p. 87 ;, Hist. of England, iv. 287).

By this time Morton's character for learning and piety, as well as for practical wisdom, was fully established. The king valued him highly, and in 1610 he was nominated for one of the seventeen fellowships in the abortive college proposed by Sutcliffe, dean of Exeter, to be established at Chelsea for the study of controversial divinity (, Church Hist. v. 390 ; Life, by J. N. p. 37). Preferments followed one another with inconvenient rapidity. In July of the same year he was collated by Archbishop Toby Matthew [q. v.] to the canonry of Husthwait in York Minster (, Hist. of St. John's College, i. 194). In 1615, on the death of Dr. George Lloyd [q. v.], the king nominated him to the see of Chester. He accepted the nomination with great reluctance. His consecration was delayed till 7 July 1616. The ceremony, which was one of unusual stateliness, was performed at Lambeth by Archbishop Abbot, assisted by the primate of Ireland, the Bishop of Caithness, and others. While the palace at Chester was getting ready he stayed with Sir Christopher Hatton at Clay Hall, Essex, where he had a dangerous fever. He had resigned Alresford, but during his episcopate he held the living of Stopford, given him by the king in commendam that he might be better able to ' keep hospitality in that hospitable county.'

Difficulties which Morton had anticipated were not slow in presenting themselves at Chester. Few of the English dioceses at that time were so large, or exhibited greater differences in religion. Morton's see embraced, as indeed it did till the first half of the present century, not only the county of Chester, but the whole of Lancashire, the north-western portion of Yorkshire, and large portions of Cumberland and Westmoreland. In Lancashire the chief landowners, together with a large portion of the population, adhered to the oldunreformed faith; while the minority, who had embraced the reformation, had adopted the most extreme opinions of the foreign divines. The sanctity of the Lord's day was one of the points at issue. An attempt had been made by the magistrates to suppress the diversions customary on Sunday afternoons. Many resented this interference with their liberties, and the quarrel grew serious. James applied for advice to Morton, who cautiously recommended that nothing should be permitted which might disturb the worshippers when engaged in divine service, and that it should be left to each man's conscience whether he should take part in the accustomed sports when service was over. At the same time all parishioners were to attend their own parish church, and those who refused to do so were to be debarred from engaging in the subsequent diversions. With the exception of the last proviso, which, as Mr. Gardiner says, 'bribed men to worship God by the alluring prospect of a dance in the afternoon' (, Hist. of England, iii. 251), the bishop's temperate recommendations, on