Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/137

 bers of the ‘caput’ in December 1570 to deprive Cartwright of the Lady Margaret professorship of divinity, which he had held for a year. This decisive step he followed up in September 1571 by decreeing Cartwright's expulsion from his fellowship at Trinity, which he had held for more than nine years. Whitgift's pretext was that Cartwright had not taken priest's orders within the statutory period. Such displays of resolution, while they increased his reputation with one section of the university, roused a storm of protest on the part of another. Whitgift retorted by threatening to resign the mastership and withdraw from the university. Six heads of houses on 28 Sept. appealed to Burghley to show Whitgift some special mark of favour. They declared that Whitgift's disciplinary measures were wise and beneficial, and that the university owed to him ‘the repressing of insolence and the maintaining of learning and well-doing.’ For the time his enemies acknowledged their defeat.

Meanwhile he was preparing for withdrawal if the need arose. On 19 June 1571 he was elected dean of Lincoln, and was installed in the cathedral on 2 Aug. On 31 Oct. Archbishop Parker granted him a faculty authorising him to hold with the deanery the mastership of Trinity College, the canonry at Ely, the rectory at Teversham, and any other benefice he chose. He had no scruples about taking full advantage of so valuable a dispensation. On 31 May 1572 he was collated to the prebend of Nassington in the church of Lincoln, and, although he resigned the rectory of Teversham about August 1572, he at once accepted the rectory of Laceby, Lincolnshire (Notes and Queries, 8th ser. i. 433). The clergy of the Lincoln diocese, with which he was thus associated in many capacities, returned him as their proctor to convocation, and towards the end of 1572 Archbishop Parker nominated him to preach the Latin sermon. On 14 May 1572 he was chosen prolocutor of the lower house.

Whitgift took wide views of the service he owed the church both inside and outside the university. He seized every opportunity that offered of championing its organisation against attack. In 1572 two violent tracts (each entitled ‘An Admonition to the Parliament’) recommended the reconstitution of the church on presbyterian lines. The first ‘Admonition’ was by two London clergymen, John Field and Thomas Wilcox [q. v.], and the second was by Whitgift's former opponent Cartwright. Whitgift at once answered the first ‘Admonition’ (not the second) in a pamphlet which was entitled ‘An Answere to a certen Libel intituled An Admonition to the Parliament. By John Whitgifte, D. of Diuinitie’ (London, 1572, by Henrie Bynneman for Humfrey Toy; black letter). Whitgift's tract had a wide circulation, and reappeared next year ‘newly augmented by the authour.’ He wrote with force of his conviction that the episcopal form of church government was an essential guarantee of law and order in the state. Cartwright readily crossed swords with the master of his college, to whom he owed his expulsion, and his ‘Replye’ to Whitgift's ‘Answere’ overflowed with venom. Whitgift returned to the charge in his ‘Defense of the Answere to the Admonition’ (London, 1574, fol.). ‘I do charge all men before God and his angels,’ he solemnly warned ‘the godly reader’ at the conclusion of his preface, ‘as they will answer at the day of judgment, that under the pretext of zeal they seek not to spoil the church; under the colour of perfection they work not confusion; under the cloak of simplicity they cover not pride, ambition, vainglory, arrogancy; under the outward show of godliness they nourish not contempt of magistrates, popularity, anabaptistry, and sundry other pernicious and pestilent errors.’ Cartwright again answered Whitgift in both a ‘Second Replie’ (1575) and ‘The Rest of the Second Replie’ (1577), but Whitgift deemed it wise to abstain from further direct altercation with his obstinate enemy.

In 1573 Whitgift was for a second time elected vice-chancellor of Cambridge University. On 26 March 1574 he preached about church government before the queen at Greenwich, and his sermon was printed and published. In 1576 he was a commissioner for the visitation of St. John's College, and in the same year entreated the chancellor of the university to take effective steps to prevent the sale of fellowships and scholarships (28 March 1576;, Life, bk. i. cap. xiii; , p. 269). But Whitgift's activities were now to find a wider field for exercise than was offered by academic functions. On 17 March 1574–5 Archbishop Parker suggested his appointment to the see of Norwich, but the recommendation was neglected. Parker's second suggestion of a like kind was successful. On 24 March 1576–7 Whitgift was nominated to the bishopric of Worcester; he was enthroned by proxy on 5 May 1577, and had restitution of the temporalities on the 10th. Next month he resigned the mastership of Trinity, which had prospered conspicuously, as his successor Dr. Still eloquently acknowledged, during his ten years' vigorous rule.