Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/4

Rh accepted preferment in the church, he betrothed himself to his future wife Elizabeth Helyar, though his marriage did not take place till more than eighteen months afterwards.

At this time the bishop of Peterborough, who seems to have been his constant friend, wrote a letter on his behalf to the Earl of Suffolk, then Lord Chamberlain, to ask preferment for him. In this letter, which is dated from Peterborough on 16th October, the bishop speaks of him as a fellow of Magdalene college, Cambridge, and says: "He is an honest man, a good scholer, and a rare preacher: this I doe report out of mine owne knowledge, being well acquaynted bothe wth the sufficiencie of his learning and wth the synceritie of his lyfe by the meanes of his domesticall conversation wth me."

Shortly afterwards, namely on 13th October, 1604, he was presented by King James I. to the rectory of Lezant, in the county of Cornwall, and on the 21st of the same month to the vicarage of Alvington, in the county of Devon, to which last he was admitted on the 3rd of the following December. In the following year he accepted a prebendal stall in the cathedral church of Peterborough, to which he was collated on 13th April, 1605, by his friend and patron Bishop Dove, with whom he resided when at Peterborough.

He was made chaplain in ordinary to King James I. in 1605, he was sworn at Grafton, and was in waiting at that summer's progress at Oxford.