228 Lawrence Mason, 



an lionorable career. In his undergraduate days an imi^ortant event 

 may have taken place whicli suppUes a connecting Hnk ignored by 

 his biographers, for it may well have been at college that John 

 King's descent, person, or abilities first recommended him to John 

 Piers, Dean of Christ Church from 1570 to 1576. ^ Piers, becoming 

 Bishop of Rochester (1576), of Salisbury (1577)^ and Archbishop 

 of York (1588), presently made King his domestic chaplain and in 

 1590 installed him as archdeacon of Nottingham. In 1590 or 1591 

 King married Joan, "daughter of Hen. Freeman of Staffordshire,"* 

 and this quaint little epigram on the occasion is perhaps worthy of 

 extraction from Malone MS. 19, p. 98, in the Bodleian: 



"Verses gave to Dr. King & his wife whose name was 



ffreeman at Ye Marriage dinnr. 

 A ffreeman yet noe man 



A Kinge, yet noe Queene, 

 A wife & yet a mayde, 



The like was never seene." 



Now King was no less a favorite at Court than at his University. For 

 after the death of Archbishop Piers, he became chaplain to Sir 

 Thomas Egerton. Lord Keepe^ of the Great Seal,* and then chaplain 

 in ordinary to Queen Elizabeth, and later to James. Various rector- 

 ages and prebends were bestowed upon him by his influential patrons, 

 and several livings sine cura were within his gift. In fact, his means 

 must have been so considerable,"* in view of the inheritance from 

 Bishop Robert King as well,^ that much fruitless conjecture has been 

 expended ui)on the question of what became of the fortune;® per- 



1 "Alum. West.," pp. ii,54- 



2 " Athen. Oxon.," Ill, 839; but the funeral certificate reads "of Henley 

 in the county of Oxford," as quoted by Hannah, xci. 



3 " Alum. West.," 54. 



* Godwin, "Catalogue of the Bishops of England," 1615, p. 106, gives the 

 royal appraisal of the Bishopric of London as 1119I. 8s. 4d. 



^ Fuller, op. cit., 499. 



® This paragraph from Manningham's Diary (ed. liruce, 1868, p. 79) 

 seems worth including in full, as it has apparently escaped the notice of John 

 King's biographers. It shows that the diminution of his resources was due 

 to no disregard of the temporalities on his part, and gives other interesting 

 information about him. The entry occurs on fol. 58 of the MS. and is dated 

 3 Nov. 1602: "Mr. Gardner of Furnivales Inne told howe that Mr. King, 

 preacher at St. Androes in Holborne, being earnestly intreated to make a 

 .sermon at the funeralc of a gent, of their liouse, because the gent, desyred 

 he should be requested, made noe better nor other aunswer, but told 



