Life and Works of Henry King. 231 



pamphlet sermons examined in connection with the present in- 

 \estigation, they simply are not comparable in absolute value with 

 the great hterary orations of John Donne and other real masters 

 of the form at that time.^ 



Bishop John King died March 30, 1621, after more than fourteen 

 years 2 of suffering from stone in the reins and bladder, "and was 

 buried in the South-Isle, over against the Quire, in the Cathedral 

 Church of S. Paul, under a flat Marble, and had a long Epitaph 

 inscrib'd in a Table hanging by,"^ "with the simple word ' Resurgam' 

 on his gravestone."* A very moving account of his last days will 

 be found in his eldest son's sermon preached nine months later in 

 answer to the "aspersion as false as foul . . . that at this death he was 

 reconciled to the church of Rome."^ This absurd charge, "suffi- 

 cientl}^ confuted by those eye and ear witnesses present at his pious 

 departure,"^ has its only suspicion of probability lent to it by the 

 alarmed and abusive and over-elaborate denials it has evoked from 

 all Anglican biographers and historians of this period. The sermon 

 just mentioned,^ with its accompanying legal retractation of the 

 libel by the libeller, should have settled and dismissed the matter 

 forever. Bishop John King's fair fame is unimpeached, nowadays, 

 and he left a record that none of his sons equalled; for Grosart's 

 statement, "his sons grew into a fame that over-shadowed his own,"^ 



1 Since all King's biographers, from Wood down, have been at great 

 pains to catalogue such of his sermons as are mentioned or extant anywhere, 

 it may be worth while to record two hitherto unnoticed London sermons 

 of his as very copiously taken down by John Manningham : (i) Oct. 24, 

 1602, at Paul's Cross, on 2 Peter II, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ; and (2) Mar. 27, 1603, 

 at White Hall, on Luke XI, 14 ct seq. — Manningham's Diary, ed. Bruce, 

 64—72, 149—153. 



2 "Athen. Oxon.," II, 295, footnote 6. 



^ "Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense," by R. Newcourt, 

 1708, I, 29. 



* "Alum. West.," 54 ; cf. Henry King's elegy on his father, with reference 

 to this "simple word"; and cf. BibHog., pp. 280, 283, for notice of this 

 "long Epitaph inscrib'd in a Table." 



^ Fuller, op. cit., V, 500. 



6 Ibid. 



' Cf. Bibliog., p. 275, inf. Cf. also the second sentence of Henry King's 

 "Epistle Dedicatory" in his "Exposition upon the Lords Prayer," 1628: 

 "something was done to disprove that {since confessed) scandall, touching 

 my Father's Revolt from his Religion." 



^ "Lectures upon Jonah." by John King, in " Nichol's Series of Commen- 

 taries," 1864, with biographical introduction by A. B. Grosart, p. xii ; 



