BISHOP AYLMER. 47 



certain timber trees. Though this information was partly CHAP, 

 true, yet it had more of malice than truth in it. But the __ 

 Bishop upon this was brought before the Council, where the 

 said Treasurer in May 1579 openly blamed him ; holding 

 himself bound, as he said, so to do, as he was a public min 

 ister, and with all plainness and freedom telling him, that 

 there was a Bishop once displaced for such a deed. These 

 words gave the Bishop some uneasiness, and provoked him 

 to some anger, holding himself unblamable for what he had 

 done. 



Whereupon coming home he took up his pen, and in that Writes to 

 heat that was upon him vented his grieved mind to the same ^e^rer 

 noble Lord, telling him that they were but indigested sur- l)out ** 

 mises of his wasting the woods, giving (in a writing in 

 closed) to the particular articles of accusation particular an 

 swers ; wherewith, as he shortly told him, if his Lordship 

 should be satisfied, he should be glad ; but if not, he would 

 stand to the justification of his doings, both in that and 

 in all other things. He added, that if he (the Lord Trea 

 surer) thought his answers were either untrue, or not suffi 

 cient to satisfy him, he prayed him to call to him a gentle 

 man, (well acquainted with the Bishop s doings,) and one 

 whom his Lordship judged to be both upright and wise, 

 and of great experience, and to inform himself by him ; and 

 if it fell not out that he (the Bishop) was not too careful a 

 man of his woods, and that they were much the better for him, 

 then let him lose his credit with her Majesty and all their 

 Honours of the Council. But, in fine, these surmises against 

 him he counted but light in comparison of his grief, as he 

 expressed himself, that &quot; my Lord Treasurer should have a 

 &quot; discontented mind toward the Bishop of London, 11 whose 

 friendship he valued above all ; and therefore the seeming 

 estrangement thereof could not but be very afflicting to him. 



The sum of the paper above mentioned, wherein he en- ills defence 

 deavoured to clear himself by distinct answers to each ob- 

 jection against him, was this : That those trees which he 

 had given order for the falling of were not timber trees, but 

 pollards, doated and decayed at the top ; nor was the num- 



