Note 40 — Chapter II · FROM THE CAROLINE REFORM TO THE SETTLEMENT OF WILLIAM III.
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He was Milton’s College Tutor, and is said to be the Damœtas in Lycidas. All the histories tell the anecdote of his pressing his adversary in a public disputation at Cambridge so keenly that the unfortunate man swooned in the pulpit, when King James, who was present, took up the argument, and presently confessed himself worsted. This kind of subtlety may have enabled him to reconcile his various breaches of statute with his sworn obligations. His holding of the Bishopric and Provostship together was, however, openly sanctioned by Laud. His Latin autobiography gives us a picture quite inconsistent with the complaints of the Fellows and the resolutions of the Irish Parliament against him. It is a string of pious lamentations, e.g.—
“Jam quindecim annos corpus vix ægrum traho Estque jubilæum hic annus ætatis meæ. Subinde climactera nova vitæ meæ Incipit et excutit reliquias dentium Ante putrium, monetque mortis sim memor.”