[342] See a declaration to this effect, at which no one could cavil, in Strype's _Annals_, iv. 85. The puritans, or at least some of their friends, retaliated this charge of denying the queen's supremacy on their adversaries. Sir Francis Knollys strongly opposed the claims of episcopacy, as a divine institution, which had been covertly insinuated by Bancroft, on the ground of its incompatibility with the prerogative, and urged Lord Burleigh to make the bishops acknowledge they had no superiority over the clergy, except by statute, as the only means to save her majesty from the extreme danger into which she was brought by the machinations of the pope and King of Spain. _Life of Whitgift_, p. 350, 361, 389. He wrote afterwards to Lord Burleigh in 1591, that if he might not speak his mind freely against the power of the bishops, and prove it unlawful, by the laws of this realm, and not by the canon law, he hoped to be allowed to become a private man. This bold letter he desires to have shown to the queen. _Lansdowne Catalogue_, vol. lxviii. 84. [343] D'Ewes, 302; Strype's _Whitgift_, 92, Append. 32. [344] D'Ewes, 339 _et post_; Strype's _Whitgift_, 176, etc., Append. 70. [345] Strype's _Annals_, iii. 228. [346] Strype's _Annals_, iii. 186, 192. Compare Append. 35. [347] Strype's _Whitgift_, 279; _Annals_, iii. 543. [348] _Parl. Hist._ 921. [349] Strype's _Whitgift_, 521, 537, App. 136. The archbishop could not disguise his dislike to the lawyers. "The temporal lawyer," he says in a letter to Cecil, "_whose learning is no learning anywhere but here at home_, being born to nothing, doth by his labour and travel in that barbarous knowledge purchase to himself and his heirs for ever a thousand pounds per annum, and oftentimes much more, whereof there are at this day many examples."--P. 215. [350] Strype's _Whitgift_, and D'Ewes, _passim_. In a convocation held during Grindal's sequestration (1580), proposals for reforming certain abuses in the spiritual courts were considered; but nothing was done in it. Strype's _Grindal_, p. 259, and Appendix, p. 97. And in 1594, a commission to enquire into abuses in the spiritual courts was issued; but whether this were intended _bonâ fide_ or not, it produced no reformation. Strype's _Whitgift_, 419. [351] 35 Eliz. c. 1; _Parl. Hist._ 863. [352] Neal asserts in his summary of the controversy, as it stood in this reign, that the puritans did not object to the office of bishop, provided he was only the head of the presbyters, and acted in conjunction with them. P. 398. But this was in effect to demand everything. For if the office could be so far lowered in eminence, there were many waiting to clip the temporal revenues and dignity in proportion.