Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, died in the year 1655, after having run a remarkable career. It is said that an entry in a volume now in the Chapter Library at Gloucester corroborates the suspicion of his early leaning to Romanism.[311] As early as the year 1626 he found himself in trouble on account of a sermon he had preached, in which he had asserted the doctrine of the real presence. Perhaps the consciousness of his tendencies led him to wish to have a coadjutor in his episcopal office, and then eventually to resign his bishopric;--a wish which is made apparent in a letter written to him by Archbishop Laud, in the year 1634.[312] When the canons were submitted to the Convocation of 1640, he at first refused to sign them;[313] for which, as Fuller states, he was sent to the Gatehouse, where "he got by his restraint what he never could have gained by his liberty, namely, of one reputed popish, to become for a short time popular, as the only confessor suffering for not subscribing the canons."[314] Nalson says nothing respecting his imprisonment, but only mentions that Goodman refused a second and a third time, and then at last put his hand to the book, declining to say that he did so _ex animo_. Laud told him that his refusal proved him to be a Papist, or a Socinian, or a sectary. This conclusion he himself denied, but Nalson adds, it "proved true, for he died a Papist."[315] [Sidenote: _Ussher._] A contrast to Goodman is found in Ussher. Upon his leaving Oxford, where last we met him, and his proceeding to visit Lady Stradling, at her Castle of St. Donate's, in Glamorganshire, there occurred to this eminent Divine an odd adventure, which indicates what must have been the state of the country and the circumstances of travelling at that period. The Welsh then being in a state of rebellion against English governors--as the ejected Primate of Ireland, with his daughter, were quietly riding along the road, they fell into the hands of some straggling insurgents, who dragged them from their horses, and stripped them of their baggage. Books and MSS. were wantonly strewed about the highway; but the respect in which the Prelate was held appears when we learn, that the neighbours from time to time brought back to him his scattered treasures, so that on their being put together he "found not many wanting."[316] Coming to London he filled the office of preacher at Lincoln's Inn, employing his leisure from public duty upon that wonderful monument of learning, his "Annals of the Old Testament,"--in which he unfolded a system of chronology, since widely adopted in the reformed churches. Cromwell sent for Ussher, and conversed with him upon the promotion of the Protestant religion at home and abroad; at the same time offering him a lease of certain lands pertaining to the see of Armagh. When failure of sight and other infirmities had unfitted the Bishop for preaching any longer, he resigned his office at Lincoln's Inn, and sought in seclusion the