About forty years past--for I am now past the seventy of my age--I began a happy affinity with William Cranmer,--now with God,--grand-nephew unto the great Archbishop of that name;--a family of noted prudence and resolution; with him and two of his sisters I had an entire and free friendship: one of them was the wife of Dr. Spencer,[1] a bosom friend and sometime com-pupil with Mr. Hooker in Corpus Christi College in Oxford, and after President of the same. I name them here, for that I shall have occasion to mention them in the following discourse, as also George Cranmer, their brother, of whose useful abilities my Reader may have a more authentic testimony than my pen can purchase for him, by that of our learned Camden and others. [Sidenote: Hooker's friends] This William Cranmer and his two fore-named sisters had some affinity, and a most familiar friendship, with Mr. Hooker, and had had some part of their education with him in his house, when he was parson of Bishop's-Bourne near Canterbury; in which City their good father then lived. They had, I say, a part of their education with him as myself, since that time, a happy cohabitation with them; and having some years before read part of Mr. Hooker's works with great liking and satisfaction, my affection to them made me a diligent inquisitor into many things that concerned him; as namely, of his persons, his nature, the management of his time, his wife, his family, and the fortune of him and his. Which enquiry hath given me much advantage in the knowledge of what is now under my consideration, and intended for the satisfaction of my Reader. [Sidenote: Conclusion] I had also a friendship with the Reverend Dr. Usher,[2] the late learned Archbishop of Armagh; and with Dr. Morton, the late learned and charitable Bishop of Durham; as also the learned John Hales, of Eton College; and with them also--who loved the very name of Mr. Hooker--I have had many discourses concerning him; and from them, and many others that have now put off mortality, I might have had more informations, if I could then have admitted a thought of any fitness for what by persuasion I have now undertaken. But though that full harvest be irrecoverably lost, yet my memory hath preserved some gleanings, and my diligence made such additions to them, as I hope will prove useful to the completing of what I intend: in the discovery of which I shall be faithful, and with this assurance put a period to my Introduction. [Footnote 1: A native of Suffolk, one of the Clerks of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Greek Reader. He entered Orders, became a noted Preacher, Chaplain to James I., and a great admirer of Richard Hooker and the famous Dr. John Reynolds, the latter of whom he succeeded as Master of his College. About four years after Hooker's death, he published the Five Books of Ecclesiastical Polity, with a Preface; and dying on April 3rd, 1614, was buried at Oxford.]