College, which lay under the suspicion of ‘Novelism’ (i.e. puritan principles), and to join the society of Jesus College (Heylin, Aerius Redivivus, p. 347). Here, according to the historian of the college (Shermanni Hist. Coll. Jesu Cant. (original manuscript), p. 64), although eminently successful as a college tutor, and himself assisting many of his pupils to fellowships, he was not elected a fellow; and the fact that he was among the opponents of the Elizabethan statutes given to the university in 1572 (Lamb, Letters and Documents, p. 359) would lead us to conclude that he had at this time a certain sympathy with the puritan party. As, however, he was shortly afterwards appointed one of the chaplains of Richard Cox, bishop of Ely, a staunch supporter of the above statutes, it may be inferred that this sympathy was not of long duration.
On 24 March 1575–6 he was collated by the bishop to the rectory of Teversham, near Cambridge, and before the end of the year was appointed one of the twelve preachers whom, on their acceptance of the Thirty-nine Articles, the university was empowered to license. This appointment led to important after-results; for in 1583, on the holding of the assizes at Bury in Suffolk, the sheriff, being unable to hear of a duly qualified preacher in the county, sent to Cambridge to obtain the services of one for the occasion, and Bancroft was selected. While inspecting the churches of that ancient town, he discovered attached to the queen's arms suspended over one of the altars a libellous piece of writing, in which Elizabeth was compared to Jezebel. The discovery would appear to have stimulated the judges to severity; for they sentenced to death two Brownists who were brought before them, while Bancroft gained credit for his vigilance in the detection of sedition.
In 1584 we find him acting on behalf of Adam Loftus, archbishop of Dublin (to whom, as a contemporary at Cambridge, he was probably well known), as a supporter of a remonstrance drawn up and forwarded to Burghley against the scheme of Sir John Perrot, whereby it was proposed to appropriate the site and endowment of St. Patrick's Church, Dublin, for the purpose of founding a new college. The scheme, as subsequently modified, resulted in the foundation of Trinity College, but without involving the sacrifice of the ecclesiastical foundation.
He was admitted D.D. of Cambridge in April 1585. A treatise which he compiled about this time, entitled ‘Discourse upon the Bill and Book exhibited in Parliament by the Puritans for a further Reformation of the Church Principles,’ &c. (an unprinted manuscript in the State Paper Office), shows that he had now definitely taken up the rôle for which he was afterwards distinguished, as a vigorous and uncompromising opponent of puritanism. Dignities and emoluments followed very quickly. On 10 Feb. 1585–6 he was made treasurer of St. Paul's; Sir Christopher Hatton presented him to the rectory of Cottingham in Northamptonshire; he was one of the commission appointed to visit the diocese of Ely, which had become vacant through the death of his former patron, Cox; and shortly after he was included in the much-dreaded Ecclesiastical Commission. On 19 July 1587 he was installed a canon of Westminster. An able but intolerant sermon which he preached at Paul's Cross on 9 Feb. 1588–9 gave rise to much indignant feeling. He not only attacked the puritans with considerable acerbity, designating them as ‘the Martinists’ (with reference to the Marprelate tracts), but he also asserted, with a plainness hitherto unheard in the English church, the claims of episcopacy to be regarded as of divine origin. Episcopacy and heresy, he maintained, were essentially opposed the one to the other. In insisting on this view he contrived to cast a slur upon the principles of presbyterianism, which was warmly resented in Scotland, where steps were even taken with the design of forwarding a remonstrance on the subject to Elizabeth. It does not appear, however, that any petition was actually presented. In the following February Bancroft was presented to the prebend of Bromesbury in the church of St. Paul.
It was mainly through his vigilance that the printers of the Marprelate tracts were detected, and when they were brought before the Star Chamber he instructed the queen's counsel. He is also said to have originated the idea of replying to the tracts in a like satirical vein, as was done by Thomas Nash and others (see Pappe with a Hatchet, An Almond for a Parrot, &c.) with considerable success. In 1592 he was appointed chaplain to the primate, Whitgift, and in this capacity took a prominent part against Barrow, Cartwright, and others of the puritan leaders. In 1593 he published his two most notable productions—‘A Survay of the pretended Holy Discipline’ (a criticism of the ‘Disciplina,’ the doctrinal text-book of the puritans) and ‘Daungerous Positions and Proceedings, published and practised within the Iland of Brytaine under pretence of Reformation’ (reprinted in 1640), &c.
Bancroft now stood high in the royal favour, and Aylmer, bishop of London, having become eminently unpopular with the
