" In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul's school; the litany
in the English tongue, by the king's command, was that year sung openly
in St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison with the other children,
enforced to buy those books, walking in general procession, as was
appointed, before the king went to Boulogne. Harrison was a student at
both Oxford and Cambridge, taking the degree of bachelor of divinity at
the latter in 1569, when he had been an Oxford M.A. of seven years'
standing. Before this he was household chaplain to Sir William Brooke,
Lord Cobham, who gave him, in 1588-89, the rectory of Radwinter, in
Essex, which he held till his death, in 1593. In 1586 he was installed
canon of Windsor. Between 1559 and 1571 he married Marion Isebrande,--of
whom he said in his will, referring to the sometime supposed unlawfulness
of priests' marriages, "by the laws of God I take and repute in all
respects for my true and lawful wife." At Radwinter, the old parson,
working in his garden, collected Roman coins, wrote his chronicles, and
expressed his mind about the rascally lawyers of Essex, to whom flowed
all the wealth of the land. The lawyers in those days stirred up
contentions, and then reaped the profits. "Of all that ever I knew in
Essex," says Harrison, "Denis and Mainford excelled, till John of Ludlow,
alias Mason, came in place, unto whom in comparison these two were but
children." This last did so harry a client for four years that the
latter, still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within four
days made an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness.
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