#mel evans

Elizabeth’s first letter was written (appropriately enough) to Cecil from Enfield in Middlesex on 31 December 1547. [Footnote: The letter shows that Elizabeth and Cecil were in communication at least seven months earlier than previously thought. Conyers Read, for example, dated their first contact to Aug. 1548] Cecil had been in Somerset’s service since May, probably as his master of requests, and the princess wrote on behalf of the letter-bearer, Hugh Goodacre, for whom she wanted to obtain a licence to preach. Goodacre, who was probably one of Elizabeth’s chaplains, ‘hath been of longe tyme knowen vnto vs to be aswell of honest conversation and sober lyving, as of sufficient learninge and Iudgement in the Scriptures to preache the worde of god, thadvauncement wherof we so desyer, that we wishe ther were many suche to set furthe godd[e]s glory’. Goodacre had graduated as a B.A. in 1530, when he was elected fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and proceeded to the M.A. in 1532 and B.Th. by 1552. Preaching had been licensed in May 1547, when the government ordered that only those who had been vetted and approved could do anything other than read the book of homilies from their pulpits. Significantly, despite the fact that Elizabeth was only fourteen, this was not her first correspondence with Cecil: he had obtained preaching licences on her behalf before, for example one for another of her chaplains, Edmund Allen.

Player Attack TV: June 3, 2016, SE4 EP15