The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.
§ 14. Historians Contemporary with Burnet: Strype
Among ecclesiastical historians in this period, Burnet has precedence, by right of seniority, over John Strype, whose first appearance as the author of any substantial work, however, dated from after his fiftieth year. His Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (1694) was succeeded (1698) by The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith, which evenly treats of his services to the welfare of the state and of those to the pronunciation of Greek. Then followed the lives of bishop Aylmer (1701); “the learned Sir John Cheke” (1705); archbishop Grindal (1710); archbishop Parker (1711)—which closes with a fuller attempt at the drawing of character than is usual with the author, perhaps because he was exceptionally impressed by a learning which “though it were universal, yet ran chiefly upon Antiquity”—and archbishop Whitgift (1718). Strype had now, in his own words, “lived to finish the Lives and Acts (as far as my Collections will serve me) of the Four First Holy Archbishops” (in the title-page “Protestant Archbishops”) “of Canterbury, those Wise and Painful, Just and Good Governors of this Reformed Church of England.” But, meanwhile, he had also been at work upon his magnum opus, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion (1700–31). The orthodoxy of this work is guaranteed by a sort of imprimatur from the archbishop and bishops of the church of England, prefixed to vol.