374 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. As Dr. Humphrey was many years president of Magdalen college, Oxford, public professor of divinity in the univer- sity, and several times vice-chancellor ; so the Oxford his- torian, who denominates him the standard-bearer of the non- conformists, says, that he stocked his college with such a generation of nonconformists,as could not be rooted out of it many years after his death ; and that he sowed in the divinity schools, such seeds of Calvinism, and such hatred of popery, as if nothingbut divine truthwas tobe found in the one, and nothing but abominations in the other. Nevertheless, he adds, Humphrey was a great and general scholar, an able linguist, and a deep divine ; and who, for the excellency of his style, the exactness of his method, and the solidity of his matter, was superior to most theologians in his day. Archbishop Matthews said, " Dr. Humphrey hath read more fathers, than Campian the Jesuit ever saw ; devoured more than he ever tasted ; and taught more than he ever beard or read,". He had the honour ofseeing many of his pupils become bishops, while he, who was every way their superior, was denied any considerable preferment, on account of his puritanical principles. At length, after a life of muchlabour and hard study, he died in the month of February, 1589, aged sixty-three years. Fuller styles him a moderate and conscientious nonconformist, and says, that at his death, he bequeathed a considerable quantity of gold to Magdalen college. f Granger says, he was one of the greatest divines, and most general scholars, of his age ; and that when Queen Elizabeth visited the university, he and Bishop Jewel entertained her majesty with a public theo- logical disputation.t The remains of Dr. Humphrey were interred in the inner chapel belonging to Magdalen college, where amonumental inscriptionwas erected to his memory, ofwhich the following is a translation :1 Sacred to the MEMORY of LAM RENEE HUMPHREY, D. D. twenty-eight years Regius,Professor and Governor of this College. His eldest daughter, JUSTINIA DORMER, erected this monument to the memory of her venerableFather. He died in February, 1559, aged 63. Wood's Athenw Oxon. vol. i. p. 195, 196. f Fuller's Church Hist. b. ix. p. 234. Granger's Biog. Hist. vol. i. p. 211. Wood's Hist. et Autiq. lib. ii. p.203.
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