384 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. your highness and honours, to call to your remembrance, that they who do well may receive that praise and comfort which they deserve. This hard treatment of our pastors, brings us into great distress. We are sure, that when the bishops deprive our preaching and laborious pastors of their livings, and stop their mouths, so that they cannot teach us the will of our God ; they undertake to do that for which they mustgive an account, in the great day of the Lord. We have great need of such pastors as can and will teach us the way of the Lord. We have no need at all of idle cere- monies, which do, not in the least edify in true godliness. Silencing our preaching pastors, who would feed our souls with the provision of God's word ; and imposing uponus mere readers, furnished with unprofitable ceremonies, is taking from us the bread of life, which God haat prepared for us, and feeding us with'the unprofitable devices of men.. The supplication was sent to the treasurer, followed by two letters from Sampson, entreating his lordship to do every thing in his power to forward the business ; but all proved ineffectual.+ The ruling prelates, with Archbishop Whitgift at their head, remained inflexible. Dr. Sampsonwas a divine highly celebrated for learning, piety, and zeal in the protestant cause, and was greatly esteemed in all parts of the kingdom. Upon his retiring to Leicester, he employed the remainder of his days chiefly in the government of his hospital, and his beloved work of preaching. And having spent his life in much labour, and many troubles, he died in great tranquillity, and com- fort in his nonconformity, April 9, 1589, aged seventy-two years.f: His mortal part was interred in the chapel belong- ing to his hospital, where was a. monumental inscription erected to his memory, of which the following is a trans- lation :4 To the MEMORY and honour of THOMAS SAMPSON, a very keen enemy to the Romish hierarchy and popish superstitionS, but a most constant advocate of gospel truth. For twenty-one years he was the faithful Keeper of this Hospital. Being justly entitled to the high esteem of the Christian world, Strype's Annals, vol. iii. Appen. p. 222,-227, Strype's Whitgift, p. 184. t Wood's Athena, vol. i. p. 193. Wood's Ifist. et Antic', lib. ii. p. 254.
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