Introduction

In 1624, preaching the sermon ad clerum in St Paul's Cathedral for the opening of Convocation, Joseph Hall listed Richard Greenharn among 21 great lights of the church (magna illa Ecclesiae lumina) who had recently (nuper) died. Although Greenharn had been buried inside the London parish church of Christ Church, Newgate some three decades earlier, Hall exhumed hirn for verbal rein terme nt in a pantheon which included John Foxe, John Whitgift, William Perkins and Richard Hooker.2 It was not Hall's first public praise of Greenham. He penned two laudatory epigrams printed at the beginning of every edition of Greenham's posthumous Works and, in 1606, described Greenharn in print as 'that saint of ours'.3