ABSTRACT
Sir John Harington’s exhortation ends the document that he gave to Bishop Tobie Matthew on or after 18 December 1602. The one topic that makes him take off the mask of ‘sapiens stulti simulator’,2 or wise fool, is that of religion and the destruction of church property. Indeed, the real subject of what its nineteenthcentury editor, Clements R. Markham, entitled A Tract on the Succession, is the absurd whirligig of religious change in the previous century and a plea for the succession to bring an end to religious division.
