Chapter XXII

The reference to "my day" for payment of "this duty of letters," enables us to identify Donne's correspondent as Sir Henry Goodyer, to whom Donne was in the habit of writing every Tuesday. (Cf. the first sentence of XVIII.) When the present letter was written Donne was employed in assisting Thomas Morton, Dean of Gloucester, and the leader of the Anglican theologians in the all but interminable controversy with the Jesuits which involved so many of the ablest churchmen of the period. The "Apology" was probably Robert Parson's "confused and worthless work," the _Treatise tending towards Mitigation_, in reply to which Sutcliffe published his _Subversion_ in 1606, and Morton, two years later, his _Preamble unto an Encounter_, which, happily belying its name, went far toward closing the debate.