In this dearth of fact as to dates, I shall presume to suppose he married about 1625 Alice the only daughter of his fellow-collegian Dr. Leonard Hutton, a man of some eminence in his day as a divine and an antiquary, and whose character is thus drawn by Antony Wood with a felicity that rarely accompanies his pencil: “His younger years were beautified with all kind of polite learning, his middle with ingenuity and judgment, and his reverend years with great wisdom in government, having been often subdean of his college.”
This union of wit and beauty was not looked upon with indifference, nor was their epithalamium unsung, or the string touched by the hand of an unskilful master:
Come, all ye Muses, and rejoyce At this your nursling’s happy choyce; Come, Flora, strew the bridemaid’s bed, And with a garland crown her head; Or, if thy flowers be to seek, Come gather roses at her cheek. Come, Hymen, light thy torches, let Thy bed with tapers be beset, And if there be no fire by, Come light thy taper at her eye: In that bright eye there dwells a starre, And wise-men by it guided are[19].
The offspring of this marriage were a daughter named Alice, and a son born the 10th of November, 1627, towards whom the beautiful poem at page 150 is an undecaying monument of paternal affection.
Of these descendants of the bishop I lament that I have discovered so little: if this volume should be fortunate enough to excite attention to its author, the loss may at some future period be supplied: they were both living when their grandmother, Anne Hutton, made her will in 1642, and the son administered to the testament in 1648.
In 1628 Corbet suffered a severe privation in the loss of his patron Villiers duke of Buckingham, assassinated by Felton on the 23d of August, who, whatever were his political crimes, was, like his amiable and indulgent master, a liberal promoter of literature and science, and to his death an encourager of Corbet’s studies. If, however, this event checked his hopes of promotion for a season, it did not leave him without a patron; for, upon the translation of Hewson to the see of Durham, (to make way for Dr. Duppa to be dean of that church,) he was elected bishop of Oxford the 30th of July, was consecrated at Lambeth the 19th of October, and installed the 3d of November, 1629; “though,” in the opinion of Wood, “in some respects unworthy of such an office[20].”