John Strype (1643-1737), historian, composed a life of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to detail his activities in strengthening the Church of England. Strype is not noted for his style or critical skill (he is often guilty of including superfluous or irrelevant material and does not edit well), but his penchant for completeness still brought to light much previously unknown information, and the range of documentation he includes is surpassed by few historians. One of the issues he deals with is Parker's elevation to the office of Archbishop, which was questioned by Romanists because it did not follow the Roman rite of installation; a newspaper article on the subject from 1945 pasted on the inside endpaper by a previous owner of this book suggests that the text was still being used as evidence in the dispute until relatively recent times.

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