Editing John Whitgift (section)

==Promotions and improvements==
[[File:Whitgift detail Laceby 2024.jpg|thumb|Detail from a window in [[Church of St Margaret, Laceby|St Margaret's church]] in [[Laceby]] in [[Lincolnshire]] depicting the confirmation of Whitgift as [[Dean of Lincoln]] in 1571]]
Whitgift's theological views were controversial. An aunt with whom he once lodged wrote that "though she thought at first she had received a saint into her house, she now perceived he was a devil". [[Thomas Macaulay]]'s description of Whitgift as "a narrow, mean, tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adulation..." is, according to the author of his 1911 ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' entry, "tinged with rhetorical exaggeration; but undoubtedly Whitgift's extreme High Church notions led him to treat the Puritans with exceptional intolerance". In a pulpit controversy with [[Thomas Cartwright (churchman)|Thomas Cartwright]] regarding the constitutions and customs of the Church of England, his oratorical effectiveness proved inferior, but he was able to exercise arbitrary authority: together with other heads of the university, he deprived Cartwright of his professorship, and in September 1571 Whitgift exercised his prerogative as master of Trinity to strip him of his fellowship. In June of the same year Whitgift was nominated Dean of Lincoln. In the following year he published ''An Answere to a Certain Libel'' entitled an ''Admonition to the Parliament'', which led to further controversy between the two churchmen. From 1572 to 1577 he was Rector of [[Church of St Margaret, Laceby|St Margaret's church]] in [[Laceby]] in Lincolnshire. On 24 March 1577, Whitgift was appointed [[Bishop of Worcester]], and during the absence of Sir [[Henry Sidney]] in Ireland in 1577 he acted as vice-president of [[Wales]].