[1] He incurred the displeasure of William James, dean of Christ Church, Oxford and the vice-chancellor of the university, in 1591, for having said unseemly words against Thomas Aubrey, who had recently made his supplication for the degree of B.D.
His widow erected a marble monument to his memory in the chancel of Orford Church, later moved to the north transept.
The book is written in the form of dialogue between Philodox, a seminary priest, and Orthodox, a minister of the church of England.
In 1616 Anthony Champney published at Douay an answer to Mason, entitled A Treatise of the Vocation of Bishops and other Ecclesiastical Ministers, which he dedicated to Abbot.
Champney was Mason's strongest antagonist; but other Catholic writers put forth works against him, principally Thomas Fitzherbert, Henry Fitzsimon, and Matthew Kellison.
At the desire of Abbot, Mason's Latin manuscript was taken in hand by Nathaniel Brent, who issued it in 1625, under the title of Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae.
It was reprinted in 1638, In 1728 an English translation of the Latin edition, under the title of A Vindication of the Church of England, was published, with a lengthy introduction by John Lindsay, in which there is an account of the whole controversy.