Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/51

Care was not a political leader or a director of popular movements, though in council he was firm and powerful. The measures of constitutional change brought forward by the governments of which he was a member in later years did not originate with him; nor was he a popular orator. He was a clear, good, terse, and fluent speaker; to be more he did not pretend or desire, and he never made an unnecessary speech. But it was as an administrator and public servant that, though less noted than others by the crowd, he really stood high among the statesmen of the time. 'Thoroughly patriotic and publicspirited, utterly free from jobbery of any sort, laborious, discreet, courteous, kind, and considerate to subordinates, conciliatory, yet tenacious of his opinion when he had satisfied himself that he was right'—such he appeared to the partners of his work. They also testify to his possession of a singularly quick and keen intelligence, though in his public utterances his mind seemed to move with excessive circumspection. The country was served more brilliantly by other men of his generation, but by none more faithfully, more zealously, more strenuously, or with more lasting fruit.

 CARE, HENRY (1646–1688), political writer and journalist, affected to be a royalist in 1670, when he published a book entitled 'Female Pre-eminence,' with a fulsome dedication to Queen Catherine. He is probably the Henry Care, 'student in physick and astrology,' who brought out a translation of a medical work in 1679. Care edited a paper called the 'Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome,' when, according to Wood, he was deeply engaged by the fanatical party, after the popish plot broke out in 1678, to write against the Church of England and the members thereof, then by him and his party supposed to be deeply enclined towards popery, &c.' He was tried at Guildhall, 2 July 1680, on an information against him as the author of this journal, and more particularly for a clause against the lord chief justice, Scroggs, who himself sat as judge at the trial. The jury found him guilty, and Care was prohibited from printing his journal. But these proceedings constituted one of the charges brought against Scroggs, who was removed from the bench some months later (, Relation of State Affairs, i. 75), and Care continued to publish his journal. Care's last number of the 'Weekly Pacquet,' which extends to five volumes, is dated 13 July 1683, at which time he fell ill. In 1682 a difference had taken place between Care and Langley Curtis, the original publisher, when Care, who resided at the time in the Great Old Bailey, continued the work on his own account till he was seized with illness. But at the commencement of the quarrel, Curtis, not willing to give up a profitable speculation, employed William Salmon, a well-known and multifarious writer, to publish a continuation of the 'Pacquets,' and he did so from 25 Aug. 1682, on which day Care's fifth volume also began, till 4 May 1683. Langley Curtis, probably having the stock-in-trade in his own hands, added the fifth volume, by Salmon, to all the remaining copies, and consequently Care's fifth volume is rarely met with.

Wood thus sums up the little that is known of the subsequent career of Care: his 'breeding,' he contemptuously remarks, 'was in the nature of a petty fogger, a little despicable wretch, and one that was afterwards much reflected upon for a poor snivelling fellow in the “Observators”, published by Roger l'Estrange, which Care, after all his scribbles against the papists and the men of the church of England, was, after King James II came to the crown, drawn over so far by the Roman catholic party, for bread and money sake and nothing else, to write on their behalf, and to vindicate their proceedings against the men of the church of England in his “Mercuries,” which weekly came out, entitled “Public Occurrences truly stated.” The first of which came out 21 Feb. 1687-8, and were by him continued to the time of his death, which happening 8 Aug. 1688, aged 42, he was buried in the yard belonging to the Blackfryers church, in 'London, with this inscription nailed to his coffin, "Here lies the ingenious Mr. Henry Care, who died, &c."'

His works are: 1. 'Female Pre-eminence,' translated from the Latin of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, London, 1670. 2. 'Speculum Galliæ; or, a New Survey of the French Court and Camp,'London, 1673, 8vo. 3. 'The Jewish Calendar explained,' London, 1674, 8vo. 4. 'Practical Physick,' by Dr. Daniel Sennert, professor at Wittenberg, translated by 'H. Care, student in physick and astrology,' London, 1676, 8vo. 5. 'A Pacquet of Advice from Rome,' London, 1678-9, 4to; continued as 'The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome,' 1679-83. 'An Abstract, with improvements,' of the