Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/328

Heylyn made in a funeral sermon on Archbishop Ussher, he had already replied in 'Extraneus Vapulans.' Bernard in 1657 published a book, 'The Judgement of the late Primate of Ireland of the extent of Christ's Death and Sacrifice, of the Sabbath and observance of the Lord's Day,' &c., to which Heylyn in 1658 made answer in 'Respondet Petrus, or the Answer of Peter Heylyn, D.D., to Dr. Bernard's book, with an Appendix in answer to certain passages in Mr. Sanderson's "History of the Life and Reign of King Charles."' In this Heylyn returned to the examination of the puritan view of the sabbath, and passed on to the relations between Ussher and Strafford. Bernard was said to have applied to Cromwell that Heylyn's book as directed against the sabbath should be burned. The question was committed by the lord mayor of London to a committee of divines, and Heylyn, who heard of this on a visit to London, begged that this indignity should not be inflicted on him, and the matter was allowed to drop (Certamen Epistolare, or the Letter-combat managed with Mr. Baxter, Dr. Bernard, &c., pp. 118–31).

Heylyn, however, could not long restrain his pen from criticism, nor abandon his function of setting all men right. In 1658–9 he published 'Examen Historicum, or a Discovery and Examination of the Mistakes, Falsities, and Defects in some Modern Histories.' In this book he first attacked Fuller's 'Church History,' and had no difficulty in pointing out a number of errors in matters of detail; but he further criticised the general method and spirit of the book, and exposed with sharpness its puritan tendencies. The second part of the 'Examen' was devoted to William Sanderson's 'History of Charles I from the Cradle to the Grave.' Sanderson replied in 'Post-haste,' a reply to which Heylyn added as an appendix in his second edition. Fuller also replied in 'The Appeal of Injured Innocence,' which was not so much a justification of himself as a witty apology. He sent a copy of this to Heylyn with a characteristically genial letter (Certamen Epistolare, pp. 312–14), which, however, did not mollify Heylyn's temper at the time, though a little while afterwards Fuller paid him a visit at Abingdon, which led to a friendship between the two men. Before this took place, however, Heylyn added to the number of his controversies by attacking Baxter for some passages in the preface of 'The Grotian Religion,' which reflected on himself. He now joined his various controversies together in 'Certamen Epistolare, or the Letter-combat managed with Mr. Baxter, Dr. Bernard, Mr. Hickman, and J. H. [John Harrington], Esq., with an Examination of Fuller's Appeal of Injured Innocence' (1659).

Controversy, however, was laid aside in the rapid changes of events which brought about the restoration of Charles II, on which Heylyn returned to his house at Westminster. He was present as sub-dean at the king's coronation on 23 April 1661, and urged upon Clarendon in a letter the desirability of calling convocation together when parliament met. His advice was adopted, and when convocation assembled in May, his house at Westminster, which he lost no time in repairing, was the meeting-place of his clerical friends, who came to him for counsel (, Register of Convocation, pp. 450–451). In the proceedings of the ecclesiastical restoration he was consulted with respect, and would probably have been made a bishop but for his physical infirmity, which increased so that he rarely left his house except to go to church. His last years were entirely devoted to study; but he was afflicted with a quartan ague and gradually wasted away. He died on 8 May 1662, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where an epitaph was put up in his honour composed by Dean Earle. He was the father of eleven children, and his widow survived him.

In personal appearance Heylyn was short and spare; Wood says that he was 'of very mean port and presence;' in later years he grew so spare that he 'looked like a skeleton.' There is a portrait of him by R. White in a frontispiece to his 'Historical and Miscellaneous Tracts' (1681). His temper was nervous and irritable, and his manner was restless. Though he subdued his temper in his ordinary dealings with others, it was increased in his writings by the intensity of a student's concentration on his subject. Heylyn was above all things a critical student of the academic type, a man of wide reading and tenacious memory, with an instinct for discovering mistakes in detail, and a contempt for ignorance, which blinded him to the good points of those from whom he differed. Though personally kindly, he was an acrimonious controversialist. Hacket calls him 'a bluster-master,' and Anthony à Wood expresses the opinion of many contemporaries when he characterises him as 'very conceited and pragmatical.' Heylyn was, however, a man who never shrank from expressing his opinions to the full. He was also a devoted student, and deserves admiration for his resolute struggle against the disadvantage of blindness. After 1651 he was entirely unable to read or write himself, and for some years before his sight had gradually been failing. It is remarkable that in spite of this