Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/84

 ferred, through the influence of the Earl of Clarendon, to the chancellorship of Connor, a place of more dignity than emolument. In 1687 he held, in answer to the challenge of Patrick Tyrrel, the recently invested Roman catholic bishop of Clogher, public disputations with some of the Roman catholic clergy at Monaghan and Tynan. As chairman of quarter sessions for co. Monaghan he committed for contempt William Barton, the high sheriff nominate, on his refusing to take the oaths of office on the ground that he was ‘of the king's religion.’ He also tried and committed some military officers for acts of pillage. This appears to be the only colour there is for Burnet's statement that he ‘was the first man that began the war in Ireland’ (Own Time, ii. 538). His loyalty to James II remained unshaken, and on the revolution he refused to take the oaths, was deprived of his chancellorship, and removed to London, where he acted as chaplain to the Earl of Clarendon, and officiated occasionally at Ely House and other places frequented by nonjurors. In 1691 he returned to Glaslough, and wrote his first work, ‘An Answer to a Book intituled the State of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James's Government’ [see, 1650–1729]. It was published without license at London in 1692, 4to, and though anonymous was at once ascribed to Leslie. Written in a strongly partisan spirit, it was treated by the government as a libel, Glaslough was searched, and the manuscript discovered in Leslie's study. He himself, however, could not be found, and the proceedings were allowed to drop. In 1693 he visited St. Germains, and obtained from the Pretender the congé d'élire for the consecration of the nonjuring bishops (, Orig. Papers, ii. 383;, Polit. State, xii. 633). On his return to England he published a virulent attack on William III, entitled ‘Gallienus Redivivus, or Murther will out, &c. Being a true Account of the De Witting of Glencoe, Gaffney,’ &c., Edinburgh, 1695, 4to. The pamphlet revives the old story of William's complicity in the assassination of John de Witt, and insinuates that he was accessory after the fact to the irregular execution of Gafney by Lord Coningsby in 1690 [see ]. It is, however, one of the principal authorities for the facts of the Glencoe massacre (see, History of England, iv. 213 n., 8vo). There is a reprint of it in ‘A Collection of Tracts written by the Author of “The Snake in the Grass,”’ &c., London, 1730, 4to.

From the king Leslie turned to attack the whig divines. Burnet was found guilty of Socinianism in ‘Some Reflections upon the Second of Dr. Burnet's Four Discourses concerning the Divinity and Death of Christ’ (1694, 4to), and pilloried as a turncoat in ‘Tempora Mutantur; or the great Change from 73–93: in the Travels of a Professor of Theology at Glasgow from the Primitive and Episcopal Loyalty through Italy, Geneva, &c., to the Deposing Doctrine under Papistico-Phanatico-Prelatico Colours at Salisbury,’ 1694, 4to (reprinted in ‘A Choice Collection of Papers relating to State Affairs,’ 1703, i. 176 et seq.) Tillotson, or rather his memory—for he was just dead—was even more bitterly attacked in ‘The Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson considered.’ With this tract were reprinted the ‘Reflections’ upon Burnet, and a ‘Supplement’ was added ‘Upon Occasion of a History of Religion lately published. Supposed to be wrote by Sir R. H——d [Sir Robert Howard (1626–1698), [q. v.] ]. Wherein likewise Charles Blount's Great Diana is considered, and both compared with Dr. Tillotson's Sermons,’ Edinburgh, 1695, 4to. A funeral sermon on the late queen by Sherlock, whose desertion of the nonjurors Leslie keenly resented, elicited from him a savage diatribe, entitled ‘Remarks on some late Sermons, and in particular on Dr. Sherlock's Sermon at the Temple, 30 Dec. 1694,’ 1695, 4to. In 1696 he published ‘Now or Never: or, The Last Cast for England. Humbly addressed to both Houses of Lords and Commons,’ 4to; a plea for peace with France, and the evacuation of England by William's foreign troops.

About this time Leslie lodged with a quaker, whose consumptive wife he afterwards claimed to have converted ‘to Christianity’ shortly before her death (see A True and Authentic Account of the Conversion of a Quaker to Christianity, and of her Behaviour on her Deathbed, London, 1757, 8vo). Here he made the acquaintance of Penn and other leading Friends, but could see nothing in their mystical doctrine of the ‘light within’ but ‘blasphemous pride’ and ‘idolatry.’ Penn, as a Jacobite, he spared, but in 1696 he attacked his co-religionists in ‘The Snake in the Grass; or Satan transformed into an Angel of Light,’ London, 8vo. At the same time he took up the cudgels for George Keith (1650?–1715) [q. v.] against Thomas Ellwood [q. v.], and in anticipation of a promised attack on Keith by George Whitehead, in ‘Satan Disrob'd from his Disguise of Light; or the Quakers' Last Shift to cover their Monstrous Heresies laid fully open,’ London, 1696, 4to; 2nd edit. 1698, 4to. This he followed up with ‘Some Seasonable Reflections upon the Quakers' solemn Protestation against George Keith's Proceedings at Turners' Hall, 29 April 1697,’ London, 1697,