Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/309

 Island beach on the 16th of June, and the Ossolis were among the passengers who perished.

FULLER, MELVILLE WESTON (1833–1910), American jurist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was born at Augusta, Maine, on the 11th of February 1833. After graduating at Bowdoin College in 1853 he spent a year at the Harvard Law School, and in 1855 began the practice of law at Augusta, where he was an associate-editor of a Democratic paper, The Age, and served in the city council and as city attorney. In 1856 he removed to Chicago, Illinois, where he continued to practise until 1888, rising to a high position at the bar of the Northwest. For some years he was active in Democratic politics, being a member of the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1862 and of the State House of Representatives from 1863 to 1865. He was a delegate to various National conventions of his party, and in that of 1876 placed Thomas A. Hendricks in nomination for the presidency. In 1888, by President Cleveland’s appointment, he succeeded Morrison R. Waite as chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1899 he was appointed by President McKinley a member of the arbitration commission at Paris to settle the Venezuela-British Guiana boundary dispute.

FULLER, THOMAS (1608–1661), English divine and historian, eldest son of Thomas Fuller, rector of Aldwincle St Peter’s, Northamptonshire, was born at his father’s rectory and was baptized on the 19th of June 1608. Dr John Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, was his uncle and godfather. According to Aubrey, Fuller was “a boy of pregnant wit.” At thirteen he was admitted to Queens’ College, Cambridge, then presided over by Dr John Davenant. His cousin, Edward Davenant, was a tutor in the same college. He was apt and quick in study; and in Lent 1624–1625 he became B.A. and in July 1628 M.A. Being overlooked in an election of fellows of his college, he was removed by Bishop Davenant to Sidney Sussex College, November 1628. In 1630 he received from Corpus Christi College the curacy of St Benet’s, Cambridge.

Fuller’s quaint and humorous oratory soon attracted attention. He published in 1631 a poem on the subject of David and Bathsheba, entitled David’s Hainous Sinne, Heartie Repentance, Heavie Punishment. In June of the same year his uncle gave him a prebend in Salisbury, where his father, who died in the following year, held a canonry. The rectory of Broadwindsor, Dorsetshire, then in the diocese of Bristol, was his next preferment (1634); and on the 11th of June 1635 he proceeded B.D. At Broadwindsor he compiled The Historie of the Holy Warre (1639), a history of the crusades, and The Holy State and the Prophane State (1642). This work describes the holy state as existing in the family and in public life, gives rules of conduct, model “characters” for the various professions and profane biographies. It was perhaps the most popular of all his writings. He was in 1640 elected proctor for Bristol in the memorable convocation of Canterbury, which assembled with the Short Parliament. On the sudden dissolution of the latter he joined those who urged that convocation should likewise dissolve as usual. That opinion was overruled; and the assembly continued to sit by virtue of a royal writ. Fuller has left in his Church History a valuable account of the proceedings of this synod, for sitting in which he was fined £200, which, however, was never exacted. His first published volume of sermons appeared in 1640 under the title of Joseph’s party-coloured Coat, which contains many of his quaint utterances and odd conceits. His grosser mannerisms of style, derived from the divines of the former generation, disappeared for the most part in his subsequent discourses.

About 1640 he had married Eleanor, daughter of Hugh Grove of Chisenbury, Wiltshire. She died in 1641. Their eldest child, John, baptized at Broadwindsor by his father, 6th June 1641, was afterwards rector of Sidney Sussex College, edited the Worthies of England, 1662, and became rector of Great Wakering, Essex, where he died in 1687.

At Broadwindsor, early in the year 1641, Thomas Fuller, his curate Henry Sanders, the church wardens, and others, nine persons altogether, certified that their parish, represented by 242 grown-up male persons, had taken the Protestation ordered by the speaker of the Long Parliament. Fuller was not formally dispossessed of his living and prebend on the triumph of the Presbyterian party, but he relinquished both preferments about this time. For a short time he preached with success at the Inns of Court, and thence removed, at the invitation of the master of the Savoy (Dr Balcanqual) and the brotherhood of that foundation, to be lecturer at their chapel of St Mary Savoy. Some of the best discourses of the witty preacher were delivered at the Savoy to audiences which extended into the chapel-yard. In one he set forth with searching and truthful minuteness the hindrances to peace, and urged the signing of petitions to the king at Oxford, and to the parliament, to continue their care in advancing an accommodation. In his Appeal of Injured Innocence Fuller says that he was once deputed to carry a petition to the king at Oxford. This has been identified with a petition entrusted to Sir Edward Wardour, clerk of the pells, Dr Dukeson, “Dr Fuller,” and four or five others from the city of Westminster and the parishes contiguous to the Savoy. A pass was granted by the House of Lords, on the 2nd of January 1643, for an equipage of two coaches, four or six horses and eight or ten attendants. On the arrival of the deputation at Uxbridge, on the 4th of January, officers of the Parliamentary army stopped the coaches and searched the gentlemen; and they found upon the latter “two scandalous books arraigning the proceedings of the House,” and letters with ciphers to Lord Viscount Falkland and the Lord Spencer. Ultimately a joint order of both Houses remanded the party; and Fuller and his friends suffered a brief imprisonment. The Westminster Petition, notwithstanding, reached the king’s hands; and it was published with the royal reply (see J. E. Bailey, Life of Thomas Fuller, pp. 245 et seq.). When it was expected, three months later, that a favourable result would attend the negotiations at Oxford, Fuller preached a sermon at Westminster Abbey, on the 27th of March 1643, on the anniversary of Charles I.’s accession, on the text, “Yea, let him take all, so my Lord the King return in peace.” On Wednesday, the 26th of July, he preached on church reformation, satirizing the religious reformers, and maintaining that only the Supreme Power could initiate reforms.

He was now obliged to leave London, and in August 1643 he joined the king at Oxford. He lived in a hired chamber at Lincoln College for 17 weeks. Thence he put forth a witty and effective reply to John Saltmarsh, who had attacked his views on ecclesiastical reform. Fuller subsequently published by royal request a sermon preached on the 10th of May 1644, at St Mary’s, Oxford, before the king and Prince Charles, called Jacob’s Vow.

The spirit of Fuller’s preaching, always characterized by calmness and moderation, gave offence to the high royalists, who charged him with lukewarmness in their cause. To silence unjust censures he became chaplain to the regiment of Sir Ralph Hopton. For the first five years of the war, as he said, when excusing the non-appearance of his Church History, “I had little list or leisure to write, fearing to be made a history, and shifting daily for my safety. All that time I could not live to study, who did only study to live.” After the defeat of Hopton at Cheriton Down, Fuller retreated to Basing House. He took an active part in its defence, and his life with the troops caused him to be afterwards regarded as one of “the great cavalier parsons.” In his marches with his regiment round about Oxford and in the west, he devoted much time to the collection of details,