Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/29

 "d S. NO 2., JAN. 12. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

21

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 18fG.

Rotes'. SUBNET'S UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS.

HIS CONDEMNED PASTORAL LETTER PROMOTION

TO SALISBURY DISPOSAL OF VACANT SEES MARLBOROUGH'S DISGRACE.

[Macaulay, in a note to his 3rd vol., p. 19., mentions the very great value of the rough draught of Bin-net's History of his Own Time, now No. 6584. of the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, which contains " some facts which Burnet afterwards thought it advisable to suppress, and some judgments which he afterwards saw cause to alter. I must own," he continues, " that I generally like his first thoughts best. Whenever his History is re- printed, it ought to be carefully collated with this volume."

The following extracts from" this "rough draught," will, we believe, be read with great interest ; and may at the same time serve to convince the authorities at Oxford how much the value of their edition of Burnet will be in- creased by the adoption of this suggestion.]

Burnefs condemned Pastoral Letter. Macaulay states (vol. iv. p. 360.) that Burnet has preserved a most significant silence, in his printed History of his Own Time, about the ignominious judgment passed by the House of Commons on his Pastoral Letter, which was condemned by that august body to the flames. Fortunately for posterity, the historian has directed public attention to the bishop's own version of this notable occurrence, which he describes with much feeling in his diary written at the time. This shall be OUT first ex- tract :

" In the last session of Parliament some began to find fault with a notion by which some divines had urged obedience to the present government, that here was a conquest over King James, and that conquest in a just war gave a good title. This some had carried so far, as to say in all wars, just or unjust, conquests were to be considered as God's transferring the dominion from the conquered to the conqueror: yet all these writers had taken care to distinguish between a conquest of a nation and a conquest of King James ; the latter being only that which was pretended, that, as they said, gave the king nil King James's right. This doctrine was condemned by a vote of both Houses ; and a book that had set it forth with great modesty nnd judgment [Charles Blount's King JFllliam and Queen Mary, Conquerors'], was in heat condemned to be burnt. And because in a treatise that I had writ immediately after I was a bishop [his Pastoral Letter"], to persuade my clergy to take the oaths, I had only mentioned this as a received opinion among lawyers, and put it in among other topics, but had put the strength of all upon the lawfulness and justice of the present esta- blishment, they fell upon that little book, and ordered it likewise to be burnt. So it looked somewhat extraordi- nary that I, who perhaps was the greatest asserter of public liberty, from my first setting out, of any writer in the n<;'e, should be so severely treated as an enemy to it. Hut the truth was, the Tories never liked me, and the Whigs hated me, because I went not into their notions and passions; but even this and worse things that may happen to me, shall not, I hope, be able to make me depart from moderate principles, and the just asserting the liberty of mankind."

Burnefs Promotion to the Bishoprick of Salis- bury. Our next extract will show that Burnet' s account of Church matters, and his own pro- motion to the see of Saflsbury, in the MS., p. 295., is far more full and racy than the meagre notice of the same events which he has given in his printed work :

" I must, in the next place, say somewhat of Church matters. The clergy did generally take the oaths, yet many of them discovered a great jealousy of the govern- ment upon the account of the favour that was showed the dissenters, and all King James's party spread reports over England that the king was a presbyterian in his heart ; his abolishing episcopacy in Scotland, and his consenting to the setting up of presb3 r tery there, gave great credit to the report, which was studiously infused into the leading men of the two universities, and began to have very ill effects over all England; those who did not carry the suspension so far, as to the pulling down of the Church, yet said that a latitudinarian party was like to prevail, and to engross all preferments. These were thought to be less zealous for the ceremonies, so it was given out that at least the zealous men for the Church would be neglected, while those that were more indif- ferent, would be trusted with the government of it ; and because many of those were men that studied to make out all things by principles of reason, and had with great success both proved the truth of the Christian religion and the grounds of morality from rational principles, it was said they denied mysteries, and were Socinians. This aspersion had been first cast on them by papists, on de- sign to disgrace a knot of divines that had both written and acted with much strength against them, and it was now taken up by some at Oxford : all which was managed and secretly set on by Clarendon, and some of the bishops that were now falling under deprivation. The promo- tions that were made increased these jealousies. A great many bishops happened to die in a few months ; so that the king made six bishops in the space of so many months: Salisbury, Chester, Bangor, Worcester, and Bristol.

" To the first of these, that was the first that fell, the king thought fit to promote me : he did it of his own motion; for though a great many of my friends, without any encouragement from me, moved him in it, he made them no manner of answer till he took occasioir to speak to myself ; and he did in a way that was much more obliging than I could have expected from him.

" When I waited on the queen, she told me she hoped I would set a pattern to others, and would put in practice those notions, with which I had taken the liberty some- times to entertain her. She also recommended" to me the making my wife an example to other clergymen's wives, both in the simplicity and plainness of her clothes, and in the humility of her deportment. This I mention to show what is the queen's sense of the duties of clergy- men, and of the behaviour of their wives ; the vanity and pride of these have risen to a great excess, and I have put many out of countenance, and have freed either them of their vanity, or at least their husbands of the expense of it, by letting this rule that the queen gave me be known.

" I came into the House of Lords when the matter of comprehension and toleration was in debate, and I went so high in those points, that I was sometimes, upon the division of the House, single against the whole bench of bishops. But in the point of tendering the oaths to all the clergy, I did indeed oppose that upon this ground, that I thought if they joined in the public offices of the Church, and performed them sometimes themselves, this must needs bind them as firmly to the government as any