DR HENRY MORE. One of the greatest of the English Platonists and metaphysicians of the seventeenth century was the amiable and learned DR HENRY MORE (1614-1687), a native of Grantham, Lincolnshire, and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. More devoted his life to study and religious meditation at Cambridge, and strenuously refused to accept preferment in the church, which would have rendered it necessary for him to leave what he called his paradise. The friends of this recluse philosopher once attempted to decoy him into a bishopric, and got him as far as Whitehall, that he might kiss the king's hand on the occasion; but when told for what purpose they had brought him thither, he refused to move a step further. Dr More published several works for the promotion of religion and virtue; his moral doctrines are admirable, but some of his views are strongly tinged with mysticism. He was one of those who held the opinion that the wisdom of the Hebrews had descended to Pythagoras, and from him to Plato, in the writings of whom and his followers he believed that the true principles of divine philosophy were consequently to be found. For such a theory, it is hardly necessary to remark, there is no good foundation, the account given of Pythagoras's travels into the East being of uncertain authority, and there being no evidence that he had any communication with the Hebrew prophets. Dr More was an enthusiastic and disinterested inquirer after truth, and is celebrated by his contemporaries as a man of uncommon benevolence, purity, and devotion. His works, though now little read, were extremely popular in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The most important are-The Mystery of Godliness, The Mystery of Iniquity, A Discourse on the Immortality of the Soul, Ethical and Metaphysical Manuals, several treatises against atheism and idolatry, and a volume entitled Platonica, or a Platonical Song of the Soul, in four poems, 1642, afterwards published as Philosophical Poems, 1647. The first book or poem in the series is Psychozoia, or the Life of the Soul, his principal poetical work. 'His poetry,' says Thomas Campbell, 'is not like a beautiful landscape on which the eye can repose, but may be compared to some curious grotto, whose gloomy labyrinths we might be curious to explore for the strange and mystic associations they excite.' We add two stanzas from the Psychozoia: The Soul and Body. Like to a light fast locked in lanthorn dark, Even so the soul, in this contracted state, At this hole hears, the sight must ray from thence, Here tastes, there smells: but when she's gone from hence, Like naked lamp she is one shining sphere, And round about has perfect cognoscence Whate'er in her horizon doth appear: She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear. Of the prose composition of Dr More, the subjoined is from his Mystery of Godliness: Devout Contemplation of the Works of God. Whether, therefore, our eyes be struck with that more radiant lustre of the sun, or whether we behold that more placid and calm beauty of the moon, or be refreshed with the sweet breathings of the open air, or be taken up with the contemplation of those pure sparkling lights of some mighty river, as that of Nile, or admire the of the stars, or stand astonished at the gushing downfalls height of some insuperable and inaccessible rock or mountain; or with a pleasant horror and chillness look upon some silent wood, or solemn shady grove; whether the face of heaven smile upon us with a cheerful bright azure, or look upon us with a more sad and minacious countenance, dark pitchy clouds being charged with thunder and lightning to let fly against the earth; whether the air be cool, fresh, and healthful; or whether it be sultry, contagious, and pestilential, so that, while we gasp for life, we are forced to draw in a sudden and inevitable death; whether the earth stand firm, and Prove favourable to the industry of the artificer; or whether she threaten the very foundations of our buildings with trembling and tottering earthquakes, accompanied with remugient echoes and ghastly murmurs from below; whatever notable emergencies happen for either good or bad to us, these are the Joves and Vejoves that we worship, which to us are not many, but one God, who has the only power to save or destroy. And therefore, from whatever part of this magnificent temple of his-the world-he shall send forth his voice, our hearts and eyes are presently directed thitherward with fear, love, and veneration. Nature of the Evidence of the Existence of God. When I say that I will demonstrate that there is a God, I do not promise that I will always produce such arguments that the reader shall acknowledge so strong, as he shall be forced to confess that it is utterly impossible that it should be otherwise; but they shall be such as shall deserve full assent, and win full assent from any unprejudiced mind. For I conceive that we may give full assent to that which, notwithstanding, may possibly be otherwise; which I shall illustrate by several examples: Suppose two men got to the top of Mount Athos, and there viewing a stone in the form of an altar with ashes on it, if you will, as Optimo Maximo, or To agnosto Theo, or and the footsteps of men on those ashes, or some words, the like, written or scrawled out upon the ashes; and one of them should cry out: Assuredly here have been some men that have done this. But the other, more nice than wise, should reply: Nay, it may possibly be otherwise; for this stone may have naturally grown into this very shape, and the seeming ashes may be no ashes, that is, no remainders of any fuel burnt there; but some inexplicable and unperceptible motions of the air, or other particles of this fluid matter that is active everywhere, have wrought some parts of the matter into the form and nature of ashes, and have fringed and played about so, that they have also figured those intelBut would not anybody ligible characters in the same. deem it a piece of weakness, no less than dotage, for the other man one whit to recede from his former apprehension, but as fully as ever to agree with what he pronounced first, notwithstanding this bare possibility of being otherwise? So of anchors that have been digged up, either in plain fields or mountainous places, as also the Roman urns with ashes and inscriptions, as Severianus Ful. Linus, and the like, or Roman coins with the effigies and names of the Caesars on them, or that which is more ordinary, the skulls of men in every churchyard, with the right figure, and all those necessary perforations for the passing of the vessels, besides those conspicuous hollows for the eyes and rows of teeth, the os styloeides, ethoeides, and what not. If a man will say of them, that the motions of the particles of the matter, or some hidden spermatic power, has gendered these, both anchors, urns, coins, and skulls, in the ground, he doth but pronounce that which human reason must admit is possible. Nor can any man ever so demonstrate that those coins, anchors, and urns were once the artifice of men, or that this or that skull was once a part of a living man, that he shall force an acknowledgment that it is impossible that it should be otherwise. But yet I do not think that any man, without doing manifest violence to his faculties, can at all suspend his assent, but freely and fully agree that this or that skull was once a part of a living man, and that these anchors, urns, and coins, were certainly once made by human artifice, notwithstanding the possibility of being otherwise. of the times seems more like what we conceive of the reign of Charles II. than that of the grave and decorous First Charles. Court and Times of Charles I. Profaneness too much abounded everywhere; and which is most strange, where there was no religion, yet there was superstition. Luxury in diet, and excess both in meat and drink, was crept into the kingdom in a high degree, not only in the quantity, but in the wanton curiosity. And in abuse of those good creatures which God had bestowed upon this plentiful land, they mixed the vices of divers nations, catching at everything that was new and foreign. Non vulgo nota placebant As much pride and excess was in apparel, almost among all degrees of people, in new-fangled and variousfashioned attire; they not only imitated, but excelled their foreign patterns; and in fantastical gestures and And what I have said of assent is also true in dissent; behaviour, the petulancy of most nations in Europe. for the mind of man, not crazed nor prejudiced, will The serious men groaned for a parliament; but the fully and irreconcilably disagree, by its own natural great statesmen plied it the harder, to complete that sagacity, where, notwithstanding, the thing that it doth work they had begun, of setting up prerogative above thus resolvedly and undoubtedly reject, no wit of man all laws. The Lord Wentworth (afterwards created can prove impossible to be true. As if we should make Earl of Strafford for his service in that kind) was then such a fiction as this-that Archimedes, with the same labouring to oppress Ireland, of which he was deputy; individual body that he had when the soldiers slew him, and to begin that work in a conquered kingdom which is now safely intent upon his geometrical figures under was intended to be afterward wrought by degrees in ground, at the centre of the earth, far from the noise England: and indeed he had gone very far and prosperand din of this world, that might disturb his medita-ously in those ways of tyranny, though very much to the tions, or distract him in his curious delineations he endamaging and setting back of that newly established makes with his rod upon the dust; which no man living kingdom. He was a man of great parts, of a deep reach, can prove impossible. Yet if any man does not as subtle wit, of spirit and industry to carry on his business, irreconcilably dissent from such a fable as this, as from and such a conscience as was fit for that work he was any falsehood imaginable, assuredly that man is next designed to. He understood the right way, and the door to madness or dotage, or does enormous violence to liberty of his country, as well as any man; for which in the free use of his faculties. former parliaments, he stood up stiffly, and seemed an excellent patriot. For those abilities he was soon taken off by the king, and raised in honour, to be employed in a contrary way, for enslaving of his country, which his ambition easily drew him to undertake. HISTORIANS. THOMAS MAY. THOMAS MAY (circa 1594-1650), who, like Daniel, was both a poet and historian, published, in 1647, The History of the Parliament of England, which began November 3, 1640, with a short and necessary View of some precedent Years. The prefatory 'view' comprises characters of Queen Elizabeth, King James, and Charles I.; and the narrative closes with the battle of Newbury, 1643, at the most interesting crisis of the struggle. May was at one time countenanced by the court, but 'fell from his duty and all his former friends,' as Clarendon has expressed it, and became Secretary to the Long Parliament. It is to be regretted that his History is confined to so small a portion of the Civil War, for though the composition of the work is inelegant, it is marked by candour and fairness, and the author had access to the best sources of information on the side of the Parliament. The task, indeed, was a difficult one, for the Civil War divided, as May said, 'the understandings of men as well as their affections, in so high a degree that scarce could any virtue gain due applause, any reason give satisfaction, or any relation obtain credit unless amongst men of the same side.' The picture which May draws of the social state The court of England, during this long vacancy of parliaments, enjoyed itself in as much pleasure and splendour as ever any court did. The revels, triumphs, and princely pastimes were for those many years kept up at so great a height, that any stranger which travelled into England, would verily believe a kingdom that looked so cheerfully in the face could not be sick in any part. May was the author of several plays and poems and translations, all forgotten excepting his translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (1627) and his Supplement to Lucan, carrying down the history of Pharsalia to the death of Cæsar, and forming, as Hallam has said, 'the first Latin poetry which England can vaunt.' LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. EDWARD HERBERT, baron of Cherbury, in Shropshire (1581-1648), was an eminent statesman and writer, and a brave and high-spirited man at a time when honourable feeling was rare at the English court. He was born at Eyton, in Shropshire, studied at Oxford, and acquired, both at home and on the continent, a high reputation for the almost Quixotic chivalry of his character. In 1616 he was sent as ambassador to Paris, at which place he published, in 1624, his celebrated Latin work De Veritate, a treatise on truth as it is distinguished from revelation, from probability, from possibility, and from falsehood. In this work, the first in which deism was ever reduced to a system, the author maintains the sufficiency, universality, and absolute perfection of natural religion. The enthusiasm as well as sincerity of his nature is exemplified in the following reference to this work : I Being doubtful in my chamber one fine day in the summer, my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my book De Veritate in my hands, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: O thou eternal God, author of this light which now shines upon me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech thee, of thy infinite goodness, to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to make. I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven; if not, shall suppress it!' I had no sooner spoke these words, but a loud, though yet gentle noise came forth from the heavens, for it was like nothing on earth, which did so cheer and comfort me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This, how strange soever it may seem, I protest before the eternal God is true; neither am I any way superstitiously deceived herein, since I did not only clearly hear the noise, but in the serenest sky I ever saw, being without all cloud, did, to my thinking, see the place from whence it came. In reprinting the work at London in 1645, Herbert added two tracts, De Causis Errorum and De Religione Laici, and soon afterwards he published another work entitled De Religione Gentilium Errorumque apud eos Causis, of which an English translation appeared in 1705, entitled The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles, and Cause of their Errors Considered. The treatise De Veritate was answered by the French philosopher Gassendi, and numerous replies appeared in England. Lord Herbert wrote a History of the Life and Reign of King Henry VIII. which was not printed till 1649, the year after his death. It is termed by Lord Orford a masterpiece of historic biography.' Herbert has, however, been accused of partiality to the tyrannical monarch, and of having produced rather a panegyric, or an apology, than a fair and judicious representation. As to style, the work is one of the best old specimens of historical composition. Lord Herbert is remarkable also as the earliest of our autobiographers. The memoirs which he left of his own life were first printed by Horace Walpole in 1764. Lord Herbert wrote Occasional Verses, published by his son in 1665. Sir Thomas More's Resignation of the Great Seal. Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, after divers suits to be discharged of his place-which he had held two years and a half-did at length by the king's good leave resign it. The example whereof being rare, will give me occasion to speak more particularly of him. Sir Thomas More, a person of sharp wit, and endued besides with excellent parts of learning (as his works may testify), was yet (out of I know not what natural facetiousness) given so much to jesting, that it detracted no little from the gravity and importance of his place, which, though generally noted and disliked, I do not think was enough to make him give it over in that merriment we shall find anon, or retire to a private life. Neither can I believe him so much addicted to his private opinions as to detest all other governments but his own Utopia, so that it is probable some vehement desire to follow his book, or secret offence taken against some person or matter-among which perchance the king's new intended marriage, or the like, might be accounted-occasioned this strange counsel; though, yet, I find no reason pretended for it but infirmity and want of health. Our king hereupon taking the seal, and giving it, together with the order of knighthood, to Thomas Audeley, Speaker of the Lower House, Sir Thomas More, without acquainting anybody with what he had done, repairs to his family at Chelsea, where, after a mass celebrated the next day in the church, he office formerly done by one of his gentlemen-and says: comes to his lady's pew, with his hat in his hand-an Madam, my lord is gone.' But she thinking this at first to be but one of his jests, was little moved, till he told her sadly he had given up the great seal; whereupon she speaking some passionate words, he called his daughters then present to see if they could not spy some fault about their mother's dressing; but they after search saying they could find none, he replied: 'Do you not perceive that your mother's nose standeth somewhat awry?'-of which jeer the provoked lady was so sensible, that she went from him in a rage. Shortly after, he acquainted his servants with what he had done, dismissing them also to the attendance of some other great personages, to whom he had recommended them. For his fool, he bestowed him on the lord-mayor during his office, and afterwards on his successors in that charge. And now coming to himself, he began to consider how much he had left, and finding that it was not above one advised with his daughters how to live together. But hundred pounds yearly in lands, besides some money, he the grieved gentlewomen-who knew not what to reply, or indeed how to take these jests-remaining astonished, he says: We will begin with the slender diet of the students of the law, and if that will not hold out, we will take such commons as they have at Oxford; which yet if our purse will not stretch to maintain, for our last refuge we will go a-begging, and at every man's door sing together a Salve Regina to get alms.' But these jests were thought to have in them more levity than to be taken everywhere for current; he might have quitted his dignity without using such sarcasms, and betaken himself to a more retired and quiet life without making he intended hereby, his family so little understood his them or himself contemptible. And certainly, whatsoever meaning, that they needed some more serious instructions. LORD CLARENDON. At the head of the historians of this period, combining disquisition with description, and the development of motives with the relation of events, generations of readers have agreed to place Lord Clarendon, the faithful though discarded minister of Charles II. EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON (16081674), the son of a private gentleman of good fortune in Wiltshire, studied for several years at Oxford with a view to the church, but in consequence of the death of two older brothers, was removed at the age of sixteen to London, where he diligently pursued the study of the law. While thus employed, he associated much with some of the most eminent of his contemporaries, among whom may be mentioned Lord Falkland, Selden, Ben Jonson, Carew, Waller, Morley, Hales of Eton, From the conversation of and Chillingworth. these and other distinguished individuals-the characters of some of whom he has admirably sketched in his works-he considered himself to have derived a great portion of his knowledge; and he declares that 'he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst man in the company.' Having entered parliament in 1640, he soon afterwards quitted the bar, and devoted himself to public affairs. At first he abstained from connecting himself with any political party; but eventually he joined the royalists, to whose principles he was inclined by nature, though not a decided partisan. In the struggles between Charles I. and the people, he was much consulted by the king, who, however, sometimes gave him annoyance by disregarding his advice. Many of the papers issued in the royal cause during the Civil War were the productions of Hyde. Charles, while holding his court at Oxford, nominated him chancellor of the exchequer, and conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. Leaving the king in 1644, he accompanied Prince Charles to the west, and subsequently to Jersey, where he remained for two years after the prince's departure from that island, engaged in tranquil literary occupations, and especially in writing a history of the stormy events in which he had lately been an actor. His Contemplations and Reflections upon the Psalms of David, applying those Devotions to the troubles of the Times, written in Jersey in 1647, and published in folio in 1727, are full of historical and personal interest, and have never been sufficiently valued. In 1648, he joined the prince in Holland, and next year went as one of his ambassadors to Madrid, having first established his own wife and children at Antwerp. In Spain, the ambassadors were coldly received: after suffering much from neglect and poverty, they were ultimately ordered to quit the kingdom, which they did in 1651; Hyde retiring to his family at Antwerp, but afterwards, in the autumn of the same year, joining the exiled Charles at Paris. Thenceforth, Hyde continued to be of great service in managing the embarrassed pecuniary affairs of the court, in giving counsel to the king, and in preserving harmony among his adherents. At this time his own poverty was such, that he writes in 1652: 'I have neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the sharpness of the season; and in the following year: 'I have not had a livre of my own for three months.' He was greatly annoyed by the indolence and extravagance of Charles, who, however, valued him highly, and manifested his approbation by raising him to the dignity of lord chancellor. This appointment by a king without a kingdom, besides serving to testify the royal favour, enabled the easy and indolent monarch to rid himself of clamorous applicants for future lucrative offices in England, by referring them to one who had greater ability to resist solicitations with firmness. Of the four confidential counsellors by whose advice Charles was almost exclusively directed after the death of Cromwell, Hyde 'bore the greatest share of business, and was believed to possess the greatest influence. The measures he recommended were tempered with sagacity, prudence, and moderation.' 'The chancellor was a witness of the Restoration; he was with Charles at Canterbury in his progress to London, followed his triumphal entry to the capital, and took his seat on the 1st of June (1660) as speaker of the House of Lords: he also sat on the same day in the Court of Chancery.' In the same year his daughter became the wife of the Duke of York, by which marriage Hyde was rendered a progenitor of two queens of England, Mary and Anne. At the coronation in 1661, the earldom of Clarendon was conferred on him, along with a gift of £20,000 from the king. He enjoyed the office of chancellor till 1665, when, having incurred the popular odium by some of his measures, his haughty demeanour, and resistance to the growing power of the Commons, and also raised up many bitter enemies in the court by his opposition to the dissoluteness and extravagance which there prevailed, he resigned the great seal, by his majesty's command, and was soon afterwards compelled to withdraw from the kingdom. He retired to France, and occupied himself in completing his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in 1641, but first published at Oxford in 1702-4. This great work is written somewhat in the style of political memoirs, easy, copious, redundant of details, and careless in execution, except where the author delineated the characters of his great contemporaries, or dwelt on events in which he was strongly interested. He fails most signally in his description of battles, which are confused and almost unintelligible.* Clarendon's sentences are often long and involved, and his expression loose and incorrect-defects perhaps springing from his previous habits of public speaking, without early opportunities or peculiar taste for mere literary study. In the department of character-painting, Clarendon is unrivalled; his description of events has not the same graphic vigour as his portraitures, and his authority as an historian is small indeed; but many incidents are related with a sober majesty and chastened beauty of expression that are rare in history. We see always a full and fertile mind-strong royalist prepossessions, but a high sense of national honour and a deep feeling of regard for the moral and material welfare of his country. His life of himself, and the continuation of the life, written subsequently to his history, are less interesting, and are more inaccurate in details. Among the other works of this great man are a reply to the Leviathan of Hobbes and an admirable Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life, and why the One should be preferred before the Other. The last is peculiarly valuable, as the production of a man who, to a sound and vigorous understanding, added rare knowledge of the world, and much experience of life, both active and retired. He strongly maintains the superiority of an active course, as having the greater tendency to promote not only the happiness and usefulness, but also the virtue of the individual. Man, says he, 'is not sent into the world only to have a being to breathe till nature extinguisheth that breath, and reduceth that miserable creature to the nothing he was before: he is sent upon an errand, and to do the business of life; he hath faculties given him to judge between good and evil, to cherish and foment the first motions he feels towards the one, and to subdue the first temptations to the other; he hath not acted his part in doing no harm; his duty is not only to do good and to be innocent himself, but to propagate virtue, and to make It is curious to find it stated by Sir Walter Scott, that the best general in the world (evidently the Duke of Wellington) has been heard to say that King James II. in his Memoirs writes of military matters more forcibly and intelligibly than any author he has perused.' See note to Military Memoirs, by John Gwynne, 1822. 353 When all was done that at that time could be done there, and the council and magistrates went out of the church to their houses, the rabble followed the bishops with all the opprobrious language they could invent, of bringing in superstition and popery into the kingdom, and making the people slaves; and were not content to use their tongues, but employed their hands too in throwing dirt and stones at them; and treated the bishop of Edinburgh, whom they looked upon as most active that way, so rudely, that with difficulty he got from thence removed to his own, with great hazard of his life. As this was the reception which it had in the cathedral, so it fared not better in the other churches of the city, but was entertained with the same hollaing and outcries, and threatening the men, whose office it was to read it, with the same bitter execrations against bishops and popery. others better than they would otherwise be. Indeed, an absence of folly is the first hopeful prologue towards the obtaining wisdom; yet he shall never be wise who knows not what folly is; nor, it may be, commendably and judiciously honest, without having taken some view of the quarters of iniquity; since true virtue pre-supposeth an election, a declining somewhat that is ill, as well as the choice of what is good.' The choice of a mode of life he thinks ought to be regulated by a considera-into a house, after they had torn his habit, and was tion of the abilities of each individual who is about to commence his career; but he omits to add, that dispositions as well as talents ought always to be considered; since, however great a man's abilities may be, the want of steady energy and decision of character must operate as an insurmountable bar to success in the struggles of active life. Lord Clarendon's other miscellaneous works consist of a Vindication of himself from the Charge of Treason; Dialogues on the Want of Respect due to Age, and on Education; and essays on various subjects. In the year 1811, a work of Lord Clarendon's which had till then remained in manuscript, was published under the title of Religion and Policy, and the Countenance and Assistance they should give to each other; with a Survey of the Power and Furisdiction of the Pope in the Dominions of other Princes. The principal object of the work is to shew the injury which religion has sustained by the pope's assumption of temporal authority, and that it is incumbent on Catholics living under Protestant governments to pay no regard to the papal authority, in opposition to their own sovereign. Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion was not intended for publication till the numerous public characters of whom it treats were no more. It was edited by Bishop Sprat and Dean Aldrich, who made numerous alterations on the text, which, however, has now been correctly given, with the suppressed passages restored, in an edition in eight volumes, printed at Oxford in 1826. The Life and Continuation, also complete, were printed at Oxford in three volumes in 1827. Reception of the Liturgy at Edinburgh in 1637. On the Sunday morning appointed for the work, the Chancellor of Scotland, and others of the council, being present in the cathedral church, the dean began to read the Liturgy, which he had no sooner entered upon, but a noise and clamour was raised throughout the church, that no words could be heard distinctly; and then a shower of stones, and sticks, and cudgels, were thrown at the dean's head. The bishop went up into the pulpit, and from thence put them in mind of the sacredness of the place, of their duty to God and the king; but he found no more reverence, nor was the clamour and disorder less than before. The chancellor, from his seat, commanded the provost and magistrates of the city to descend from the gallery in which they sat, and by their authority to suppress the riot; which at last with great difficulty they did, by driving the rudest of those who made the disturbance out of the church, and shutting the doors, which gave the dean opportunity to proceed in the reading of the Liturgy, that was not at all attended or hearkened to by those who remained within the church; and if it had, they who were turned out continued their barbarous noise, broke the windows, and endeavoured to break down the doors, so that it was not possible for any to follow their devotions. Hitherto no person of condition or name appeared or seemed to countenance this seditious confusion; it was the rabble, of which nobody was named, and, which is more strange, not one apprehended: and it seems the bishops thought it not of moment enough to desire or require any help or protection from the council; but without conferring with them, or applying themselves to them, they despatched away an express to the king, with a full and particular information of all that had passed, and a desire that he would take that course he thought best for the carrying on his service. there were very few in England who had heard of any Until this advertisement arrived from Scotland, disorders there, or of anything done there which might produce any.. And the truth is, there was so little curiosity either in the court or in the country to know anything of Scotland, or what was done there, that when the whole nation was solicitous to know what passed weekly in Germany and Poland, and all other parts of Europe, no man ever inquired what was doing in Scotland, nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page of any gazette; and even after the advertisement of this preamble to rebellion, no mention was made of it at the council-board, but such the king's dislike and displeasure, and obliged the a dispatch made into Scotland upon it, as expressed lords of the council there to appear more vigorously in the vindication of his authority, and suppression of those tumults. But all was too little. That people, after they had once begun, pursued the business vigorously, and with all imaginable contempt of the government; and though in the hubbub of the first day there appeared nobody of name or reckoning, but the actors were really of the dregs of the people, yet they discovered by the countenance of that day, that few men of rank were forward to engage themselves in the quarrel on the behalf of the bishops; whereupon more considerable persons every day appeared against them, and-as heretofore in the case of St Paul, Acts xiii. 50, 'The Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women -the women and ladies of the best quality declared themselves of the party, and, with all the reproaches imaginable, made war upon the bishops, as introducers of popery and superstition, against which they avowed themselves to be irreconcilable enemies; and their husbands did not long defer the owning the same spirit; insomuch as within few days the bishops durst not appear in the streets, nor in any courts or houses, but were in danger of their lives; and such of the lords as durst be in their company, or seemed to desire to rescue them from violence, had their coaches torn in pieces, and their persons assaulted, insomuch as they were glad to send for some of those great men, who did indeed govern the rabble, though they appeared not in it, who readily came and redeemed them out of their hands; so that, by the time new orders came from England, there was scarce a bishop left in Edinburgh, and not a minister who durst read the Liturgy in any church. |