"_A Letter to a Convocation Man_" (Vol vii., p. 358.).--The authorship
of the tract concerning which MR. FRASER inquires, is assigned to Sir
Bartholomew Shower, not by the Bodleian Catalogue only, but also by Sir
Walter Scott, in his edition of the Somers' _Tracts_ (vol. ix. p. 411.),
as well as by Dr. Watt, in his _Bibliotheca Britannica_. The only
authorities for ascribing it to Dr. Binckes which I have been able to
discover, are Dr. Edmund Calamy, in his _Life and Times_ (vol. i. p.
397.), and the Rev. Thomas Lathbury, in his _History of the Convocation
of the Church of England_ (p. 283.); but neither of those authors gives
the source from which his information is {416} derived: and Mr.
Lathbury, who appears perfectly unaware that the tract had ever been
ascribed to Sir Bartholomew Shower, a lawyer, remarks: "It is worthy of
observation that the author of the _letter_ professes to be a lawyer,
though such was not the case, Dr. Binckes being a clergyman." Dr.
Kennett also, in his _Ecclesiastical Synods_, p. 19., referred to by Mr.
Lathbury, speaking of Archbishop Wake's reply, says: "I remember one
little prejudice to it, that it was wrote by a divine, whereas the
argument required an able lawyer; and the very writer of the _Letter to
a Convocation Man_ suggesting himself to be of that profession, there
was the greater equity, there should be the like council of one side as
there had been of the other."--It has occurred to me that the mistake of
assigning the tract to Dr. Binckes may possibly have been occasioned by
the circumstance that another tract, with the following title, published
in 1701, has the initials W. B. at the end of it,--_A Letter to a
Convocation Man, by a Clergyman in the Country_. I have examined both
tracts, and they are quite different, and leave no appearance of having
proceeded from the same hand.