Thus far I have been concerned with externals, and before turning to the
contents of the tract itself in an endeavor to explain the extraordinary
popularity it enjoyed, something must be said of the author--Henry
Neville. Like most of the characters engaged in the politics of England
in the middle of the seventeenth century, he has suffered at the hands
of his biographer, Anthony à Wood,{1} merely because he belonged to
the opposite party--the crudest possible measure of merit For the odium
politicum and the odium theologicum are twin agents of detraction, and
the writing of history would be dull indeed were it not for the joy of
digging out an approximation to the truth from opposing opinions. Where
the material is so scanty it will be safer [30]to summarize what is
known, without attempting to pass finally upon Neville's position among
his contemporaries.