1.
The History of Great Britain, Being the Life and Reign of King James
The First, Relating To what passed from his first Accesse to the
Crown, till his Death. By Arthur Wilson, Esq. London, 1653. (pp.
289-90.)
Arthur Wilson (1595-1652) was a gentleman-in-waiting to Robert
Devereux, third Earl of Essex, during James's reign, and was
afterwards in the service of Robert Rich, second Earl of Essex. The
_History_ was written towards the end of his life, and published the
year after his death. He was the author also of an autobiography,
_Observations of God's Providence in the Tract of my Life_ (first
printed in Francis Peck's _Desiderata Curiosa_, 1735, Lib. XII, pp.
6-34), and of three plays, _The Swisser_ (performed at Blackfriars,
1633, first printed in 1904, ed. Albert Feuillerat, from the MS.
in the British Museum), _The Corporall_ (performed, 1633, but not
extant), and _The Inconstant Lady_ (first printed in 1814, ed. Philip
Bliss, from the MS. in the Bodleian Library). The three plays were
entered in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, September 4,
1646, and September 9, 1653. But nothing he wrote appears to have been
published during his life.
Page 2, l. 24. _Peace begot Plenty_. An adaptation of the wellknown
saying which Puttenham in his _Arte of English Poesie_ (ed. Arber, p.
217) attributes to Jean de Meung. Puttenham gives it thus:
Peace makes plentie, plentie makes pride,
Pride breeds quarrell, and quarrell brings warre:
Warre brings spoile, and spoile pouertie,
Pouertie pacience, and pacience peace:
So peace brings warre, and warre brings peace.
It is found also in Italian and Latin. Allusions to it are frequent
in the seventeenth century. Compare the beginning of Swift's _Battle
of the Books_, and see the correspondence in _The Times Literary
Supplement_, February 17-March 30, 1916.
2.
The Court and Character of King James. Written and taken by Sir
A.W. being an eye, and eare witnesse. Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit
regnare. Published by Authority. London, MDCL.
'The Character of King James' forms a section by itself at the
conclusion of the volume, pp. 177-89. The volume was reprinted in
the following year, when there were added to it 'The Court of King
Charles' and 'Observations (instead of a Character) upon this King,
from his Childe-hood'. Both editions are carelessly printed. The
second, which corrects some of the errors of the first but introduces
others, has been used for the present text.
Weldon was clerk of the kitchen to James I and afterwards clerk of
the Green Cloth. He was knighted in 1617, and accompanied James to
Scotland in that year, but was dismissed from his place at court for
his satire on the Scots. He took the side of the parliament in the
Civil War. The dedication to Lady Elizabeth Sidley (first printed in
the second edition) states that the work 'treads too near the heeles
of truth, and these Times, to appear in publick'. According to Anthony
à Wood she had suppressed the manuscript, which was stolen from
her. Weldon had died before it was printed. The answer to it called
_Aulicus Coquinariæ_ describes it as 'Pretended to be penned by Sir
A.W. and published since his death, 1650'.
Other works of the same kind, though of inferior value, are Sir Edward
Peyton's _The Divine Catastrophe of The Kingly Family Of the House of
Stuarts_, 1652, and Francis Osborne's _Traditionall Memoyres on The
Raigne of King James_, 1658. They were printed together by Sir Walter
Scott in 1811 under the title _The Secret History of the Court of
James the First_, a collection which contains the historical material
employed in _The Fortunes of Nigel_.
Though carelessly written, and as carelessly printed, Weldon's
character of James is in parts remarkably vivid. It was reprinted by
itself in Morgan's _Pboenix Britannicus_, 1732, pp. 54-6; and it
was incorporated in the edition of Defoe's _Memoirs of a Cavalier_
published in 1792: see _The Retrospective Review_, 1821, vol. iii, pt.
ii, pp. 378-9.
There is a valuable article on Weldon's book as a whole in _The
Retrospective Review_, 1823, vol. vii, pt. I.
PAGE 4, l. 6. _before he was born_, probably an allusion to the murder
of Rizzio in Mary's presence.
l. 11. The syntax is faulty: delete 'and'?
On James's capacity for strong drinks, compare Roger Coke's _Detection
of the Court and State of England_ (1694), ed. 1719, vol. i, p. 78.
l. 27. _that foul poysoning busines_, the poisoning of Sir Thomas
Overbury, the great scandal of the reign. Robert Ker, or Carr, created
Viscount Rochester 1611 and Earl of Somerset 1613, had cast his eye
on the Countess of Essex, and, after a decree of nullity of marriage
with Essex had been procured, married her in December 1613. Overbury,
who had been Somerset's friend, opposed the projected marriage. On
a trumped up charge of disobedience to the king he was in April 1613
committed to the Tower, where he was slowly poisoned, and died in
September. Somerset and the Countess were both found guilty in 1616,
but ultimately pardoned; four of the accomplices were hanged. Weldon
deals with the scandal at some length in the main part of his work,
pp. 61 ff.
l. 30. _Mountgomery_, Philip Herbert, created Earl of Montgomery 1605,
succeeded his brother, William Herbert, as fourth Earl of Pembroke
in 1630 (see No. 7). To this 'most noble and incomparable paire
of brethren' Heminge and Condell dedicated the First Folio of
Shakespeare's plays, 1623. Montgomery's character is given by
Clarendon, _History_, ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 74-5; and, as fourth
Earl of Pembroke, vol. ii, pp. 539-41.
Page 5, l. 22. _unfortunate in the marriage of his Daughter_. James's
daughter Elizabeth married the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, in 1613.
His election as King of Bohemia led to the Thirty Years' War (1618-48)
in which James long hesitated to become involved and played at best
an ineffectual part. The opinion here expressed is explained by
an earlier passage in Weldon's book, pp. 82-4: 'In this Favourites
(Somerset's) flourishing time, came over the _Palsgrave_ to marry our
Kings daughter, which for the present, gave much content, and with the
generall applause, yet it proved a most infortunate match to him and
his Posterity, and all Christendome, for all his Alliance with so
many great Princes, which put on him aspiring thoughts, and was so
ambitious as not to content himselfe with his hereditary patrimony
of one of the greatest Princes in _Germany_; but must aspire to a
Kingdome, beleeving that his great allyance would carry him through
any enterprise, or bring him off with honour, in both which he failed;
being cast out of his own Country with shame, and he and his, ever
after, living upon the devotion of other Princes; but had his Father
in Law spent halfe the mony in Swords he did in words, for which he
was but scorned, it had kept him in his own inheritance, and saved
much Christian bloud since shed; but whiles he, being wholly addicted
to peace, spent much treasure, in sending stately Embassadours to
treat, his Enemies (which he esteemed friends) sent Armies with a
lesse charge to conquer, so that it may be concluded, that this
then thought the most happy match in Christendome, was the greatest
unhappinesse to Christendome, themselves, and posterity.'
l. 27. _Sir Robert Mansell_ (1573-1656), Vice-Admiral of England under
Charles I. Clarendon, writing of the year 1642, says that 'his courage
and integrity were unquestionable' (ed. Macray, vol. ii, p. 219).
'Argiers' or 'Argier' was the common old form of 'Algiers': cf. _The
Tempest_, I. ii. 261, 265.
Page 6, l. 2. _Cottington_, Francis Cottington (1578-1652), baronet
1623, Baron Cottington, 1631. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from
1629 to 1642.
Page 7, l. 5. The first edition reads 'In sending Embassadours, which
were'. The printer's substitution of 'His' for 'In' and omission of
'which' do not wholly mend the syntax.
l. 10. _peace with honour_. An early instance of the phrase made
famous by Lord Beaconsfield in his speech of July 16, 1878, after the
Congress of Berlin, 'Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back
peace, but a peace I hope with honour.' Cf. _Notes and Queries_, 1887,
Seventh Series, vol. iii, p. 96.
l. 14. _Nullum tempus, &c._, the law maxim _Nullum tempus occurrit
regi_, lapse of time does not bar the crown. The Parliament which met
in February 1624 passed 'An Act for the generall quiett of the Subject
agaynst all pretences of Concealement' (21° Jac. I, c. 2) which
declared sixty years' possession of Lands, &c., to be a good title
against the Crown.
l. 18. _his Tuesday Sermons_, likewise explained by an earlier passage
in Weldon's book, pp. 8, 9: 'the chiefe of those secrets, was that
of _Gowries_ Conspiracy, though that Nation [the Scots] gave little
credit to the Story, but would speak sleightly and despitefully of
it, and those of the wisest of that Nation; yet there was a weekly
commemoration by the Tuesday Sermon, and an anniversary Feast, as
great as it was possible, for the Kings preservation, ever on the
fifth of August.' James attempted to force the Tuesday sermon on the
University of Oxford; it was to be preached by members of each college
in rotation. See Brodrick's _Memorials of Merton College_, 1885, p.
70.
Page 8, l. 1. _a very wise man_. Compare _The Fortunes of Nigel_,
chap. v: 'the character bestowed upon him by Sully--that he was
the wisest fool in Christendom'. Two volumes of the _Mémoires_ of
Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully (1560-1641), appeared in 1638; the
others after 1650. There is much about James in the second volume, but
this description of him does not appear to be there.
ll. 10-12. _two Treasurers_, see p. 21, ll. 15-22: _three
Secretaries_, Sir Thomas Lake; Sir Robert Naunton; Sir George Calvert,
Baron Baltimore; Sir Edward Conway, Viscount Conway: _two Lord
Keepers_, Sir Francis Bacon; John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln (see
p. 18, l. 5): _two Admiralls_, Charles Howard of Effingham, Earl of
Nottingham; the Duke of Buckingham: _three Lord chief Justices_, Sir
Edward Coke; Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester; James Ley, Earl of
Marlborough.
Weldon's statement is true of the year 1623; he might have said
'_three_ Treasurers' and '_four_ Secretaries'.
3.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 7-9, 18-20; _History_, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol.
i, pp. 9-11, 26-9; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 10-13, 38-43.
This is the first of the portraits in Clarendon's great gallery, and
it is drawn with great care. Clarendon was only a youth of twenty when
Buckingham was assassinated, and he had therefore not the personal
knowledge and contact to which the later portraits owe so much of
their value. But he had throughout all his life been interested in
the remarkable career of this 'very extraordinary person'. Sir Henry
Wotton's 'Observations by Way of Parallel' on the Earl of Essex
and Buckingham had suggested to him his first character study, 'The
Difference and Disparity' between them. (It is printed after the
'Parallel' in _Reliquiæ Wottonianæ_, and described in the third
edition, 1672, as 'written by the Earl of Clarendon in his younger
dayes'.) His two studies offer an interesting comparison. Many of the
ideas are the same, but there is a marked difference in the precision
of drawing and the ease of style. The character here reprinted was
written when Clarendon had mastered his art.
Page 11, l. 5. See p. 4, l. 27.
Page 13, l. 25. The passage here omitted deals with Buckingham's
unsuccessful journey to Spain with Prince Charles, and with his
assassination.
Page 16, l. 28. _touched upon before_, ed. Macray, vol. i, p. 38; here
omitted.
4.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 27, 28; _History_, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i,
pp. 36-8; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 56-9.
Page 18, l. 5. _the Bishopp of Lincolne_, John Williams (1582-1650),
afterwards Archbishop of York. He succeeded Bacon as Lord Keeper. He
is sketched in Wilson's _History of Great Britain_, pp. 196-7, and
Fuller's _Church-History of Britain_, 1655, Bk. XI, pp. 225-8. His
life by John Hacket, _Scrinia Reserata_, 1693, is notorious for the
'embellishments' of its style; a shorter life, based on Hacket's, was
an early work of Ambrose Philips.
l. 22. _the Earle of Portlande_, Sir Richard Weston: see No. 5.
l. 24. _Hambleton_, Clarendon's usual spelling of 'Hamilton'.
5.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 28-32; _History_, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i,
pp. 31-43; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 59-67.
Another and more favourable character of Weston is the matter of an
undated letter which Sir Henry Wotton sent to him as 'a strange New
years Gift' about 1635. 'In short, it is only an Image of your Self,
drawn by memory from such discourse as I have taken up here and
there of your Lordship, among the most intelligent and unmalignant
men; which to pourtrait before you I thought no servile office, but
ingenuous and real'. See _Reliquiæ Wottonianæ_, ed. 1672, pp. 333-6.
Page 21, l. 7. _the white staffe_. 'The Third _Great Officer_ of the
Crown, is the _Lord High Treasurer of England_, who receives this High
Office by delivery of a _White Staffe_ to him by the _King_, and
holds it _durante bene placito Regis_' (Edward Chamberlayne, _Angliæ
Notitia_, 1674, p. 152).
Page 23, l. 4. _L'd Brooke_, Sir Fulke Greville (1554-1628) the
friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney. He was Chancellor of the
Exchequer from 1614 to 1621.
Page 28, l. 18. _eclarcicement_, introduced into English about
this time, and in frequent use till the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
l. 28. _a younge, beautifull Lady_, Frances, daughter of Esmé, third
Duke of Lennox, married to Jerome Weston, afterwards second Earl of
Portland, in 1632.
6.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 33, 34; _History_, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i,
p. 44; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 69-71.
This is one of Clarendon's most unfriendly portraits. It was seriously
edited when first printed. The whole passage about the coldness and
selfishness of Arundel's nature on p. 31, ll. 12-30, was omitted, as
likewise the allusion to his ignorance on p. 30, ll. 25-7, 'wheras in
truth he was only able to buy them, never to understande them.' Minor
alterations are the new reading 'thought no part of History _so_
considerable, _as_ what related to his own Family' p. 30, ll. 28,
29, and the omission of 'vulgar' p. 31, l. 11. The purpose of these
changes is obvious. They are extreme examples of the methods of
Clarendon's first editors. In no other character did they take so
great liberties with his text.
Arundel's great collection of ancient marbles is now in the Ashmolean
Museum in the University of Oxford. The inscriptions were presented
to the University in 1667 by Lord Henry Howard, Arundel's grandson,
afterwards sixth Duke of Norfolk, and the statues were reunited
to them in 1755 by the gift of Henrietta Countess of Pomfret. As
Clarendon's _History_ was an official publication of the University,
it is probable that the prospect of receiving the statues induced
the editors to remove or alter the passages that might be thought
offensive.
As a whole this character does not show Clarendon's usual detachment.
Arundel was Earl Marshal, and Clarendon in the Short Parliament of
1640 and again at the beginning of the Long Parliament had attacked
the jurisdiction of the Earl Marshal's Court, which, as he says,
'never presumed to sit afterwards'. The account given in Clarendon's
_Life_, ed. 1759, pp. 37-9, explains much in this character. Clarendon
there says that Arundel 'did him the honour to detest and hate him
perfectly'. There was resentment on both sides. The character was
written in Clarendon's later years, but he still remembered with
feeling the days when as Mr. Edward Hyde he was at cross purposes with
this Earl of ancient lineage.
A different character of Arundel is given in the 'Short View' of his
life written by Sir Edward Walker (1612-77), Garter King of Arms and
Secretary of War to Charles I:
'He was tall of Stature, and of Shape and proportion rather goodly
than neat; his Countenance was Majestical and grave, his Visage long,
his Eyes large black and piercing; he had a hooked Nose, and some
Warts or Moles on his Cheeks; his Countenance was brown, his Hair thin
both on his Head and Beard; he was of a stately Presence and Gate, so
that any Man that saw him, though in never so ordinary Habit, could
not but conclude him to be a great Person, his Garb and Fashion
drawing more Observation than did the rich Apparel of others; so that
it was a common Saying of the late Earl of _Carlisle_, Here comes the
Earl of _Arundel_ in his plain Stuff and trunk Hose, and his Beard
in his Teeth, that looks more like a Noble Man than any of us. He
was more learned in Men and Manners than in Books, yet understood the
_Latin_ Tongue very well, and was Master of the _Italian_; besides he
was a great Favourer of learned Men, such as Sir _Robert Cotton_, Sir
_Henry Spelman_, Mr. _Camden_, Mr. _Selden_, and the like. He was a
great Master of Order and Ceremony, and knew and kept greater Distance
towards his Sovereign than any Person I ever observed, and expected
no less from his inferiours; often complaining that the too great
Affability of the King, and the _French_ Garb of the Court would
bring MAJESTY into Contempt.... He was the greatest Favourer of Arts,
especially Painting, Sculpture, Designs, Carving, Building and the
like, that this Age hath produced; his Collection of Designs being
more than of any Person living, and his Statues equal in Number, Value
and Antiquity to those in the Houses of most Princes; to gain which,
he had Persons many Years employed both in _Italy_, _Greece_, and so
generally in any part of _Europe_ where Rarities were to be had. His
Paintings likewise were numerous and of the most excellent Masters,
having more of that exquisite Painter _Hans Holben_ than are in the
World besides.... He was a Person of great and universal Civility, but
yet with that Restriction as that it forbad any to be bold or sawcy
with him; though with those whom he affected, which were Lovers of
State, Nobility and curious Arts, he was very free and conversible;
but they being but few, the Stream of the times being otherwise, he
had not many Confidents or Dependents; neither did he much affect
to have them, they being unto great Persons both burthensome and
dangerous. He was not popular at all, nor cared for it, as loving
better by a just Hand than Flattery to let the common People to know
their Distance and due Observance. Neither was he of any Faction in
Court or Council, especially not of the _French_ or Puritan.... He was
in Religion no Bigot or Puritan, and professed more to affect moral
Vertues than nice Questions and Controversies.... If he were defective
in any thing, it was that he could not bring his Mind to his Fortune;
which though great, was far too little for the Vastness of his noble
Designs.'
Walker's character was written before Clarendon's. It is dated
'Iselsteyne the 7th of June 1651'. It was first published in 1705 in
his _Historical Discourses upon Several Occasions_, pp. 221-3.
Page 30, l. 15. _his wife_, 'the Lady Alithea Talbot, third Daughter
and Coheir of _Gilbert Talbot_ Earl of _Shrewsbury_, Grandchild of
_George Talbot_ Earl of _Shrewsbury_ and Earl Marshal of _England_'
(Walker, _Historical Discourses_, p. 211).
7.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 34, 35; _History_, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i,
pp. 44-6; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 71-3.
This pleasing portrait of Pembroke, one of the great patrons of
literature of James's reign, follows immediately after the unfriendly
portrait of Arundel, the art collector. Clarendon knew the value of
contrast in the arrangement of his gallery.
Pembroke is sometimes supposed to have been the patron of Shakespeare.
It cannot, however, be proved that there were any personal relations,
though the First Folio was dedicated to him and his brother, the Earl
of Montgomery, afterwards fourth Earl of Pembroke. See note, p. 4,
l. 30. He was the patron of Ben Jonson, who dedicated to him his
_Catiline_, his favourite play, and his _Epigrams_, 'the ripest of
my studies'; also of Samuel Daniel, Chapman, and William Browne. See
_Shakespeare's England_, vol. ii, pp. 202-3.
Clarendon has also given a character of the fourth Earl, 'the poor
Earl of Pembroke', _History_, ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 539-41.
8.
Timber: or, Discoveries; Made Vpon Men and Matter. By Ben: Iohnson.
London, Printed M.DC.XLI. (pp. 101-2.)
This character is a remarkable testimony to the impression which
Bacon's restrained eloquence made on his contemporaries. Yet it is
little more than an exercise in free translation. Jonson has pieced
together two passages in the _Controversies_ of Marcus Seneca, and
placed the name of 'Dominus Verulanus' in the margin. The two passages
are these:
'Non est unus, quamvis præcipuus sit, imitandus: quia nunquam par
fit imitator auctori. Hæc natura est rei. Semper citra veritatem est
similitudo.' Lib. I, Præfatio (ed. Paris, 1607, p. 58).
'Oratio eius erat valens cultu, ingentibus plena sententiis. Nemo
minus passus est aliquid in actione sua otiosi esse. Nulla pars erat,
quæ non sua virtute staret. Nihil, in quo auditor sine damno aliud
ageret. Omnia intenta aliquo, petentia. Nemo magis in sua potestate
habuit audientium affectus. Verum est quod de illo dicit Gallio
noster. Cum diceret, rerum potiebatur, adeo omnes imperata faciebant.
Cum ille voluerat, irascebantur. Nemo non illo dicente timebat, ne
desineret.' Epit. Declamat. Lib. III (p. 231).
From the continuation of the first passage Jonson took the words
'insolent Greece' ('insolenti Græciæ') in his verses 'To the memory of
Shakespeare'.
Jonson has left a more vivid picture of Bacon as a speaker in a short
sentence of his Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden: 'My Lord
Chancelor of England wringeth his speeches from the strings of his
band.'
9.
Reign of King James the First, 1653, pp. 158-60.
Page 36, l. 18. _which the King hinted at_, in the King's Speech to
the Lords, 1621: 'But because the World at this time talks so much of
_Bribes_, I have just cause to fear the whole _Body_ of this _House_
hath _bribed_ him [Prince Charles] to be a good _Instrument_ for you
upon all occasions: He doth so good Offices in all his _Reports_
to me, both for the _House_ in _generall_, and every one of you
in _particular_.' The speech is given in full by Wilson before the
passage on Bacon.
Page 37, l. 25. The passage here omitted is 'The humble Submission and
Supplication of the Lord Chancellour'.
Page 38, l. 10. _a good Passeover_, a good passage back to Spain.
Gondomar was Spanish ambassador.
10.
The Church-History of Britain; From the Birth of Jesus Christ, Untill
the Year M.DC.XLVIII. Endeavoured By Thomas Fuller. London, 1655. (Bk.
x, p. 89.)
11.
Resuscitatio, Or, Bringing into Publick Light Severall Pieces, of
the Works, Civil, Historical, Philosophical, & Theological, Hitherto
Sleeping; Of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon Baron of Verulam,
Viscount Saint Alban. According to the best Corrected Coppies.
Together, With his Lordships Life. By William Rawley, Doctor in
Divinity, His Lordships First, and Last, Chapleine. Afterwards,
Chapleine, to His late Maiesty. London, 1657.
'The Life of the Honourable Author' serves as introduction to this
volume of Bacon's literary remains. It runs to fourteen pages,
unnumbered. The passage quoted from this life (_c1v-c2v_) is of the
nature of a character.
Rawley's work is disfigured by pedantically heavy punctuation. He
carried to absurd excess the methods which his Master adopted in the
1625 edition of his _Essays_. It has not been thought necessary to
retain all his commas.
Page 41, l. 4. _Et quod tentabam_, &c. Ovid, _Tristia_, IV. x. 26.
12.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 48; _Life_, ed. 1759, p. 16.
Page 42, l. 23. _M'r Cowly_, an indication of Cowley's fame among his
contemporaries. This was written in 1668, after the publication of
_Paradise Lost_, but Clarendon ignores Milton.
l. 25. _to own much of his_, 'to ascribe much of this' _Life_ 1759.
Page 43, l. 2. _M'r Hyde_, Clarendon himself.
13.
A New Volume of Familiar Letters, Partly Philosophicall, Politicall,
Historicall. The second Edition, with Additions. By James Howell, Esq.
London, 1650. (Letter XIII, pp. 25-6.)
This is the second volume of _Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ_, first published
1645 (vol. 1) and 1647 (vol. 2). The text is here printed from the
copy of the second edition which Howell presented to Selden with an
autograph dedication: 'Ex dono Authoris ... Opusculum hoc honoris ergô
mittitur, Archiuis suis reponendum. 3° non: Maij 1652.' The volume now
reposes in the Selden collection in the Bodleian library. The second
edition of this letter differs from the first in the insertion of the
bracketed words, ll. 22, 23, and the date.
The authenticity of the letters as a whole is discussed in Joseph
Jacob's edition, 1890, pp. lxxi ff. This was probably not a real
letter written to his correspondent at the given date. But whenever,
and in whatever circumstances, Howell wrote it, the value of the
picture it gives us of Ben Jonson is not impaired.
PAGE 43, l. 9. _Sir Tho. Hawk_. Sir Thomas Hawkins, translator of
Horace's _Odes and Epodes_, 1625; hence 'your' Horace, p. 44, l. 4.
l. 17. _T. Ca._ Thomas Carew, the poet, one of the 'Tribe of Ben'.
PAGE 44, l. 6. _Iamque opus_, Ovid, _Metam._ xv. 871; cf. p. 202,
l. 13. l. 8. _Exegi monumentum_, Horace, _Od._ iii. 30. i. l. 10. _O
fortunatam_, preserved in Quintilian, _Inst. Orat._ ix. 4. 41 and xi.
I. 24, and in Juvenal, _Sat._ x. 122.
14.
This remarkable portrait of a country gentleman of the old school
is from the 'Fragment of Autobiography', written by the first Earl
of Shaftesbury (see Nos. 68, 69) towards the end of his life. The
manuscript is among the Shaftesbury papers in the Public Record
Office, but at present (1918) has been temporarily withdrawn for
greater safety, and is not available for reference. The text is
therefore taken from the modernized version in W.D. Christie's
_Memoirs of Shaftesbury_, 1859, pp. 22-5, and _Life of Shaftesbury_,
1871, vol. i, appendix i, pp. xv-xvii.
The character was published in Leonard Howard's _Collection of
Letters, from the Original Manuscripts_, 1753, pp. 152-5, and was
reprinted in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for April 1754, pp. 160-1, and
again in _The Connoisseur_, No. 81, August 14, 1755. _The Gentleman's
Magazine_ (1754, p. 215) is responsible for the error that it is to be
found in Peck's _Desiderata Curiosa_.
Hastings was Shaftesbury's neighbour in Dorsetshire. A full-length
portrait of him in his old age, clad in green cloth and holding
a pike-staff in his right hand, is at St. Giles, the seat of the
Shaftesbury family. It is reproduced in Hutchins's _History of
Dorset_, ed. 1868, vol. iii, p. 152.
PAGE 44, ll. 24-26. He was the second son of George fourth Earl of
Huntingdon. Shaftesbury is describing his early associates after his
marriage in 1639: 'The eastern part of Dorsetshire had a bowling-green
at Hanley, where the gentlemen went constantly once a week, though
neither the green nor accommodation was inviting, yet it was well
placed for to continue the correspondence of the gentry of those
parts. Thither resorted Mr. Hastings of Woodland,' &c.
Page 47, l. 12. '_my part lies therein-a_.' As was pointed out by E.F.
Rimbault in _Notes and Queries_, 1859, Second Series, vol. vii, p.
323, this is part of an old catch printed with the music in _Pammelia.
Musicks Miscellanie. Or, Mixed Varietie of Pleasant Roundelayes, and
delightfull Catches_, 1609:
There lies a pudding in the fire,
and my parte lies therein a:
whome should I call in,
O thy good fellowes and mine a.
_Pammelia_, 'the earliest collection of rounds, catches, and canons
printed in England', was brought out by Thomas Ravenscroft. Another
edition appeared in 1618.
15.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 383-4; _History_, Bk. XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii,
pp. 197-9; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 488-92.
The sense of Fate overhangs the portrait in which Clarendon paints for
posterity the private virtues of his unhappy master. The easy dignity
of the style adapts itself to the grave subject. This is one of
Clarendon's greatest passages. It was written twenty years after
Charles's death, but Time had not dulled his feelings. 'But ther shall
be only incerted the shorte character of his person, as it was found
in the papers of that person whose life is heare described, who was so
nerely trusted by him, and who had the greatest love for his person,
and the greatest reverence for his memory, that any faythfull servant
could exspresse.' So he wrote at first in the account of his own life.
On transferring the passage to the _History_ he substituted the more
impersonal sentence (p. 48, l. 27--p. 49, l. 5) which the general
character of the _History_ demanded.
Page 48, l. 15. _our blessed Savyour_. Compare 'The Martyrdom of King
Charls I. or His Conformity with Christ in his Sufferings. In a Sermon
preached at Bredah, Before his Sacred Majesty King Charls The Second,
And the Princess of Orange. By the Bishop of Downe. Printed at the
Hage 1649, and reprinted at London ... 1660'. Clarendon probably heard
this sermon.
l. 21. _have bene so much_, substituted in MS. for 'fitt to be more'.
_treatises_. E.g. _Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia_ (part 1),
1649, by George Bate or Bates, principal physician to Charles I and
II; _England's black Tribunall. Set forth in the Triall of K. Charles
I_, 1660; and the sermon mentioned above.
Page 51, l. 20. _educated by that people_. His tutor was Sir Peter
Young (1544-1628), the tutor of James. Patrick Young (1584-1652), Sir
Peter's son, was Royal Librarian.
l. 26. _Hambleton_. Cf. p. 18, l. 24.
16.
Mémoires Of the reigne of King Charles I. With a Continuation to the
Happy Restauration of King Charles II. By Sir Philip Warwick, Knight.
Published from the Original Manuscript. With An Alphabetical Table.
London, 1701. (pp. 64-75.)
Warwick (1609-83) was Secretary to Charles in 1647-8. 'When I think
of dying', he wrote, adapting a saying of Cicero, 'it is one of my
comforts, that when I part from the dunghill of this world, I shall
meet King Charles, and all those faithfull spirits, that had virtue
enough to be true to him, the Church, and the Laws unto the last.'
(_Mémoires_, p. 331.) Passages in the _Mémoires_ show that they were
begun after the summer of 1676 (p. 37), and completed shortly after
May 18, 1677 (p. 403).
Page 55, l. 13. _Sir Henry Vane_, the elder.
l. 14. _dyet_, allowance for expenses of living.
Page 56, l. 26. [Greek: Eikon Basilikae]. _The Pourtraicture of His
Sacred Maiesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings_ was published in
February 1649. Charles's authorship was at once doubted in Milton's
[Greek: EIKONOKLASTAES] and in [Greek: EIKON ALAETHINAE]. _The
Pourtraicture of Truths most sacred Majesty truly suffering, though
not solely_, and supported in [Greek: EIKON AKLASTOS], in [Greek:
EIKON AE PISTAE], and in _The Princely Pellican_, all published
in 1649. The weight of evidence is now strongly in favour of
the authorship of John Gauden (1605-62), bishop of Exeter at
the Restoration. Gauden said in 1661 that he had written it, and
examination of his claims is generally admitted to have confirmed
them. See H.J. Todd's _Letter concerning the Author_, 1825, and
_Gauden the Author, further shewn_, 1829; and C.E. Doble's four
letters in _The Academy_, May 12-June 30, 1883.
Carlyle had no doubt that Charles was not the author. 'My reading
progresses with or without fixed hope. I struggled through the
"Eikon Basilike" yesterday; one of the paltriest pieces of vapid,
shovel-hatted, clear-starched, immaculate falsity and cant I have ever
read. It is to me an amazement how any mortal could ever have taken
that for a genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced
Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such a set
of meditations. It got Parson Gauden a bishopric.'--Letter of November
26, 1840 (Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_, 1884, vol. i, p. 199).
Page 57, l. 4. Thomas Herbert (1606-82), made a baronet in 1660.
Appointed by Parliament in 1647 to attend the King, he was latterly
his sole attendant, and accompanied him with Juxon to the scaffold.
His _Threnodia Carolina_, reminiscences of Charles's captivity, was
published in 1702 under the title, _Memoirs of the Two last Years of
the Reign of that unparalleled Prince, of ever Blessed Memory, King
Charles I_. It was 'printed for the first time from the original MS.'
(now in private possession), but in modernized spelling, in Allan
Fea's _Memoirs of the Martyr King_, 1905, pp. 74-153.
l. 10. Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), bishop of Salisbury, 1689, the
historian whose characters are given in the later part of this volume.
His _Mémoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William Dukes of
Hamilton_, 1677, his first historical work, appeared while Warwick was
writing his _Mémoires of Charles_. It attracted great attention, as
its account of recent events was furnished with authentic documents.
'It was the first political biography of the modern type, combining
a narrative of a man's life with a selection from his letters' (C.H.
Firth, introduction to Clarke and Foxcroft's _Life of Burnet_, 1907,
p. xiii).
l. 15. _affliction gives understanding_. Compare Proverbs 29. 15,
and Ecclesiasticus 4. 17 and 34. 9; the exact words are not in the
Authorised Version.
l. 30. Robert Sanderson (1587-1663), Regius Professor of Divinity at
Oxford, 1642, Bishop of Lincoln, 1660. Izaak Walton wrote his _Life_,
1678.
Page 58, l. 20. Sir Dudley Carleton (1573-1632), created Baron
Carleton, 1626, and Viscount Dorchester, 1628; Secretary of State,
1628.
l. 21. Lord Falkland, see pp. 71-97; Secretary of State, 1642.
Page 59, ll. 11-13. Plutarch, Life of Alexander the Great; opening
sentences, roughly paraphrased.
Page 60, l. 20. _Venient Romani_, St. John, xi. 48. See _The
Archbishop of Canterbury's Speech or His Funerall Sermon, Preacht by
himself on the Scaffold on Tower-Hill, on Friday the 10. of Ianuary,
1644. London_, 1644, p. 10: 'I but perhaps a great clamour there is,
that I would have brought in Popery, I shall answer that more fully
by and by, in the meane time, you know what the Pharisees said against
Christ himself, in the eleventh of _Iohn_, _If we let him alone,
all men will beleeve on him_, Et venient Romani, _and the Romanes
will come and take away both our place and the Nation_. Here was a
causelesse cry against Christ that the Romans would come, and see how
just the Iudgement of God was, they crucified Christ for feare least
the Romans should come, and his death was that that brought in the
Romans upon them, God punishing them with that which they most feared:
and I pray God this clamour of _veniunt Romani_, (of which I have
given to my knowledge no just cause) helpe not to bring him in; for
the Pope never had such a Harvest in England since the Reformation, as
he hath now upon the Sects and divisions that are amongst us.'
ll. 22-30. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) brought out his _De Jure Belli ac
Pacis Libri Tres_ at Paris in 1625. Towards the end of the dedication
to Louis XIII Grotius says: 'Pertæsos discordiarum animos excitat in
hanc spem recens contracta inter te & sapientissimum pacisque illius
sanctæ amantissimum Magnæ Britanniæ Regem amicitia & auspicatissimo
Sororis tuæ matrimonio federata.'
17.
Clarendon, MS. History, p. 59; _History_, Bk. III, ed. 1702, vol. i,
pp. 203-4; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 340-2.
Page 62, l. 23. Thomas Savile (1590-1658), created Viscount Savile,
1628, Privy Councillor, 1640, Controller and then Treasurer of the
Household. 'He was', says Clarendon, 'a man of an ambitious and
restless nature, of parts and wit enough, but in his disposition and
inclination so false that he could never be believed or depended upon.
His particular malice to the earl of Strafford, which he had sucked in
with his milk, (there having always been an immortal feud between the
families, and the earl had shrewdly overborne his father), had engaged
him with all persons who were willing, and like to be able, to do him
mischieve' (_History_, Bk. VI, ed. Macray, vol. ii, p. 534).
Page 63, l. 25. _S'r Harry Vane_. See p. 152, ll. 9 ff.
l. 26. _Plutarch recordes_, Life of Sylla, last sentence.
18.
Mémoires of the reigne of King Charles I, 1701, pp. 109-13.
Page 65, l. 21. Warwick was member for Radnor in the Long Parliament
from 1640 to 1644. The Bill of Attainder passed the Commons on April
21, 1641, by 204 votes to 59 (Clarendon, ed. Macray, vol. i, p. 306;
Rushworth, _Historical Collections_, third part, vol. i, 1692, p.
225). The names of the minority were posted up at Westminster, under
the heading 'These are Straffordians, Betrayers of their Country'
(Rushworth, _id._, pp. 248-9). There are 56 names, and 'Mr. Warwick'
is one of them.
19.
Clarendon, MS. History, p. 398; _History_, Bk. VI, ed. 1703, vol. ii,
pp. 115-6; ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 477-8.
Page 68, l. 5. _Et velut æquali_. The source of this quotation is not
yet found.
l. 15. _the Standard was sett up_, at Nottingham, on August 22, 1642.
l. 17. Robert Greville (1608-43), second Baron Brooke, cousin of Sir
Fulke Greville, first Baron (p. 23, l. 4). See Clarendon, ed. Macray,
vol. ii, pp. 474-5.
l. 27. _all his Children_. Compare Warwick's account of 'that most
noble and stout Lord, the Earle of Northampton', _Mémoires_, pp.
255-7: 'This may be said of him, that he faithfully served his Master,
living and dead; for he left six eminent sons, who were all heirs
of his courage, loyalty, and virtue; whereof the eldest was not then
twenty.'
20.
Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 477-8; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol.
ii, pp. 269-70; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 177-8.
Carnarvon's character has much in common with Northampton's. Though
separated in the _History_, they are here placed together as companion
portraits of two young Royalist leaders who fell early in the Civil
War.
Page 70, l. 21. Dorchester and Weymouth surrendered to Carnarvon on
August 2 and 5, 1643. They were granted fair conditions, but on the
arrival of the army of Prince Maurice care was not taken 'to observe
those articles which had been made upon the surrender of the towns;
which the earl of Carnarvon (who was full of honour and justice upon
all contracts) took so ill that he quitted the command he had with
those forces, and returned to the King before Gloster' (Clarendon,
vol. iii, p. 158).
21.
Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 478-81; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol.
ii, pp. 270-7; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 178-90.
Clarendon wrote two characters of Falkland, the one in 1647 in the
'History' and the other in 1668 in the 'Life'. Both are long, and both
are distinguished by sustained favour of affection and admiration as
well as by wealth of detail. He was aware that the earlier character
was out of scale in a history, but he would not condense it. He even
thought of working it up into a book by itself, wherein he would
follow the example of Tacitus who wrote the _Agricola_ before the
_Annals_ and _Histories_. He corresponded about it with John Earle
(see No. 50). From two of the letters the following extracts are
taken:
'I would desire you (at your leisure) to send me that discourse
of your own which you read to me at Dartmouth in the end of your
contemplations upon the Proverbs, in memory of my Lord Falkland; of
whom in its place I intend to speak largely, conceiving it to be so
far from an indecorum, that the preservation of the fame and merit of
persons, and deriving the same to posterity, is no less the business
of history, than the truth of things. And if you are not of another
opinion, you cannot in justice deny me this assistance' (March 16,
1646-7: _State Papers_, 1773, vol. ii, p. 350).
'I told you long since, that when I came to speak of that unhappy
battle of Newbury, I would enlarge upon the memory of our dear friend
that perished there; to which I conceive myself obliged, not more by
the rights of friendship, than of history, which ought to transmit the
virtue of excellent persons to posterity; and therefore I am careful
to do justice to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which
side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden
himself. I am now past that point; and being quickened your most
elegant and political commemoration of him, and from hints there,
thinking it necessary to say somewhat for his vindication in such
particulars as may possibly have made impression in good men, it may
be I have insisted longer upon the argument than may be agreeable to
the rules to be observed in such a work; though it be not much longer
than Livy is in recollecting the virtues of one of the Scipios after
his death. I wish it were with you, that you might read it; for if
you thought it unproportionable for the place where it is, I could
be willingly diverted to make it a piece by itself, and inlarge it
into the whole size of his life; and that way it would be sooner
communicated to the world. And you know Tacitus published the life
of Julius Agricola, before either of his annals or his history. I
am contented you should laugh at me for a fop in talking of Livy or
Tacitus; when all I can hope for is to side Hollingshead, and Stow, or
(because he is a poor Knight too, and worse than either of them) Sir
Richard Baker' (December 14, 1647, _id._ p. 386).
Page 71, l. 22. _Turpe mori_. Lucan, ix. 108.
l. 26. His mother's father, Sir Lawrence Tanfield, Chief Baron of the
Exchequer. He died in May 1625. See p. 87, ll. 21 ff.
Page 72, l. 3. _His education_. See p. 87, ll. 6-13. His father, Henry
Carey, first Viscount, was Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1622 to 1629,
when he was recalled. He died in 1633.
l. 30. _his owne house_, at Great Tew, 16 miles NW. of Oxford;
inherited from Sir Lawrence Tanfield. The house was demolished in
1790, but the gardens remain.
PAGE 74, l. 14. _two large discources_. See p. 94, ll. 10-15.
Falkland's _Of the Infallibilitie of the Church of Rome ... Now
first published from a Copy of his owne hand_ had appeared at Oxford
in 1645, two years before Clarendon wrote this passage. It is a
short pamphlet of eighteen quarto pages. It had been circulated in
manuscript during his lifetime, and he had written a _Reply_ to an
_Answer_ to it. The second 'large discource' may be this _Reply_. Or
it may be his _Answer to a Letter of Mr. Mountague, justifying his
change of Religion, being dispersed in many Copies_. Both of these
were first published, along with the _Infallibilitie_, in 1651, under
the editorship of Dr. Thomas Triplet, tutor of the third Viscount,
to whom the volume is dedicated. The dedication is in effect a
character of Falkland, and dwells in particular on his great virtue
of friendship. A passage in it recalls Clarendon. 'And your blessed
Mother', says Triplet, 'were she now alive, would say, she had the
best of Friends before the best of Husbands. This was it that made
_Tew_ so valued a Mansion to us: For as when we went from _Oxford_
thither, we found our selves never out of the Universitie: So we
thought our selves never absent from our own beloved home'.
l. 25. He was Member for Newport in the Isle of Wight in The Short
Parliament, and again in The Long Parliament.
Page 75, l. 5. His father was Controller of the Household before his
appointment as Lord Deputy of Ireland. Cf. p. 91, ll. 3, 4.
l. 18. _L'd Finch_, Sir John Finch (1584-1660), Speaker, Chief Justice
of the Common Pleas, and Lord Keeper, created Baron Finch, 1640. He
was impeached in 1640 and fled to Holland. 'The Lord Falkland took
notice of the business of ship-money, and very sharply mentioned the
lord Finch as the principal promoter of it, and that, being then
a sworn judge of the law, he had not only given his own judgement
against law, but been the solicitor to corrupt all the other judges to
concur with him in their opinion; and concluded that no man ought to
be more severely prosecuted than he' (Clarendon, vol. i, p. 230).
Page 77, l. 26. _haud semper_, Tacitus, _Agricola_, ix.
Page 78, l. 17. _in republica Platonis_, Cicero, _Epis. ad Atticum_,
ii. 1.
l. 20. _it_, i.e. his avoiding them.
l. 30. Sir Harry Vane, the elder, was dismissed from the Secretaryship
of State in November 1641. In an earlier section of the _History_
(vol. i, p. 458) Clarendon claims responsibility for Falkland's
acceptance of the Secretaryship: 'It was a very difficult task to
Mr. Hyde, who had most credit with him, to persuade him to submit to
this purpose of the King cheerfully, and with a just sense of the
obligation, by promising that in those parts of the office which
required most drudgery he would help him the best he could, and would
quickly inform him of all the necessary forms. But, above all, he
prevailed with him by enforcing the ill consequence of his refusal',
&c.
Page 80, l. 19. _in tanto viro_, Tacitus, _Agricola_, ix.
l. 20. _Some sharpe expressions_. See the quotation by Fuller, p.
105, ll. 14, 15. Clarendon refers to Falkland's speech 'Concerning
Episcopacy' in the debate on the bill for depriving the bishops of
their votes, introduced on March 30, 1641: 'The truth is, Master
Speaker, that as some ill Ministers in our state first tooke
away our mony from us, and after indeavoured to make our mony
not worth the taking, by turning it into brasse by a kind of
_Antiphilosophers-stone_: so these men used us in the point of
preaching, first depressing it to their power, and next labouring
to make it such, as the harme had not beene much if it had beene
depressed, the most frequent subjects even in the most sacred
auditories, being the _Jus divinum_ of Bishops and tithes, the
sacrednesse of the clergie, the sacriledge of impropriations,
the demolishing of puritanisme and propriety, the building of the
prerogative at _Pauls_, the introduction of such doctrines, as,
admitting them true, the truth would not recompence the scandall; or
of such as were so far false, that, as Sir _Thomas More_ sayes of the
Casuists, their businesse was not to keepe men from sinning, but to
enforme them _Quam prope ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accedere_:
so it seemed their worke was to try how much of a Papist might bee
brought in without Popery, and to destroy as much as they could of the
Gospell, without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by
the Law.'--_Speeches and Passages of This Great and Happy Parliament:
From the third of November, 1640 to this instant June, 1641_, p. 190.
The speech is reprinted in Lady Theresa Lewis's _Lives of the Friends
of Clarendon_, 1852, vol. i, pp. 53-62.
Page 82, ll. 23-6. See p. 90, ll. 6-13.
Page 83, l. 2. Falkland's participation in 'the Northern Expedition
against the Scots', 1639, was the subject of a eulogistic poem by
Cowley:
Great is thy _Charge_, O _North_; be wise and just,
_England_ commits her _Falkland_ to thy trust;
Return him safe: _Learning_ would rather choose
Her _Bodley_, or her _Vatican_ to loose.
All things that are but _writ_ or _printed_ there,
In his unbounded Breast _engraven_ are, &c.
It was the occasion also of Waller's 'To my Lord of Falkland'.
l. 14. _et in luctu_, Tacitus, _Agricola_, xxix.
l. 15. _the furious resolution_, passed on November 24, 1642, after
the battle at Brentford: see Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 395-9.
Page 84, l. 9. _adversus malos_, Tacitus, _Agricola_, xxii.
ll. 11-28. The date of this incident is uncertain. Professor Firth
believes it to have happened when the House resolved that Colonel
Goring 'deserved very well of the Commonwealth, and of this House',
for his discovery of the army plot, June 9, 1641 (_Journals of the
House of Commons_, vol. ii, p. 172).
Page 85, l. 18. _the leaguer before Gloster_. The siege of Gloucester
was raised by the Earl of Essex on September 8, 1643. Clarendon
had described it (vol. iii, pp. 167 ff.) just before he came to the
account of Falkland.
Page 86, l. 1. _the battell_, i.e. of Newbury, September 20, 1643. How
Falkland met his death is told in Byron's narrative of the fight: 'My
Lord of Falkland did me the honour to ride in my troop this day, and I
would needs go along with him, the enemy had beat our foot out of the
close, and was drawne up near the hedge; I went to view, and as I was
giving orders for making the gap wide enough, my horse was shott in
the throat with a musket bullet and his bit broken in his mouth so
that I was forced to call for another horse, in the meanwhile my Lord
Falkland (more gallantly than advisedly) spurred his horse through the
gapp, where both he and his horse were immediately killed.' See Walter
Money, _The Battles of Newbury_, 1884, p. 52; also p. 93.
A passage in Whitelocke's _Memorials_, ed. 1682, p. 70, shows that
he had a presentiment of his death: 'The Lord _Falkland_, Secretary
of State, in the morning of the fight, called for a clean shirt, and
being asked the reason of it, answered, _that if he were slain in the
Battle, they should not find, his body in foul Linnen_. Being diswaded
by his friends to goe into the fight, as having no call to it, and
being no Military Officer, he said _he was weary of the times, and
foresaw much misery to his own Countrey, and did beleive be should be
out of it ere night_, and could not be perswaded to the contrary, but
would enter into the battle, and was there slain.'
22.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 51-4; _Life_, ed. 1759, pp. 19-23.
This is Falkland in his younger days, amid the hospitable pleasures of
Tew, before he was overwhelmed in politics and war.
Page 86, l. 20. _he_, i.e. Clarendon.
Page 88, l. 2. _the two most pleasant places_, Great Tew (see p. 72,
l. 30) and Burford, where Falkland was born. He sold Burford in 1634
to William Lenthall, the Speaker of the Long Parliament: see p. 91, l.
5.
Page 89, l. 2. He married Lettice, daughter of Sir Richard Morrison
of Tooley Park, Leicestershire. His friendship with her brother Henry
is celebrated in an ode by Ben Jonson, 'To the immortall memorie, and
friendship of that noble paire, Sir Lucius Cary, and Sir H. Morison'
(_Under-woods_, 1640, p. 232).
Page 91, ll. 17-20. So in the MS. The syntax is confused, but the
sense is clear.
Page 92, ll. 21, 22. Gilbert Sheldon (1598-1677), Archbishop of
Canterbury, 1663; Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and builder
of the Sheldonian Theatre there.
George Morley (1597-1684), Bishop of Worcester, 1660.
Henry Hammond (1605-60), chaplain to Charles I.
Clarendon has given short characters of Sheldon and Morley in his
_Life_. For his characters of Earle and Chillingworth, see Nos. 50 and
52.
Page 94, l. 11. See note p. 74, l. 14.
Page 95, l. 3. Cf. p. 78, l. 17.
l. 17. It is notable that Clarendon nowhere suggests that Falkland was
also a poet. Cowley gives his verses the highest praise in his address
to him on the Northern Expedition (see p. 83, l. 2, note); and they
won him a place in Suckling's _Sessions of the Poets_:
He was of late so gone with Divinity
That he had almost forgot his Poetry,
Though to say the truth (and _Apollo_ did know it)
He might have been both his Priest and his Poet.
His poems were collected and edited by A.B. Grosart in 1871.
23.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 55; _Life_, ed. 1759, p. 24.
This very pleasing portrait of Godolphin serves as a pendant to the
longer and more elaborate description of his friend. Clarendon wrote
also a shorter character of him in the _History_ (vol. ii, pp. 457-8).
Page 96, l. 2. _so very small a body_. He is the 'little Cid' (i.e.
Sidney) of Suckling's _Sessions of the Poets_.
PAGE 97, l. 1. He was member for Helston from 1628 to 1643.
l. 6. In the character in the _History_ Clarendon says that he left
'the ignominy of his death upon a place which could never otherwise
have had a mention to the world'. The place was Chagford.
24.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 69-70; _History_, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i,
pp. 69-73; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 119-25.
The three characters of Laud here given supplement each other. They
convey the same idea of the man.
Page 97, l. 20. George Abbott (1562-1633), Archbishop of Canterbury,
1611. In the preceding paragraph Clarendon had written an unfavourable
character of him. He 'considered Christian religion no otherwise than
as it abhorred and reviled Popery, and valued those men most who did
that most furiously': 'if men prudently forbore a public reviling
and railing at the hierarchy and ecclesiastical government, let their
opinions and private practice be what it would, they were not only
secure from any inquisition of his, but acceptable to him, and at
least equally preferred by him': his house was 'a sanctuary to the
most eminent of that factious party'. Cf. p. 100, ll. 21-7.
Page 101, l. 2. In the omitted portion Clarendon dealt with the
'Arminianism', as it was then understood in England: 'most of the
popular preachers, who had not looked into the ancient learning, took
Calvin's word for it, and did all they could to propagate his opinions
in those points: they who had studied more, and were better versed
in the antiquities of the Church, the Fathers, the Councils, and the
ecclesiastical histories, with the same heat and passion in preaching
and writing, defended the contrary. But because in the late dispute in
the Dutch churches, those opinions were supported by Jacobus Arminius,
the divinity professor in the university of Leyden in Holland, the
latter men we mentioned were called Arminians, though many of them
had never read a word written by Arminius'. Arminius (the name is the
Latinized form of Harmens or Hermans) died in 1609.
25.
The Church-History of Britain, 1648, Bk. XI, pp. 217-9.
Page 104, l. 15. Canterbury College was founded at Oxford in 1363 by
Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was incorporated in Christ
Church, Wolsey's foundation, and so 'lost its name'; but the name
survives in the Canterbury quadrangle.
Page 105, l. 13. _Lord F._, i.e. Lord Falkland: see p. 80, l. 20 note.
26.
Mémoires of the reigne of King Charles I, 1701, pp. 78-82, 89-93.
Page 107, l. 27. _cleansed it by fire_. Perhaps a reminiscence of
Dryden's _Annus Mirabilis_, 1667, stanza 276:
The daring Flames peep't in, and saw from far
The awful Beauties of the Sacred Quire:
But since it was prophan'd by Civil War,
Heav'n thought it fit to have it purg'd by fire.
l. 29. _too too_, so in the original; perhaps but not certainly a
misprint.
27.
Mémoires, 1701, pp. 93-6.
Page 112, l. 9. _Lord Portland_, Sir Richard Weston: see No. 5.
l. 13. _white staff_, see p. 21, l. 7 note.
28.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 152-3; _History_, Bk. IV, ed. 1702, vol. i,
pp. 332-3; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 563-5.
This is the first of three characters of Hertford in Clarendon's
_History_. The others, in Bk. VI (MS. Life) ed. Macray, ii. 528, and
Bk. VII (MS. History) iii. 128, are supplementary.
Page 114, l. 10. _disobligations_, on account of his secret marriage
with James's cousin, Arabella Stuart, daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl
of Lennox, brother of the Earl of Darnley. She died a prisoner in the
Tower; he escaped to France, but after her death was allowed to return
to England in 1616. He succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Hertford
in 1621. He lived in retirement from the dissolution of Parliament in
March 1629 to 1640, when he was made a Privy Councillor.
Page 115, l. 5. He was appointed Governor to the Prince of Wales in
May 1641, in succession to the Earl of Newcastle. He was then in his
fifty-third year. In the following month he was made a Marquis. See
his life in Lady Theresa Lewis's _Lives of the Friends of Clarendon_,
vol. ii, pp. 436-42.
Page 116, l. 2. _attacque_, an unexpected form of 'attach' at this
time, and perhaps a slip, but 'attack' and 'attach' are ultimately the
same word; cf. Italian _attaccare_. The _New English Dictionary_ gives
an instance in 1666 of 'attach' in the sense of 'attack'.
29.
Clarendon, MS. History, Transcript, vol. iv, pp. 440-2; _History_, Bk.
VIII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 391-3; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 380-3.
The original manuscript of much of Book VIII is lost. The text is
taken from the transcript that was made for the printers.
This is the portrait of a great English nobleman whose tastes
lay in music and poetry and the arts of peace, but was forced by
circumstances into the leadership of the Royalist army in the North.
He showed little military talent, though he was far from devoid
of personal courage; and he escaped from the conflict, weary and
despondent, when other men were content to carry on the unequal
struggle. He modelled himself on the heroes of Romance. The part he
tried to play could not be adjusted to the rude events of the civil
war.
His romantic cast of mind is shown in his challenge to Lord Fairfax to
follow 'the Examples of our Heroick Ancestors, who used not to spend
their time in scratching one another out of holes, but in pitched
Fields determined their Doubts'. Fairfax replied by expressing his
readiness to fight but refusing to follow 'the Rules of _Amadis
de Gaule_, or the Knight of the Sun, which the language of the
Declaration seems to affect in appointing pitch'd battles' (Rushworth,
_Historical Collections_, third part, vol. ii, 1692, pp. 138, 141).
Warwick's short character of Newcastle resembles Clarendon's: 'He was
a Gentleman of grandeur, generosity, loyalty, and steddy and forward
courage; but his edge had too much of the razor in it: for he had
a tincture of a Romantick spirit, and had the misfortune to have
somewhat of the Poet in him; so as he chose Sir William Davenant, an
eminent good Poet, and loyall Gentleman, to be Lieutenant-Generall
of his Ordnance. This inclination of his own and such kind of
witty society (to be modest in the expressions of it) diverted many
counsels, and lost many opportunities; which the nature of that
affair, this great man had now entred into, required' (_Mémoires_, pp.
235-6).
His life by the Duchess of Newcastle--the 'somewhat fantastical, and
original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle', as Charles Lamb calls
her--was published in 1667. The edition by C.H. Firth, 1886, contains
copious historical notes, and an introduction which points out
Newcastle's place as a patron and author.
Page 116, ll. 15-22. Newcastle had been besieged at York. He was
relieved by Prince Rupert, who, against Newcastle's advice, forced on
the disastrous battle of Marston Moor (July 2, 1644) without waiting
for reinforcements. In this battle Newcastle was not in command
but fought at the head of a company of volunteers. The next day he
embarked at Scarborough for the continent, where he remained till the
Restoration.
l. 24. He published two books on horsemanship--_La Méthode et
Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux_, written originally in
English, but printed in French at Antwerp in 1658, and _A New Method
and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses_, 1667. The former was
dedicated to Prince Charles, whom, as Governor, he had taught to
ride. On his reputation as a horseman, see C.H. Firth, _op. cit._, pp.
xx-xxii.
Page 117, l. 20. He was Governor of the Prince from 1638 to 1641: cf.
note on p. 115, l. 5.
l. 29. Newcastle-upon-Tyne (from which he took his title) was
'speedily and dexterously' secured for the King at the end of June
1642 'by his lordship's great interest in those parts, the
ready compliance of the best of the gentry, and the general good
inclinations of the place' (Clarendon, vol. ii, p. 227).
Page 118, l. 17. Henry Clifford (1591-1643) fifth Earl of Cumberland.
He had commanded the Royalist forces in Yorkshire, but was 'in his
nature inactive, and utterly inexperienced'. He willingly gave up
the command (Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 282, 464-5). He died shortly
afterwards.
l. 28. _this last_, Marston Moor.
Page 119, l. 8. _unacquainted with War_. Clarendon expressed himself
privately on this point much more emphatically than the nature of his
_History_ would allow: 'you will find the Marquis of Newcastle a very
lamentable man and as fit to be a General as a Bishop.' (Letter to
Sir Edward Nicholas, dated Madrid, June 4, 1650: _State Papers_, 1786,
vol. iii, p. 20.)
l. 10. James King (1589?-1652?), created Baron Eythin and Kerrey in
the Scottish peerage in 1643. He had been a general in the army of the
King of Sweden, and returned to this country in 1640. He left it with
Newcastle after Marston Moor. He entirely disapproved of Rupert's
plans for the battle; his comment, as reported by Clarendon, was 'By
God, sir, it is very fyne in the paper, but ther is no such thinge in
the Feilds' (vol. iii, p. 376).
30.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 136; _History_, Bk. IV, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp.
270-1; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 461-3.
The references to Digby in various parts of the _History_ show the
interest--sometimes an amused interest--that Clarendon took in his
strange and erratic character. 'The temper and composition of his mind
was so admirable, that he was always more pleased and delighted that
he had advanced so far, which he imputed to his virtue and conduct,
than broken or dejected that his success was not answerable, which
he still charged upon second causes, for which he could not be
accountable' (vol. iv, p. 122). 'He was a person of so rare a
composition by nature and by art, (for nature alone could never have
reached to it,) that he was so far from being ever dismayed by any
misfortune, (and greater variety of misfortunes never befell any man,)
that he quickly recollected himself so vigorously, that he did really
believe his condition to be improved by that ill accident' (_id._, p.
175). But the interest is shown above all by the long study of Digby
that he wrote at Montpelier in 1669. It was first printed in his
_State Papers_, 1786, vol. iii, supplement, pp. li-lxxiv. The
manuscript--a transcript revised by Clarendon--is in the Bodleian
Library, Clarendon MS. 122, pp. 1-48.
Page 120, l. 8. _the other three_, Sir John Culpeper, or Colepeper;
Lord Falkland; and Clarendon.
Page 121, l. 2. _sharpe reprehension_. 'He was committed to the Fleet
in June 1634, but released in July, for striking Mr. Crofts in Spring
Garden, within the precincts of the Court. _Cal. Dom. State. Papers_,
1634-5 (1864), pp. 81, 129'--Macray, vol. i, p. 461.
Shaftesbury gives a brief sketch of him at this time in his
fragmentary autobiography: 'The Earl of Bristoll was retired from all
business and lived privately to himself; but his son the Lord Digby,
a very handsome young man of great courage and learning and of a quick
wit, began to show himself to the world and gave great expectations
of himself, he being justly admired by all, and only gave himself
disadvantage with a pedantic stiffness and affectation he had
contracted.'
l. 19. As Baron Digby, during the lifetime of his father; June 9,
1641.
Page 123, l. 5. _a very unhappy councell_, the impeachment and
attempted 'Arrest of the Five Members', January 3 and 4, 1642. Compare
Clarendon, vol. i, p. 485: 'And all this was done without the least
communication with any body but the Lord Digby, who advised it.'
31.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 389, and MS. History, p. 25 (or 597);
_History_, Bk. XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 210-11; ed. Macray, vol.
iv, pp. 510-11.
This admirable character was not all written at the same time. The
first sentence is from Clarendon's Life, and the remainder from the
History, where the date, '21 Nov. 1671', is appended. 123, l. 15.
_Crumwells owne character_,--in the debate in Parliament on carrying
out the sentence of death, March 8, 1649. Clarendon had briefly
described Cromwell's speech: 'Cromwell, who had known him very well,
spake so much good of him, and professed to have so much kindness
and respect for him, that all men thought he was now safe, when he
concluded, that his affection to the public so much weighed down his
private friendship, that he could not but tell them, that the question
was now, whether they would preserve the most bitter and the most
implacable enemy they had' (vol. iv, p. 506).
l. 22. He married in November 1626, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Charles
Morrison, of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, and granddaughter of the first
Viscount Campden. Their daughter Theodosia was the wife of the second
Earl of Clarendon.
Page 124, l. 13. _an indignity_, probably a reference to Lord Hopton's
command of the army in the west; see vol. iv, p. 131.
32.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 273; _History_, Bk. VIII, ed. 1703, vol. ii,
pp. 427-8; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 443-5.
The four generals in this group are described on various occasions in
the _History_. In this passage Clarendon sums up shortly what he says
elsewhere, and presents a parallel somewhat in the manner of Plutarch.
Page 125, l. 23. Clarendon has a great passage in Book VII (vol. iii,
pp. 224-6) on the value of Councils, even when the experience and
wisdom of the councillors individually may not promise the right
decisions. The passage is suggested by, and immediately follows, a
short character of Prince Rupert.
Page 126, ll. 15, 16. Clarendon refers to the retreat of the
Parliamentary Army at Lostwithiel, on August 31, 1644, when Essex
embarked the foot at Fowey and escaped by sea, and Sir William Balfour
broke away with the horse. In describing it, Clarendon says that 'the
notice and orders came to Goring when he was in one of his jovial
exercises; which he received with mirth, and slighting those who sent
them, as men who took alarms too warmly; and he continued his delights
till all the enemy's horse were passed through his quarters, nor did
then pursue them in any time' (vol. iii, p. 403; cf. p. 391). But
Goring's horse was not so posted as to be able to check Balfour's.
See the article on Goring by C.H. Firth in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ and S.R. Gardiner's _Civil War_, 1893, vol. ii, pp. 13-17.
Clarendon was misinformed; yet this error in detail does not impair
the truth of the portrait.
33.
Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 447-8; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1704, vol.
ii, pp. 204-6; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 61-4.
The studied detachment that Clarendon tried to cultivate when writing
about his political enemies is nowhere shown better than in the
character of Hampden. 'I am careful to do justice', he claimed, 'to
every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as
you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden himself' (see No.
21, note). The absence of all enthusiasm makes the description of
Hampden's merits the more telling. But there is a tail with a sting in
it.
The last sentence, it must be admitted, is not of a piece with
the rest of the character. There was some excuse for doubting its
authenticity. But doubts gave place to definite statements that it
had been interpolated by the Oxford editors when seeing the
_History_ through the press. Edmund Smith, the author of _Phædra and
Hippolytus_, started the story that while he was resident in Christ
Church he was 'employ'd to interpolate and alter the Original', and
specially mentioned this sentence as having been 'foisted in'; and
the story was given a prominent place by Oldmixon in his _History of
England, during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart_ (see _Letters
of Thomas Burnat to George Duckett_, ed. Nichol Smith, 1914, p. xx).
A controversy ensued, the final contribution to which is John Burton's
_Genuineness of L'd Clarendon's History Vindicated_, 1744. Once the
original manuscript was accessible, all doubt was removed. Every word
of the sentence is there to be found in Clarendon's hand. But it is
written along the margin, to take the place of a deleted sentence, and
is evidently later than the rest of the character. This accounts for
the difference in tone.
Page 129, ll. 22 ff. Compare Warwick, _Mémoires_, p. 240: 'He was of
a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtillest,
speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity, when a question
was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over
to it, by adding some equivocall or sly word, which would enervate the
meaning of it, as first put.'
At the beginning of this short character of Hampden, Warwick says that
'his blood in its temper was acrimonious, as the scurfe commonly on
his face shewed'.
Page 131, l. 4. _this that was at Oxforde_, i.e. the overture,
February and March 1643: Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 497 ff.
ll. 24-6. _Erat illi_, &c. Cicero, _Orat. in Catilinam_ iii. 7.
'Cinna' should be 'Catiline'.
34.
Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 525-7; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol.
ii, pp. 353-5; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 321-4.
The character of Pym does not show the same detachment as the
character of Hampden. Clarendon has not rejected unauthenticated
Royalist rumour.
Page 132, ll. 7-9. This rumour occasioned the publication of an
official narrative of his disease and death, 'attested under the Hands
of his Physicians, Chyrurgions, and Apothecary', from which it appears
that he died of an intestinal abscess. See John Forster's _John Pym_
('Lives of Eminent British Statesmen', vol. iii), pp. 409-11.
l. 19. He was member for Tavistock from 1624.
Page 133, l. 26. Oliver St. John (1603-42), Solicitor-General,
mortally wounded at Edgehill.
ll. 29, 30. Cf. p. 129, ll. 15-18.
Page 134, l. 3. Francis Russell (1593-1641), fourth Earl of Bedford.
'This lord was the greatest person of interest in all the popular
party, being of the best estate and best understanding of the whole
pack, and therefore most like to govern the rest; he was besides of
great civility, and of much more good-nature than any of the others.
And therefore the King, resolving to do his business with that party
by him, resolved to make him Lord High Treasurer of England, in the
place of the Bishop of London, who was as willing to lay down the
office as any body was to take it up; and, to gratify him the more, at
his desire intended to make Mr. Pimm Chancellor of the Exchequer, as
he had done Mr. St. John his Solicitor-General' (Clarendon, vol. i,
p. 333). The plan was frustrated by Bedford's death in 1641. The
Chancellorship of the Exchequer was bestowed on Culpeper (_id._, p.
457).
ll. 27 ff. The authority for this story is the _Mercurius Academicus_
for February 3, 1645-6 (pp. 74-5), a journal of the Court party
published at Oxford (hence the title), and the successor of the
_Mercurius Aulicus_. The Irishman is there reported to have made this
confession on the scaffold.
Page 135, ll. 25-8. _The last Summer_, i.e. before Pym's death, 1643.
See Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 116, 135, 141.
Page 136, ll. 7-10. He died on December 8, 1643, and was buried on
December 13 in Westminster Abbey, whence his body was ejected at the
Restoration.
35.
Clarendon, MS. History, Bk. X, p. 24 (or 570); _History_, ed. 1704,
vol. iii, pp. 84-5; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 305-7.
The two characters of Cromwell by Clarendon were written about the
same time. Though the first is from the manuscript of the History,
it belongs to a section that was added in 1671, when the matter in
the original History was combined with the matter in the Life. It
describes Cromwell as Clarendon remembered him before he had risen
to his full power. He was then in Clarendon's eyes preeminently a
dissembler--'the greatest dissembler living'. The other character
views him in the light of his complete achievement. It represents
him, with all his wickedness, as a man of 'great parts of courage and
industry and judgement'. He is a 'bad man', but a 'brave, bad man',
to whose success, remarkable talents, and even some virtues, must have
contributed. The recognition of his greatness was unwilling; it was
all the more sincere.
'Crumwell' is Clarendon's regular spelling.
Page 136, l. 22. Hampden's mother, Elizabeth Cromwell, was the sister
of Cromwell's father.
Page 138, l. 18. _the Modell_, i.e. the New Model Army, raised in the
Spring of 1645. See C.H. Firth's _Cromwell's Army_, 1902, ch. iii.
l. 21. _chaunged a Generall_, the Earl of Essex. See No. 40.
36.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 549-50; _History_, Bk. XV, ed. 1704, vol.
iii, pp. 505-6, 509; ed. Macray, vol. vi, pp. 91-2, 97.
Page 139, ll. 3, 4. _quos vituperare_, Cicero, _Pro Fonteio_, xvii.
39 'Is igitur vir, quem ne inimicus quidem satis in appellando
significare poterat, nisi ante laudasset.'
ll. 19, 20. _Ausum eum_, Velleius Paterculus, ii. 24.
Page 140, ll. 9-12. Machiavelli, _The Prince_, ch. vii.
ll. 17-22. Editorial taste in 1704 transformed this sentence thus:
'In a word, as he was guilty of many Crimes against which Damnation
is denounced, and for which Hell-fire is prepared, so he had some good
Qualities which have caused the Memory of some Men in all Ages to be
celebrated; and he will be look'd upon by Posterity as a brave wicked
Man.'
37.
Mémoires Of the reigne of King Charles I, 1701, pp. 247-8.
Page 141, l. 17. _a servant of Mr. Prynn's_, John Lilburne (1614-57).
But it is doubtful if he was Prynne's servant; see the article in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. Lilburne's petition was presented
by Cromwell on November 9, 1640, and referred to a Committee; and
on May 4, 1641, the House resolved 'That the Sentence of the
Star-Chamber, given against John Lilborne, is illegal, and against the
Liberty of the Subject; and also, bloody, wicked, cruel, barbarous,
and tyrannical' (_Journals of the House of Commons_, vol. ii, pp. 24,
134).
ll. 29, 30. Warwick was imprisoned on suspicion of plotting against
the Protector's Government in 1655.
38.
A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq.; Edited by
Thomas Birch, 1742, vol. i, p. 766.
This passage is from a letter written to 'John Winthrop, esq; governor
of the colony of Connecticut in New England', and dated 'Westminster,
March 24, 1659'.
Maidston was Cromwell's servant.
39.
Reliquiæ Baxterianæ: or, Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of The most
Memorable Passages of his Life and Times. Faithfully Publish'd from
his own Original Manuscript, By Matthew Sylvester. London: MDCXCVI.
(Lib. I, Part I, pp. 98-100.)
The interest of this character lies largely in its Presbyterian point
of view. It is a carefully balanced estimate by one who had been a
chaplain in the Parliamentary army, but opposed Cromwell when, after
the fall of Presbyterianism, he assumed the supreme power.
Page 144, ll. 19-24. See the article by C.H. Firth on 'The Raising of
the Ironsides' in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
1899, vol. xiii, and its sequel, 'The Later History of the Ironsides',
1901, vol. xv; and the articles on John Desborough (who married
Cromwell's sister) and James Berry in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_. 'Who Captain Ayres was it is difficult to say ... He left
the regiment about June 1644, and his troop was given to James Berry
... the captain-lieutenant of Cromwell's own troop'. (R.H.S. Trans.,
vol. xiii, pp. 29, 30). Berry subsequently became one of Cromwell's
major-generals. His character is briefly sketched by Baxter, who
calls him 'my old Bosom Friend', _Reliquiæ_, 1696, p. 57. For Captain
William Evanson, see R.H.S. Trans., vol. xv, pp. 22-3.
Page 146, l. 12. A passage from Bacon's essay 'Of Faction' (No. 51)
is quoted in the margin in the edition of 1696. 'Fraction' in l. 12 is
probably a misprint for 'Faction'.
Page 148, ll. 7-10. The concluding sentence of the essay 'Of
Simulation and Dissimulation'. Brackets were often used at this time
to mark a quotation.
40.
Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696, Lib. I, Part I, p. 48.
Much the same opinion of Fairfax was held by Sir Philip Warwick and
Clarendon. Warwick says he was 'a man of a military genius, undaunted
courage and presence of mind in the field both in action and danger,
but of a very common understanding in all other affairs, and of a
worse elocution; and so a most fit tool for Mr. Cromwel to work with'
(_Mémoires_, p. 246). Clarendon alludes to him as one 'who had no
eyes, and so would be willinge to be ledd' (p. 138, l. 24). But Milton
saw him in a different light when he addressed to him the sonnet on
his capture of Colchester in August 1648:
_Fairfax_, whose name in armes through Europe rings
Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise,...
Thy firm unshak'n vertue ever brings
Victory home,...
O yet a nobler task awaites thy hand;
For what can Warr, but endless warr still breed,
Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed,
And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand
Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed
While Avarice, & Rapine share the land.
Fairfax's military capacity is certain, and his private virtues are
unquestioned. Writing in 1648, Milton credited him with the power to
settle the affairs of the nation. But Fairfax was not a politician. He
broke with Cromwell over the execution of the king, and in July 1650
retired into private life. Baxter, Warwick, and Clarendon all wrote
of him at a distance of time that showed his merits and limitations in
truer perspective.
Milton addressed him again when singing the praises of Bradshaw and
Cromwell and other Parliamentary leaders in his _Pro Populo Anglicano
Defensio Secunda_, 1654. As a specimen of a contemporary Latin
character, and a character by Milton, the passage is now quoted in
full:
'Sed neque te fas est præterire, _Fairfaxi_, in quo cum summa
fortitudine summam modestiam, summam vitæ sanctitatem, & natura &
divinus favor conjunxit: Tu harum in partem laudum evocandus tuo jure
ac merito es; quanquam in illo nunc tuo secessu, quantus olim Literni
Africanus ille Scipio, abdis te quoad potes; nec hostem solum, sed
ambitionem, & quæ præstantissimum quemque mortalium vincit, gloriam
quoque vicisti; tuisque virtutibus & præclare factis, jucundissimum &
gloriosissimum per otium frueris, quod est laborum omnium & humanarum
actionum vel maximarum finis; qualique otio cum antiqui Heroes, post
bella & decora tuis haud majora, fruerentur, qui eos laudare conati
sunt poetæ, desperabant se posse alia ratione id quale esset digne
describere, nisi eos fabularentur, coelo receptos, deorum epulis
accumbere. Verum te sive valetudo, quod maxime crediderim, sive
quid aliud retraxit, persuasissimum hoc habeo, nihil te a rationibus
reipublicæ divellere potuisse, nisi vidisses quantum libertatis
conservatorem, quam firmum atque fidum Anglicanæ rei columen ac
munimentum in successore tuo relinqueres' (ed. 1654, pp. 147-8).
Page 149, l. 9. The Self-denying Ordinance, discharging members of
Parliament from all offices, civil and military, passed both Houses on
April 3, 1645.
l. 18. He succeeded his father as third Lord Fairfax in 1648.
l. 21. See p. 118, ll. 8 ff.
41.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 103; _History_, Bk. III, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp.
148-9; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 247-9.
Baxter has an account of Vane in his Autobiography: 'He was the
Principal Man that drove on the Parliament to go too high, and act
too vehemently against the King: Being of very ready Parts, and very
great Subtilty, and unwearied Industry, he laboured, and not without
Success, to win others in Parliament, City and Country to his Way.
When the Earl of _Strafford_ was accused, he got a Paper out of his
Father's Cabinet (who was Secretary of State) which was the chief
Means of his Condemnation: To most of our Changes he was that _within_
the House, which _Cromwell_ was _without_. His great Zeal to drive
all into War, and to the highest, and to cherish the Sectaries, and
especially in the Army, made him above all Men to be valued by that
Party ... When Cromwell had served himself by him as his surest
Friend, as long as he could; and gone as far with him as their way lay
together, (_Vane_ being for a Fanatick Democracie, and _Cromwell_ for
Monarchy) at last there was no Remedy but they must part; and when
_Cromwell_ cast out the Rump (as disdainfully as Men do Excrements)
he called _Vane_ a Jugler' (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ_, Lib. I, Part I, p.
75). This account occurs in Baxter's description of the sectaries who
were named after him 'Vanists'.
Clarendon and Baxter both lay stress on the element of the fanatic
in Vane's nature; and in a later section of the _History_ Clarendon
speaks of it emphatically: ... 'Vane being a man not to be described
by any character of religion; in which he had swallowed some of the
fancies and extravagances of every sect or faction, and was become
(which cannot be expressed by any other language than was peculiar to
that time) _a man above ordinances_, unlimited and unrestrained by any
rules or bounds prescribed to other men, by reason of his perfection.
He was a perfect enthusiast, and without doubt did believe himself
inspired' (vol. vi, p. 148).
Milton's sonnet, to Vane 'young in yeares, but in sage counsell old'
gives no suggestion of the fanatic:
besides to know
Both spirituall powre & civill, what each meanes
What severs each thou 'hast learnt, which few have don.
The bounds of either sword to thee wee ow.
Therfore on thy firme hand religion leanes
In peace, & reck'ns thee her eldest son.
There was much in Vane's views about Church and State with which
Milton sympathized; and the sonnet was written in 1652, before
Cromwell broke with Vane.
See also Pepys's _Diary_, June 14, 1662, and Burnet's _History of His
Own Time_, ed. Osmund Airy, vol. i, pp. 284-6.
Page 150, ll. 13, 14. _Magdalen College_, a mistake for Magdalen Hall,
of which Vane was a Gentleman Commoner; but he did not matriculate.
See Wood's _Athenæ Oxonienses_, ed. Bliss, vol. iii, col. 578.
l. 17. He returned to England in 1632; he had been in the train of the
English ambassador at Vienna.
ll. 25 ff. He transported himself into New England in 1635. He was
chosen Governor of Massachusetts in March 1636 and held the post
for one year, being defeated at the next election. He retransported
himself into England in August 1637.
Page 151, ll. 27-9. 'In New Hampshire and at Rhode Island. The grant
by the Earl of Warwick as the Governor of the King's Plantations in
America of a charter for Providence, &c., Rhode Island, is dated March
14, 164-3/4; _Calendar of Colonial State Papers_, 1574-1660, p. 325.
The code of laws adopted there in 1647 declares "sith our charter
gives us power to govern ourselves ... the form of government
established in Providence plantations is democratical." _Collections
of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc._, second series, vol. vii, p.
79.'--Note by Macray.
Page 152, ll. 2, 3. He married Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher
Wray, of Ashby, Lincolnshire.
ll. 5, 6. He was made joint Treasurer of the Navy in January 1639, and
was dismissed in December 1641.
ll. 10 ff. Strafford was created Baron of Raby in 1640. At the
conclusion of Book VI Clarendon says that the elder Vane's 'malice to
the Earl of Strafford (who had unwisely provoked him, wantonly and out
of contempt) transported him to all imaginable thoughts of revenge'.
Cf. p. 63, l. 25.
42.
Clarendon, MS. History, p. 486 (first paragraph) and Life, p. 249
(second paragraph); _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, p. 292; ed.
Macray, vol. iii, pp. 216-17.
Clarendon added the first paragraph in the margin of the manuscript
of his earlier work when he dovetailed the two works to form the
_History_ in its final form.
Page 152, l. 27. _this Covenant_, the Solemn League and Covenant,
which passed both Houses on September 18, 1643: 'the battle of Newbery
being in that time likewise over (which cleared and removed more
doubts than the Assembly had done), it stuck very few hours with both
Houses; but being at once judged convenient and lawful, the Lords and
Commons and their Assembly of Divines met together at the church,
with great solemnity, to take it, on the five and twentieth day of
September' (Clarendon, vol. iii, p. 205).
43.
Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham
Castle and Town ... Written by His Widow Lucy, Daughter of Sir Allen
Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, &c. Now first published from the
original manuscript by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson ... London: 1806.
(pp. 4-6.)
The original manuscript has disappeared, and the edition of 1806 is
the only authoritative text. It has been many times reprinted. It was
edited with introduction, notes, and appendices by C.H. Firth in 1885
(new edition, 1906).
The Memoirs as a whole are the best picture we possess of a puritan
soldier and household of the seventeenth century. They were written by
his widow as a consolation to herself and for the instruction of
her children. To 'such of you as have not seene him to remember his
person', she leaves, by way of introduction, 'His Description.' It is
this passage which is here reprinted.
44, 45, 46, 47, 48.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 212-15; _History_, Bk. VI, ed. 1703, vol. ii,
pp. 158-62; ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 541-8.
These five characters of Parliamentary peers follow one another at
the conclusion of Clarendon's sixth book, and are part of his 'view
of those persons who were of the King's Council, and had deserted his
service, and stayed in the Parliament to support the rebellion'.
A short passage on the Earl of Holland, between the characters of
Warwick and Manchester, is omitted.
Taken as a group, they are yet another proof of Clarendon's skill in
portraiture. Each character is clearly distinguished.
Page 159, ll. 7-10. His grandfather was William Cecil (1520-98), Lord
Burghley, the great minister of Elizabeth; his father was Robert Cecil
(1563-1612), created Earl of Salisbury, 1605, Secretary of State at
the accession of James.
Page 160, l. 9. He was member for King's Lynn in 1649, and
Hertfordshire in 1654 and 1656.
ll. 13-16. _Hic egregiis_, &c. Seneca, _De Beneficiis_, iv, cap. 30.
Page 161, ll. 3-19. 'Clarendon's view that Warwick was a jovial
hypocrite is scarcely borne out by other contemporary evidence. The
"jollity and good humour" which he mentions are indeed confirmed. "He
was one of the most best-natured and cheerfullest persons I have in
my time met with," writes his pious daughter-in-law (_Autobiography
of Lady Warwick_, ed. Croker, p. 27). Edmund Calamy, however, in his
sermon at Warwick's funeral, enlarges on his zeal for religion; and
Warwick's public conduct during all the later part of his career is
perfectly consistent with Calamy's account of his private life (_A
Pattern for All, especially for Noble Persons_, &c., 1658, 410, pp.
34-9).'--C.H. Firth, in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
l. 13. _Randevooze_ (or _-vouze_, or _-vouce_, or _-vowes_) is a
normal spelling of _Rendezvous_ in the seventeenth century. The words
had been introduced into English by the reign of Elizabeth.
ll. 20-2. The proceedings are described at some length by Clarendon,
vol. ii, pp. 19-22, 216-23. Warwick was appointed Admiral by the
Parliament on July 1, 1642.
l. 23. The expulsion of the Long Parliament on April 20, 1653. A
thorough examination of all the authorities for the story of the
expulsion will be found in two articles by C.H. Firth in _History_,
October 1917 and January 1918.
ll. 24-5. Robert Rich, his grandson, married Frances, Cromwell's
youngest daughter, in November 1657, but died in the following
February, aged 23. See _Thurloe's State Papers_, vol. vi, p. 573.
Page 162, l. 11. _in Spayne_, on the occasion of the proposed Spanish
match.
ll. 22-3. He resigned his generalship on April 2, 1645, the day before
the Self-Denying Ordinance was passed.
ll. 24 ff. His first wife was Buckingham's cousin, their mothers
being sisters. He married his second wife in 1626, before Buckingham's
death. He was five times married.
Page 163, l. 11. _his father_, Henry Montagu (1563-1642), created
Baron Montagu of Kimbolton and Viscount Mandeville, 1620, and Earl of
Manchester, 1628. By the favour of Buckingham he had been made Lord
Treasurer in 1620, but within a year was deprived of the office and
'reduced to the empty title of President of the Council'; see the
character (on the whole favourable) by Clarendon, vol. i, pp. 67-9.
l. 12. Manchester and Warwick are described by Clarendon as 'the two
pillars of the Presbyterian party' (vol. iv, p. 245).
Page 164, l. 16. He was accused with the five members of the House of
Commons, January 3, 1642. Cf. p. 123, l. 5.
l. 26. Elsewhere Clarendon says that Manchester 'was known to have all
the prejudice imaginable against Cromwell' (vol. iv, p. 245). He lived
in retirement during the Commonwealth, but returned to public life at
the Restoration, when he was made Lord Chamberlain.
This character may be compared with Clarendon's other character of
Manchester, vol. i, pp. 242-3, and with the character in Warwick's
_Mémoires_, pp. 246-7. Burnet, speaking of him in his later years,
describes him as 'A man of a soft and obliging temper, of no great
depth, but universally beloved, being both a vertuous and a generous
man'.
Page 165, ll. 6-9. See Clarendon, vol. i, p. 259.
l. ii. _that unhappy kingdome_. This was written in France.
ll. 20-5. Antony à Wood did not share Clarendon's scepticism about
Say's descent, though he shared his dislike of Say himself: see
_Athenæ Oxonienses_, ed. Bliss, vol. in, col. 546.
Page 166, ll. 25 ff. See Clarendon, ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 333-5. Cf.
note p. 134, l. 3. After the King's execution he took little part in
public affairs, but at the Restoration he managed to be made a Privy
Councillor and Lord Privy Seal.
Clarendon has another and shorter character of Say, which supplements
the character here given, and deals mainly with his ecclesiastical
politics (vol. i, p. 241). He was thought to be the only member of the
Independent party in the House of Peers (vol. iii, p. 507).
Arthur Wilson gives short characters of Essex, Warwick, and Say:
'_Saye_ and _Seale_ was a seriously subtil _Peece_, and alwayes averse
to the Court wayes, something out of pertinatiousnesse; his _Temper_
and _Constitution_ ballancing him altogether on that _Side_, which
was contrary to the _Wind_; so that he seldome tackt about or went
upright, though he kept his _Course_ steady in his owne way a long
time: yet it appeared afterwards, when the harshnesse of the humour
was a little allayed by the sweet _Refreshments_ of Court favours,
that those sterne _Comportments_ supposed _naturall_, might be
mitigated, and that indomitable Spirits by gentle usage may be tamed
and brought to obedience' (_Reign of King James I_, p. 162).
49.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 48-9: _Life_, ed. 1759, p. 16.
This and the four following characters of men of learning and letters
are taken from the early section of the _Life_ where Clarendon proudly
records his friendships and conversation with 'the most excellent men
in their several kinds that lived in that age, by whose learning and
information and instruction he formed his studies, and mended his
understanding, and by whose gentleness and sweetness of behaviour,
and justice, and virtue, and example, he formed his manners.' The
characters of Jonson, Falkland, and Godolphin which belong to the same
section have already been given.
Page 167, l. 27. _his conversation_, fortunately represented for us in
his _Table-Talk_, a collection of the 'excellent things that usually
fell from him', made by his amanuensis Richard Milward, and published
in 1689.
Page 168, l. 3. _M'r Hyde_, i.e. Clarendon himself.
l. 5. _Seldence_, a phonetic spelling, showing Clarendon's haste in
composition.
l.10. Selden was member for Oxford during the Long Parliament.
ll. 15, 16. Compare Clarendon's _History_, vol. ii, p. 114: 'he had
for many years enjoyed his ease, which he loved, was rich, and would
not have made a journey to York, or have lain out of his own bed, for
any preferment, which he had never affected. Compare also Aubrey's
_Brief Lives_, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, p. 224: 'He was wont to say
"I'le keepe myselfe warme and moyst as long as I live, for I shall be
cold and dry when I am dead ".'
50.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 57; _Life_, ed. 1759, pp. 26-7.
Izaak Walton included a short character of Earle in his _Life of
Hooker_, published in the year of Earle's death: 'Dr. Earle, now Lord
Bishop of Salisbury, of whom I may justly say, (and let it not offend
him, because it is such a trifle as ought not to be concealed from
posterity, or those that now live, and yet know him not,) that since
Mr. Hooker died, none have lived whom God hath blessed with more
innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable,
primitive temper: so that this excellent person seems to be only like
himself, and our venerable Richard Hooker.'
See also _Athenæ Oxonienses_, ed. Bliss, vol. iii, cols. 716-9.
Page 168, l. 25. _Earle of Pembroke_, the fourth Earl, Lord
Chamberlain 1626-1641: see p. 4, l. 30, note.
Page 169, l. 3. _Proctour_, in 1631. The 'very witty and sharpe
discourses' are his _Micro-cosmographie_, first published anonymously
in 1628.
l. 23. Compare p. 72, ll. 29 ff., and p. 90, ll. 21 ff.
l. 28. He was made chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles in 1641. His
'lodginge in the court' as chaplain to the Lord Chamberlain had made
him known to the king.
51.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 57-8; _Life_, ed. 1759, pp. 27-8.
'The Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales, of Eaton-Colledge', as he is
called on the title-page of his _Golden Remains_, published in 1659
(second impression, 1673), is probably best known now by his remark
'That there was no subject of which any Poet ever writ, but he would
produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare'. This remark was
first given in print in Dryden's essay _Of Dramatick Poesie_, 1668,
and was repeated in varying forms in Nahum Tate's Dedication to the
_Loyal General_, 1680, Charles Gildon's _Reflections on Mr. Rymer's
Short View of Tragedy_, 1694, and Nicholas Rowe's _Account of the
Life of Shakespear_, 1709. But it had apparently been made somewhere
between 1633 and 1637 in the company of Lord Falkland. It is the one
gem that survives of this retired student's 'very open and pleasant
conversation'.
Clarendon's portrait explains the honour and affection in which the
'ever memorable' but now little known scholar was held by all his
friends. The best companion to it is the life by Wood, _Athenæ
Oxonienses_, ed. Bliss, vol. iv, cols. 409-15. See also John Pearson's
preface to _Golden Remains_.
Page 170, ll. 10 ff. Hales was elected Fellow of Merton College in
1605, and Regius Professor of Greek in 1615. His thirty-two letters to
Sir Dudley Carlton (cf. p. 58, l. 20) reporting the proceedings of the
Synod of Dort, run from November 24, 1618, to February 7, 1619, and
are included in his _Golden Remains_. On his return to England in 1619
he withdrew to his fellowship at Eton.
Sir Henry Savile's monumental edition of the Greek text of St.
Chrysostom, in eight large folio volumes, was published at Eton,
1610-12. Savile was an imperious scholar, but when Clarendon says
that Hales 'had borne all the labour' of this great edition, he can
only mean that Hales had given his assistance at all stages of its
production. In Brodrick's _Memorials of Merton College_, p. 70, it is
stated that Hales was voted an allowance for the help he had given.
Savile was appointed Warden of Merton in 1585 and Provost of Eton in
1596, and continued to hold both posts at the same time till his death
in 1622.
Page 171, ll. 8-12. Compare the verse epistle in Suckling's _Fragmenta
Aurea_, which was manifestly addressed to Hales, though his name is
not given (ed. 1648, pp. 34-5):
Whether these lines do find you out,
Putting or clearing of a doubt;
... know 'tis decreed
You straight bestride the Colledge Steed ...
And come to Town; 'tis fit you show
Your self abroad, that men may know
(What e're some learned men have guest)
That Oracles are not yet ceas't ...
News in one day as much w' have here
As serves all Windsor for a year.
In Suckling's _Sessions of the Poets_, 'Hales set by himselfe most
gravely did smile'.
ll. 14 ff. Compare the story told by Wood: 'When he was Bursar of his
Coll. and had received bad money, he would lay it aside, and put good
of his own in the room of it to pay to others. Insomuch that sometimes
he has thrown into the River 20 and 30_l_. at a time. All which he
hath stood to, to the loss of himself, rather than others of the
Society should be endamaged.'
l. 19. Reduced to penury by the Civil Wars, Hales was 'forced to sell
the best part of his most admirable Library (which cost him 2500_l_.)
to Cornelius Bee of London, Bookseller, for 700_l_. only'. But Wood
also says that he might be styled 'a walking Library'. Another account
of his penury and the sale of his library is found in John Walker's
_Sufferings of the Clergy_, 1714, Part II, p. 94.
l. 24. _syded_, i.e. stood by the side of, equalled, rivalled.
Page 173, ll. 1 ff. His _Tract concerning Schisme and Schismaticks_
was published in 1642, and was frequently reissued. It was written
apparently about 1636, and certainly before 1639. He was installed as
canon of Windsor on June 27, 1639.
52.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 58-9; _Life_, ed. 1759, pp. 28-30.
Clarendon clearly enjoyed writing this character of Chillingworth. The
shrewd observation is tempered by subdued humour. Looking back on his
friendship at a distance of twenty years, he felt an amused pleasure
in the disputatiousness which could be irritating, the intellectual
vanity, the irresolution that came from too great subtlety.
Chillingworth was always 'his own convert'; 'his only unhappiness
proceeded from his sleeping too little and thinking too much'. But
Clarendon knew the solid merits of _The Religion of Protestants_
(_History_, vol. i, p. 95); and he felt bitterly the cruel
circumstances of his death.
Page 174, ll. 17-19. Compare the character of Godolphin, p. 96, ll. 1
ff.
Page 176, l. 14. _the Adversary_, Edward Knott (1582-1656), Jesuit
controversialist.
l. 29. _Lugar_, John Lewgar (1602-1665): see Wood's _Athenæ
Oxonienses_, ed. Bliss, vol. iii, cols. 696-7.
Page 177, l. 24. This Engine is described in the narrative of the
siege of Gloucester in Rushworth's _Historical Collections_, ed. 1692,
Part III, vol. ii, p. 290: 'The King's Forces, by the Directions of
Dr. _Chillingworth_, had provided certain Engines, after the manner of
the Roman _Testudines cum Pluteis_, wherewith they intended to Assault
the City between the South and West Gates; They ran upon Cart-Wheels,
with a _Blind_ of Planks Musquet-proof, and holes for four Musqueteers
to play out of, placed upon the Axle-tree to defend the Musqueteers
and those that thrust it forwards, and carrying a Bridge before it;
the Wheels were to fall into the Ditch, and the end of the Bridge to
rest upon the Towns Breastworks, so making several compleat Bridges to
enter the City. To prevent which, the Besieged intended to have made
another Ditch out of their Works, so that the Wheels falling therein,
the Bridge would have fallen too short of their Breastworks into their
wet Mote, and so frustrated that Design.'
ll. 26 ff. Hopton took Arundel Castle on December 9, 1643, and was
forced to surrender on January 6 (Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 330-5).
Aubrey says that Chillingworth 'dyed of the _morbus castrensis_ after
the taking of Arundel castle by the parliament: wherin he was very
much blamed by the king's soldiers for his advice in military affaires
there, and they curst _that little priest_ and imputed the losse of
the castle to his advice'. (_Brief Lives_, ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p.
172). The chief actor in the final persecution was Francis Cheynell
(1608-65), afterwards intruded President of St. John's College
and Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford; see his
_Chillingworthi Novissima. Or, the Sicknesse, Heresy, Death, and
Buriall of William Chillingworth (In his own phrase) Clerk of Oxford,
and in the conceit of his fellow Souldiers, the Queens Arch-Engineer,
and Grand-Intelligencer_, 1644.
53.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 55; _Life_, ed. 1759, pp. 24, 25.
Weakness of character disguised by ready wit, pleasant discourse,
and charm of manner is Clarendon's judgement on Waller. They had
been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than
an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his
behaviour on the discovery of 'Waller's plot', the purpose of which
was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action
but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his
subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them.
To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are
transparent. 'His company was acceptable, where his spirit was
odious.' The censure was the more severe because of the part which
Waller had just played at Clarendon's fall. The portrait may be
overdrawn; but there is ample evidence from other sources to confirm
its essential truth.
Burnet says that '_Waller_ was the delight of the House: And even at
eighty he said the liveliest things of any among them: He was only
concerned to say that which should make him be applauded. But he never
laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, tho'
a witty, man' (_History of His Own Time_, ed. 1724, vol. i, p. 388).
He is described by Aubrey, _Brief Lives_, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, pp.
276-7.
Clarendon's character was included by Johnson in his _Life of Waller_,
with a few comments. Page 179, l. 1. _a very rich wife_, Anne, only
daughter of John Bankes, mercer; married 1631, died 1634. 'The fortune
which Waller inherited from his father, which must have been largely
increased during his long minority, has been variously estimated
at from £2,000 to £3,500 a year; adding to this the amount which
he received with Miss Bankes, said to have been about £8,000, and
allowing for the difference in the value of the money, it appears
probable that, with the exception of Rogers, the history of English
literature can show no richer poet' (_Poems of Waller_, ed. Thorn
Drury, vol. i, p. xx).
l. 4. _M'r Crofts_, William Crofts (1611-77), created Baron Crofts of
Saxham in 1658 at Brussels. He was captain of Queen Henrietta Maria's
Guards.
l. 6. _D'r Marly_. See p. 92, l. 21, note.
ll. 10-14. Waller's poems were first published in 1645, when Waller
was abroad. But they had been known in manuscript. They appear to
have first come to the notice of Clarendon when Waller was introduced
to the brilliant society of which Falkland was the centre. If the
introduction took place, as is probable, about 1635, this is the
explanation of Clarendon's 'neere thirty yeeres of age'. But some of
his poems must have been written much earlier. What is presumably
his earliest piece, on the escape of Prince Charles from shipwreck
at Santander on his return from Spain in 1623, was probably written
shortly after the event it describes, though like other of his early
pieces it shows, as Johnson pointed out, traces of revision.
l. 21. _nurced in Parliaments_. He entered Parliament in 1621, at the
age of sixteen, as member for Amersham. See _Poems_, ed. Drury, vol.
i. p. xvii.
Page 180, l. 5. The great instance of his wit is his reply to Charles
II, when asked why his Congratulation 'To the King, upon his Majesty's
happy Return' was inferior to his Panegyric 'Upon the Death of the
Lord Protector'--'Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth'
(quoted from _Menagiana_ in Fenton's 'Observations on Waller's Poems',
and given by Johnson). See _Lives of the Poets_, ed. G.B. Hill, vol.
i, p. 271.
54.
Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church
and State, In Mr. Hobbes's Book, Entitled Leviathan. By Edward Earl of
Clarendon. Oxford, 1676. (pp. 2-3.)
It is a misfortune that Clarendon did not write a character of Hobbes,
and, more than this, that there is no character of Hobbes by any one
which corresponds in kind to the other characters in this collection.
But in answering the _Leviathan_, Clarendon thought it well to state
by way of introduction that he was on friendly terms with the author,
and the passage here quoted from his account of their relations is in
effect a character. He condemned Hobbes's political theories; 'Yet I
do hope', he says, 'nothing hath fallen from my Pen, which implies the
least undervaluing of Mr. _Hobbes_ his Person, or his Parts.'
Page 181, l. 21. _ha's_, a common spelling at this time and earlier,
on the false assumption that _has_ was a contraction of _haves_.
55.
Bodleian Library, MS. Aubrey 9, foll. 34-7, 41, 42, 46-7.
The text of these notes on Hobbes is taken direct from Aubrey's
manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library. The complete life is printed
in _Brief Lives by John Aubrey_, edited by Andrew Clark, 1898, vol. i,
pp. 321-403.
Aubrey collected most of his biographical notes, to which he gave the
title '[Greek: Schediasmata.] Brief Lives', in order to help Anthony à
Wood in the compilation of his _Athenæ Oxonienses_. 'I have, according
to your desire', he wrote to Wood in 1680, 'putt in writing these
minutes of lives tumultuarily, as they occur'd to my thoughts or as
occasionally I had information of them.... 'Tis a taske that I never
thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me.' Independently
of Wood, Aubrey had collected material for a life of Hobbes, in
accordance with a promise he had made to Hobbes himself. All his
manuscript notes were submitted to Wood, who made good use of them.
On their return Aubrey deposited them in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,
the library of which is now merged in the Bodleian.
The notes were written 'tumultuarily', jotted down hastily, and as
hastily added to, altered, and transposed. They are a first draft for
the fair copy which was never made. The difficulty of giving a true
representation of them in print is increased by Aubrey's habit of
inserting above the line alternatives to words or phrases without
deleting the original words or even indicating his preference. In the
present text the later form has, as a rule, been adopted, the other
being given in a footnote.
'The Life of Mr. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesburie' is by far the longest
of Aubrey's 'Brief Lives', but it does not differ from the others
in manner. The passages selected may be regarded as notes for a
character.
Page 183, ll. 1 ff. Aubrey is a little more precise in his notes
on Bacon. 'Mr. Thomas Hobbes told me ... that he was employed in
translating part of the Essayes, viz. three of them, one whereof was
that of the Greatnesse of Cities, the other two I have now forgott'
(ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 83). On the evidence of style, Aldis Wright
thought that the other two essays translated by Hobbes were 'Of
Simulation and Dissimulation' and 'Of Innovation': see the preface to
his edition of _Bacon's Essays_, 1862, pp. xix, xx. The translation
appeared in 1638 under the title _Sermones fideles, sive interiora
rerum_.
l. 4. Gorhambury was Bacon's residence in Hertfordshire, near St.
Alban's, inherited from his father. Aubrey described it in a long
digression 'for the sake of the lovers of antiquity', ed. Clark, vol.
i, pp. 79-84, and p. 19.
l. 5. Thomas Bushell (1594-1674), afterwards distinguished as a mining
engineer and metallurgist: see his life in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_.