A book that was very famous in its day, on the opposite side to Defoe, was Doctor Drake's _Memorial of the Church of England_, published anonymously in 1705. The Tory author was indignant that the House of Lords should have rejected the Bill against Occasional Conformity, which would have made it impossible for Dissenters to hold any office by conforming to the Test Act; he complained of the knavish pains of the Dissenters to divide Churchmen into High and Low; and he declared that the present prospect of the Church was "very melancholy," and that of the government "not much more comfortable." Long habit has rendered us callous to the melancholy state of the Church and the discomfort of governments; but in Queen Anne's time the croakers' favourite cry was a serious offence. The Queen's Speech, therefore, of October 27th, 1705, expressed strong resentment at this representation of the Church in danger; both Houses, by considerable majorities, voted the Church to be "in a most safe and flourishing condition"; and a royal proclamation censured both the book and its unknown author, a few months after it had been presented by the Grand Jury of the City, and publicly burnt by the hangman. It was more rationally and effectually dealt with in Defoe's _High Church Legion, or the Memorial examined_; but one is sometimes tempted to wish that the cry of the Church in danger might be as summarily disposed of as it was in the reign of Queen Anne, when to vote its safety was deemed sufficient to insure it. Drake's misfortunes as a writer were as conspicuous as his abilities. Two years before the Memorial was burnt, his _Historia Anglo-Scotica_, purporting to give an impartial history of the events that occurred between England and Scotland from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth, was burnt at Edinburgh (June 30th, 1703). It was dedicated to Sir Edward Seymour, one of the Queen's Commissioners for the Union, and a High Churchman; and as it also expressed the hope that the Union would afford the Scotch "as ample a field to love and admire the generosity of the English as they had theretofore to dread their valour," it was clearly not calculated to please the Scotch. They accordingly burned it for its many reflections on the sovereignty and independence of their crown and nation. As the Memorial was also burnt at Dublin, Drake enjoys the distinction of having contributed a book to be burnt in each of the three kingdoms. He would, perhaps, have done better to have stuck to medicine; and indeed the number of books written by doctors, which have brought their authors into trouble, is a remarkable fact in the history of literature.