Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century
History
Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century
Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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