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 HORAE SABBATICAE
 
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 HORAE SABBATICAE 
 
 REPRINT OF ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED 
 
 TO 
 
 THE SATURDAY REVIEW 
 
 BY 
 
 Sir JAMES FITZJAMES STEPHEN, Bart., K.C.S.I. 
 
 /// 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 Hontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1892 
 
 All rights reserved

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 KssAV PAGE 
 
 I. JoiNVILLE AND St. LOUIS . . .1 
 
 II. Feoissart's Chronicles 22 
 
 III. Philippe de Comines 55 
 
 IV. Montaigne's Essays 124 
 
 V. Hooker's ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' . . .145 
 
 VI. Archbishop Laud 167 
 
 VII. Chillingworth ... 187 
 
 VIII. 'The Liberty of Prophesying' . . .209 
 
 IX. Jeremy Taylor as a Moralist . 226 
 
 X. „ „ ■ ■ 242 
 
 XI. „ „ 263 
 
 XII. Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams . 286 
 
 .XIII. Clarendon's ' History of the Rebellion ' . 309 
 
 XIV. Lord Clarendon's 'Life' . . . 329
 
 I 
 
 JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 1 
 
 M. de Sainte-Beuve says that Joinville is the best 
 representative ' of the age which we like to represent 
 to ourselves as the golden age of the good old time. 
 If this happy period ever existed in the past, it was 
 in the reign of Saint Louis, during the fifteen years 
 of peace under the shadow of the oak in the forest 
 of Vincennes.' Joinville certainly gives us a vivid 
 glimpse of this past age. It is, however, only a 
 glimpse, and before the figures of the picture can be 
 fully appreciated, it is necessary to sketch slightly the 
 frame in which they must be set. 
 
 The forty-four years of the reign of Louis IX. 
 (1226-1270) nearly coincide with the fifty-six years of 
 the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272), and cover one of 
 the great epochs of European history ; for during that 
 period the French Monarchy and the English Con- 
 stitution were founded, and the first great religious 
 crisis of modern Europe — that which included the de- 
 
 1 Memoires de Jean Sire de Joinville ou VHistoire et Chron* 
 ique du tres chritien roi St. Louis. 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 2 IIOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 struction of the Albigenses, the erection of persecution 
 into a system, and the crusades — came to an end. 
 
 The final conclusion of the Languedocian troubles, 
 and the fall of the independence of the province may 
 be dated in 1244. At the same date the successes of 
 Louis in his war with Henry III., and the additions 
 which his dominions received on the fall of Kaymond, 
 extended the French Monarchy from the Scheldt to 
 the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. 
 
 Thus the great events of the boyhood and early 
 manhood of Louis were the extension and consolida- 
 tion of his own dominions, by the same causes Avhich 
 overthrew the Albigensian heresy and established the 
 Inquisition. This of itself would account for the great 
 space which the question of orthodoxy occupied in 
 his mind. It occupied, however, a similar space in 
 the minds of his contemporaries. 
 
 The Church was at that time by far the greatest 
 and most powerful organisation in the world; for 
 though there were several great sovereigns, — Louis 
 IX., Henry III., and the Emperor Frederic II, there 
 was hardly such a thing in the wdiole of Europe as a 
 nation well denned and thoroughly organised. The 
 Church, moreover, was not only powerfully organised, 
 but was instinct with life in every part. Councils, 
 general, provincial, and national, were still a reality. 
 The clergy of every country, and almost of every 
 church, had their own special rights, which they 
 maintained with the greatest determination. Even 
 at St. Louis's own funeral there was a quarrel, between
 
 i JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 3 
 
 the clergy of the Abbey of St. Denis and the Arch- 
 bishop of Sens and the Bishop of Paris, as to the 
 right of the prelates to officiate. It had to be ar- 
 ranged before the funeral could proceed, though the 
 new king, Philip III, with all the aristocracy and 
 clergy of France, was kept waiting with the coffin 
 at the church doors. The political side of religion 
 was thus constantly brought home to everybody. 
 
 The intellectual movement, both within and with- 
 out the Church, was at least as powerful. On the 
 one side, the Albigensians had developed views of 
 which, at this distance of time and with our im- 
 perfect sympathy with the feelings of a past age, it is 
 difficult to form a just opinion. They would, however, 
 appear to have involved, on the part of those who 
 held them, not merely a revolt against all the institu- 
 tions of the age, but a formal surrender of part of 
 human life to the evil principle, coupled with that 
 strange mixture of asceticism and license as to the 
 other part, which is the practically necessary comple- 
 ment of such a view. On the other hand, there was 
 within the Church a movement, or rather a series of 
 movements, in which several of the great questions 
 of religion were debated in a terminology and under 
 conditions strange to us, but most influential over the 
 men of that age. 
 
 In the thirteenth century, the Church was rather 
 the friendly and sympathetic ruler, than the enemy of 
 what then passed for reason ; and this relation was 
 rendered possible by the scholastic conception of
 
 4 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 science, and by the universal belief that the method 
 of acquiring knowledge was to argue downwards, from 
 principles generally admitted to be true, either as self- 
 evident, or as notoriously revealed from heaven. 
 
 All theology may be divided into two great branches 
 — the process of ascertaining certain facts, and the 
 process of giving form to certain sentiments ; at dif- 
 ferent periods the result of these two processes, and 
 their relation to each other, differ. The degree of 
 completeness, precision, and system which can be 
 given to the religious emotions— in other words, the 
 extent to which feeling can be translated into pro- 
 positions, depends upon the amount of certainty which 
 is felt as to the facts to which the sentiments relate. 
 In the thirteenth century all the facts were taken for 
 granted. The apparatus for examining or discussing 
 them did not then exist. Hence it was possible to 
 exhibit, in an astonishingly definite and systematic 
 form, what in reality were only conjectures, upon 
 subjects about which religious people felt a curiosity. 
 
 For instance, amongst the innumerable subjects on 
 which Thomas Aquinas considered himself scientifi- 
 cally able to pronounce an opinion, were (according 
 to Hallam) such as these : Could God have per- 
 mitted actions against natural reason 1 ? Can he dis- 
 pense with the law of nature 1 Did he act in a 
 legislative, or in some, and what, other capacity, in 
 the matter of the sacrifice of Isaac? To us these 
 questions appear insoluble or puerile, but in that age 
 various principles which could be logically connected
 
 I JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 
 
 with them were universal postulates, and the state of 
 religious sentiment was such as absolutely to demand 
 some rational organisation. 
 
 It was the age not only of the Albigensians, but of 
 the Pastoureaux, the sect which tried to erect what is 
 called the religion of the Holy Ghost, the time of the 
 Father having ended at the birth of Christ, and the 
 time of the Son at the rise of the Pastoureaux. An 
 immense mass of peasants marched half over France 
 on this strange errand under an unknown leader in 
 1251. In 1260 the Flagellants scourged themselves 
 through every city in Europe ; and the Dominicans 
 and Franciscans, with other orders of less importance, 
 were in the full flush of their early enthusiasm, and 
 afforded a safety-valve for fanaticism. 
 
 Their intense sense of the emotional side of religion 
 enabled the monks to take up the logical side of it 
 ardently and successfully. The greatest of all the 
 Dominicans was Thomas Aquinas, a friend, and often 
 a guest of St. Louis, and the work of his marvellously 
 laborious life seems to have been — for it would be 
 presumptuous for any one to speak positively on the 
 contents of eighteen folio volumes known to him 
 only by report — to expand and systematise the pre- 
 misses which orthodoxy supplied, into a form suffi- 
 ciently minute and definite to exercise, and, if possible, 
 to satisfy, the reason, and to afford to the religious 
 emotions that food and support, which they find in 
 the intricacy of systems assumed to be strong because 
 they are complex. Long chains of coherent reasoning
 
 G HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 often confirm the faith by which they are supported, 
 as a number of hurdles will bear up a heavy super- 
 structure on a swampy foundation. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas was the architect of the greatest 
 structure of this kind ever erected, and St. Louis's 
 character is an indirect illustration of its practical 
 objects. To use the picturesque language of M. 
 Michelet, who compares the thirteenth century to a 
 pyramid : ' Au sommet le grand boeuf muet de Sicilc ' 
 (Aquinas's nickname, given on the principle on which 
 the owl at Arundel Castle was called Lord Thurlow) 
 'ruminait la question.' 'Audessous de l'ange il y 
 avait l'homme, la morale sous la metaphysique. Sous 
 St. Thomas, St. Louis.' The charm of Joinville's 
 Mimoires is, that they draw an original picture of a 
 man who might be considered the flower of the age 
 in which these influences were at work. They set in 
 the clearest light his sound intelligence in common 
 things, his passionate religious sensibility, and the 
 wild course of conduct into which he was led by 
 indulging it. They also throw a curious light on the 
 doubts, just sufficiently realised to enable him to look 
 upon faith as difficult and meritorious, which passed 
 through the mind of St. Louis, and no doubt through 
 the minds of many others in that age, for the thir- 
 teenth century was an age of doubt as well as of 
 faith. In its history indications are still to be found 
 of a sceptical movement, not the less real because it 
 was secret. 
 
 ' The Latin writers of those times ' (says Mosheim)
 
 I JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 7 
 
 ' often complain of public enemies of the Christian 
 religion, and even of mockers of the Supreme Being. 
 . . . The Aristotelian philosophy, which reigned in 
 all the schools of Europe, and was regarded as identi- 
 cal with sound reason, led not a few to discard the 
 doctrines commonly held and preached respecting 
 Divine Providence, the immortality of the soul, the 
 creation of the world, and other points.' 
 
 'They defended themselves,' adds one of his anno- 
 tators, 'by distinguishing between theological truth 
 and philosophical,' as many others have done to our 
 own days. The Emperor Frederic II. was, of all the 
 men of his age, the most deeply and widely suspected 
 in this matter. The suspicions of his orthodoxy 
 (which were probably not ill founded) were embodied 
 in the myth of the book De Tribus Impostoribus. 
 
 Such was the age in which Louis IX. lived and 
 reigned, and which Joinville commemorated. The 
 leading dates of it are few. The first period extends 
 from his accession, in 1226, to the first crusade in 
 1248. The second takes in the first crusade, from 
 1248 to 1254. The third consists of fifteen years of 
 peace, 1255-1270; and the fourth consists of the few 
 weeks which were occupied in the second crusade, 
 July-August 1270. Joinville's MSmoires contain an 
 outline of the first period, a pretty complete history 
 of the second, some account of the third and scattered 
 anecdotes as to the whole of the reign, for the most 
 part not dated. 
 
 The book begins with a division of the subject,
 
 8 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 which is soon given up. The first part, it is said, is 
 meant to show in general how the king ' se gouverna 
 tout son temps selon Dieu et selon l'eglise, et au profit 
 de son regne' (p. 1). The second part relates his 
 ' great acts of chivalry and great feats of arms.' 
 
 The first part consists of characteristic anecdotes 
 told without arrangement, some of which have become 
 almost proverbial, and of which all are eminently 
 characteristic. The first of these is splendid in its 
 simplicity and magnanimity. 
 
 ' II me demanda se je voulais estre honore" en ce 
 siecle et avoir paradis a la mort, et je li diz oyl. Et 
 il me dit, Donques vous gardez que vous ne faites 
 ne ne dites a votre escient nulle riens, que se tout le 
 monde le savoit, que vous ne peussiez congnoistre, je 
 ai ce fait, je ai ce dit' (p. 6). 
 
 The most curious of these anecdotes are those which 
 show how deeply the controversies of the day had 
 affected Louis, and what was the view which orthodox 
 men of his age took of the nature of religious doubt. 
 They viewed it as in all cases, a voluntary act to which 
 a man was distinctly tempted by the devil, and for 
 which he was responsible, just as he would be for any 
 other definite sin. 
 
 ' The holy king did his utmost to make me believe 
 firmly in the Christian law. ... He said that we 
 ought to believe firmly in the Christian law ; when 
 people are dying the devil does all he can to make 
 them die in doubt on points of faith ; for he sees 
 that he cannot take away the good works which a
 
 I JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 9 
 
 man has done, so that he will have lost him if he dies 
 in the true faith. Therefore we ought to guard and 
 defend ourselves against this snare ; say to the enemy 
 when he sends such temptations, Begone. . . . He 
 said that faith and belief were such that we ought to 
 believe firmly, although we had only hearsay evidence. 
 He asked how I knew that my father's name was 
 Simon. I said I firmly believed it because my mother 
 had told me so. Then, said he, you ought to believe 
 firmly all the articles of faith to which the apostles testify, 
 as you mean to sing in the creed on Sunday' (p. 13). 
 
 He also told a story of a conversation between a 
 ' great master in divinity ' and the Bishop of Paris. 
 The theologian said to the Bishop, weeping much : — 
 
 'I tell you, sir, said the master, I cannot help 
 weeping, for I fear I am an unbeliever, for I cannot 
 force my heart ' (inon cceur ahurter) ' to believe in the 
 sacrament of the altar as the Church teaches us, and 
 I know these are temptations of the devil. Sir, said 
 the Bishop, tell me, when the enemy sends you this 
 temptation, does it please you? The master said, 
 Sir, it annoys me as much as possible. I will ask 
 you, said the Bishop, would you take money to avow 
 with your mouth anything contrary to the sacrament 
 of the altar or against the other holy sacraments of 
 the Church 1 ? Sir, said the master, I would rather 
 have the limbs torn from my body than I would 
 make such an admission. I will say more, said the 
 Bishop. You know that the King of France is at 
 Avar with the King of England, and you know that
 
 10 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 the castle on the march between them is La Rochelle 
 in Poiton. Now, I ask yon, if the King had delivered 
 you the castle of Rochelle to keep, which is on the 
 frontier, and had delivered to me the castle of Laon, 
 which is in the heart of France, and in a peaceable 
 country, to which ought the King to be most indebted 
 at the end of the war, to you who had kept Rochelle 
 without losing it, or to me who had kept Laon with- 
 out losing it 1 Good God, sir, said the master, to me 
 who had kept La Rochelle. Sir, said the Bishop, I 
 tell you that my heart is like the castle of Laon, for 
 I have no temptation or doubt as to the sacrament of 
 the altar, wherefore, I say that God owes you four 
 times as much for believing with your heart in war 
 and tribulation, as he owes me for believing firmly 
 and peaceably.' 
 
 In the same spirit was another story of Louis. 
 De Montfort refused to go and see a miraculous host, 
 which had turned into visible flesh and blood. ' Do 
 you go and see it, who disbelieve. I believe firmly. 
 . . . And do you know what I shall gain 1 In heaven 
 I shall have a crown more than the angels, who see 
 face to face, and so are obliged to believe' (p. 15). 
 There is one more of the king's stories which, well 
 known as it is, will bear repetition, as the comment 
 is usually separated from the facts to which it relates. 
 
 There was to be a controversy at Clugny between the 
 Jews and the clergy. A knight begged to be allowed 
 to open the discussion. Ho asked for the greatest of 
 the rabbis, and when he came, asked him if he believed
 
 I JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 11 
 
 in the history of the Virgin Mary. The rabbi natur- 
 ally said No. The knight said ' que moult avait fait 
 que f ol ' — that he had acted very like a fool, in 
 coming to the Virgin's house, if he neither believed 
 in nor loved her ; and so saying, ' he lifted his crutch 
 and hit the Jew near the ear and knocked him down, 
 and the other Jews ran away, and carried off their 
 master all wounded.' The knight, when blamed by 
 the abbot, justified what he had done by saying that 
 there were many Christians present who, if they had 
 heard the controversy, would have gone away un- 
 believers. ' And I tell you,' said the king, ' that no 
 one, if he is not a great scholar, ought to dispute 
 with them ; but a layman, when he hears the Chris- 
 tian law attacked, ought to defend it with the sword 
 only, which he ought to drive into their bellies as far 
 as it will go.' ' De quoy il doit donner parmi le ventre 
 dedens, tant comme elle y peut entrer ' (p. 1 6). 
 
 These stories give the keynote of Louis's mind. 
 Faith, in his view, was the act of believing without 
 evidence, or even against evidence. Nay, the greater 
 the objections from a rational point of view, the 
 more merit was there in believing. Whatever made, 
 or seemed to make, against the ' Christian law ' was 
 a temptation of the devil, and whoever doubted or 
 denied it was a personal enemy, to be combated by 
 laymen like himself, with the sword ; by ' great 
 clerks,' like Thomas Aquinas, with syllogisms ; and 
 by the ecclesiastical authorities with the Inquisition 
 backed by the secular arm.
 
 12 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 This faith was the fruit of a still deeper feeling. 
 
 In his instruction to his daughter Isabelle he says : 
 ' Dear daughter, have in yourself a desire which is 
 never to leave you, that is to say, to please our Lord 
 as much as you can, and give your whole heart to this, 
 so that if you were certain that you would never be 
 rewarded for the good you might do, nor punished for 
 the ill you might do, you would still be obliged to keep 
 yourself from doing anything which could displease 
 our Lord, and would try to do what would please Him 
 as much as you can, solely for the love of Him.' 
 
 Joinville tells a story which shows how widely such 
 feelings were spread. At Acre ' brother Yoes saw an 
 old woman crossing the street carrying in her right 
 hand a pan full of fire, and in her left hand a bottle of 
 water. Brother Yoes asked her : ' What do you want 
 to do with this 1 ? She replied that she wanted to 
 burn paradise with the fire and to put out hell with 
 the water, so that they should be no more.' ' Why 
 do you want to do that 1 ' ' Because I wish that no 
 one should do good to have the reward of heaven, or 
 for fear of hell, but only to have the love of God, 
 which is worth so much, and which gives us all 
 good.' 
 
 With all his piety Louis IX. was the last man to 
 underrate his own position in relation to the clergy. 
 The bishops on one occasion addressed him by their 
 spokesman as follows : ' Sire, the archbishops and 
 bishops here present, have charged me to tell you 
 that Christianity is falling and melting away in your
 
 I JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 13 
 
 hands, and will fall still more unless you interfere, 
 for no one at the present clay cares for being excom- 
 municated. Therefore, sire, we ask you to order 
 your bailiffs and Serjeants to imprison those who are 
 excommunicated a year and a day to compel them to 
 give satisfaction to the Church ! And the king 
 replied without taking counsel that he would will- 
 ingly command his bailiffs and Serjeants to imprison 
 excommunicated persons as they wished, but that he 
 must take cognisance of the sentence ' (i.e. of excom- 
 munication) ' to see whether it was just or not. Upon 
 this they consulted and replied to the king that they 
 Avould not give him cognisance of matters relating to 
 the Christian religion. And the king told them 
 that he would never give them cognisance of what 
 belonged to him, nor order his officers to imprison 
 persons excommunicated to force them to get absolu- 
 tion whether right or wrong. ' If I did so I should 
 go against God and against right. And I will give 
 you a proof of it. The bishops of Brittany have 
 kept the Count of Brittany excommunicated for full 
 seven years, and then he got absolution from the 
 Court of Rome, and if I had constrained him' (to 
 get absolved) ' in the first year I should have done 
 so wrongfully.' 
 
 Joinville, whose unconscious portrait of himself is 
 only less interesting than his portrait of St. Louis, 
 was a very different kind of man. They were not 
 unlike Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. Joinville 
 admired and reverenced the king beyond all bounds,
 
 14 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 O 1 
 
 but he was by no means of the same way of thinkin 
 or rather of feeling. He would appear to have been 
 a model of the orthodox sensible men of the world of 
 that day. He seems to have acquiesced in the creed 
 of the time, to have believed it, and submitted to it, 
 rather as a straightforward matter of prudence than 
 from any special devotional feeling. A strong vein 
 of frank dislike of cant runs through all that he says 
 on such subjects. 
 
 The following anecdote is characteristic of them 
 both. ' He once called me and said, I dare not speak 
 to you on account of the sharpness of your wit in things 
 touching God, 1 and therefore I have summoned these 
 monks because I want to ask you a question. The ques- 
 tion was this, Seneschal, what sort of thing is God 1 ' 
 (quel chose est Dieu ?). 'I said, Sire, so good a thing 
 that better cannot be. Well, said he, that is a good 
 answer which you have made, and is the same which is 
 written in this book which I hold in my hand. And 
 now I ask you, which you would like best, to have 
 the leprosy, or to commit a mortal sin, and I, who 
 never told him a lie, said I would rather commit 
 thirty mortal sins than be a leper. Next day when 
 they were alone, the King gave him a solemn reproof, 
 but Joinville does not seem to have changed his 
 views. Louis asked him if he washed the feet of 
 poor men on Holy Thursday.' ' Sire, dis-je les pieds 
 de ces vilains ne laverai-je ja' (p. 81). 
 
 1 ' Je n'ose parler a vous pour le soutil sens dont vous estes 
 de chose qui touclie a Dieu.'
 
 i JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 15 
 
 His own religious observations show how straight- 
 forward and simple-minded he was, and in what 
 a direct business-like way the laymen of those days 
 regarded such matters. Speaking of the belief of the 
 Bedouins in predestination, he says : ' It is as much 
 as to say that God has no power to help us ; for it 
 would be foolish to serve God (ils seroient fols ceux 
 cpii serviroient Dieu) 'if we did not think that He 
 could prolong our lives and protect us from evil and 
 mischief (p. 79). 
 
 On one occasion Joinville knocked down one of his 
 knights for quarrelling with another, saying as he did 
 so : ' Get out of my house ; so help me God, you shall 
 not come back.' The knight made great interest to be 
 pardoned, but Joinville says : ' I answered that I could 
 not take him back unless the Legate would absolve me 
 from my oath. They went and told the Legate, and 
 he said he could not absolve me, as the oath was 
 reasonable, and had served the knight quite right. . . . 
 And this I mention to teach you not to take foolish 
 oaths' (p. 176). The directness and simplicity of 
 Joinville's views about prayer and oaths show a con- 
 tented, straightforward, business-like view of religion 
 which few people possess in our days. 
 
 Without reading the whole of Joinville's account 
 of the crusade it would be difficult to form a just 
 idea of the way in which the passionate devotion of 
 Louis and the practical sense of Joinville set each 
 other off throughout. Joinville's prevailing notion 
 seems to have been that it was the right thing to do,
 
 16 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 and that he and others would or might go to heaven 
 for it. He speaks of those who were killed as mar- 
 tyrs. 'The Bishop of Soissons greatly desiring to 
 go to God, when he saw our troops retreating to 
 Damietta, would not return to his native land, but 
 hastened to go to God. He, therefore, spurred his 
 horse and attacked the Turks all alone. They cut 
 him down, and put him in the company of God, and 
 in the number of the martyrs' (p. 119). 
 
 He also distinguished himself by strongly oppos- 
 ing, on the point of honour, a premature proposal 
 to return to France ; but when there was a talk 
 of a second crusade he as strongly condemned it. 
 'I was much pressed by the King of France and 
 the King of Navarre to cross myself, and I answered 
 that while I was serving God and the king beyond 
 the sea (in the first crusade) the officers of the King 
 of France and the King of Navarre had destroyed 
 and impoverished my vassals, so that they and 
 I never were in a worse condition. I said also 
 that if I wished to do God's will, I ought to stay 
 at home and take care of my people ; for if I were 
 to risk my body by going on the crusade, clearly 
 seeing that by so doing I should injure my people, 
 I should offend God, who gave his body to save his 
 people. I thought those who advised the king to 
 go committed a mortal sin, for as long as he was in 
 France the whole realm was at peace, at home and 
 abroad, and after his departure things got continually 
 worse ' (p. 235).
 
 I JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 17 
 
 Notwithstanding his clear apprehension of the 
 plain duties which the King neglected by going on 
 this strange wild-goose chase, no one could feel his 
 piety more deeply than Joinville. He says that to 
 canonise him was not enough. ' He should have 
 been put amongst the martyrs for all he underwent 
 in the crusade. ... If God died on the cross, so did 
 he, for he went as a crusader to Tunis.' 
 
 The actual history of the crusade must be gathered 
 from the book itself. It is impossible for any abstract 
 to do justice to the merit of a story the beauty of which 
 depends so much upon the way in which it is told. But 
 it may be worth while to give, in the most cursory way, 
 the outline of the events which Joinville describes. 
 
 Louis IX. took the cross on his recovery from 
 an illness, in December 1244. So difficult was 
 it in those days to make all the necessary arrange- 
 ments, that he did not sail from Aigues Mortes till 
 the 28th of August 1248. He reached Cyprus on 
 the 17th of September, and stayed there till the 
 following May. He landed at Damietta on the 3d 
 of June 1249, and took the town on the 6th, owing 
 to the panic which the landing caused amongst the 
 Turks. The Nile began to rise, and the crusaders 
 loitered at Damietta till the end of November, waiting 
 for it to fall, and did not appear before Mansourah, 
 the half-way stage to Cairo, or Babylon as Joinville 
 calls it, till the 20th of December. They remained in 
 front of Mansourah till Shrove Tuesday (8th February 
 1250), when a great battle was fought, in which 
 
 VOL. I C
 
 18 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 the Saracens were defeated. There was more fighting 
 on the Friday, which was not so favourable to the 
 French. After this, the armies maintained their 
 positions till early in April, when the Christians, 
 worn out with sickness and warfare, were obliged to 
 retreat. The retreat became a rout, Louis himself 
 being taken prisoner and held to ransom. Early in 
 May the ransom was paid, and the army made its 
 escape to Acre by sea. There, and at Jaffa, Louis 
 remained four years, doing hardly anything of im- 
 portance, and not even succeeding in entering Jeru- 
 salem. He returned to France on his mother's death, 
 early in 1255, and entered Paris on the 7th of 
 September. 
 
 Nothing could be more miserable than the general- 
 ship of this strange expedition. In just seven years' 
 absence from France there was not much more than 
 three months of fighting (8th February to 8th May 
 1250); the rest of the time was either wasted in 
 delay or passed in doing nothing at all. The loss 
 was awful. Of 2800 knights who left Cyprus with 
 the King, only 100 went with him to Acre. The 
 whole transaction was a wretched failure. On the 
 other hand, Homer himself is hardly more pictur- 
 esque than Joinville. Every page has its picture. 
 The following are a few instances of his powers. He 
 thus describes Greek fire : — ■ 
 
 ' La maniere du feu gregois estoit telle que il venoit 
 bien devant aussi gros comme une tonnel de verjus, 
 et la queue du feu qui partoit de li estoit bien aussi
 
 t JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 19 
 
 grant comme un grant glaive ; il faisoit telle noise au 
 venir que il sembloit que ce feust la foudre clu ciel ; 
 il sembloit un dragon qui volast par l'air ; tant getoit 
 grant clarte' que Ton veoit parmi Fast comme si il 
 feust jour pour la grant foison du feu qui getoit la 
 grant clarte\ . . . Toutes les fois que notre saint roy 
 voit que il nous getoient le feu gregois il se restoit 
 en son lit et tendoit ses mains vers Nostre Seigneur 
 et desoit en plourant, "Biau Sire Dieu, gardez moy 
 ma gent," et je croie vraiement que ses prieres nous 
 orent bien mestier au besoing ' (p. 65). 
 
 The following is a very Homeric sketch of a bit of 
 a battle : ' There was wounded, Monseigneur Huges 
 d'Escoz with three sword cuts on his face, and Mon- 
 seigneur Eaoul, and Monseigneur Ferri de Loupey with 
 a sword between his shoulders, and the wound was so 
 large that the blood came out of his body as from the 
 bung-hole of a barrel. Monseigneur Erart de Syverey 
 was struck by a sword in the face so that his nose 
 fell over his lip ; and thereupon I recollected my lord 
 St. James, and said, "Biau Sire, St. Jacques, whom 
 I implore, help and succour me in this business " ' 
 (p. 70). 
 
 Take again this picture of St. Louis himself : 
 ' The King came with all his battle and halted on a 
 causeway with a great blast and noise of trumpets 
 and cymbals. Never was seen so fine a man at arms, 
 for he was above all his men from the shoulders 
 upwards, with a gilt helmet on his head, and a 
 German sword in his hand' (p. 71).
 
 20 HOKA.E SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 I must content myself with one more of these 
 pictures, though the whole history is almost made up 
 of them. On the disastrous retreat from Mansourah 
 Joinville with others fell into the power of the 
 Saracens, who were about to put them to death. 
 Upon this, says Joinville, — 
 
 ' A number of people were confessing themselves to 
 a monk who was there. For my own part I could 
 not remember any sin I had committed, yet I saw 
 the more I struggled the worse it would be, so I 
 crossed myself and knelt down before one of the 
 Saracens, who had a Danish carpenter's axe, and said, 
 " So died St. Agnes." The Constable of Cyprus knelt 
 by my side and confessed himself to me, and I said, 
 " I absolve you in so far as God has given me power f 
 but when I got up I could not remember a single 
 thing he had said' (pp. 107, 108). 
 
 Joinville was not present at the last Crusade of St. 
 Louis. It formed an appropriate ending to his life. 
 For fifteen years after his return from Syria, he 
 ruled France with exemplary virtue, and with the 
 most resolute and vigorous good sense, asserting his 
 own authority, not only against the nobles but also 
 against the clergy, and, in the case of need, against 
 the Popes ; but the strange vein of enthusiastic 
 religion which prompted him to the first crusade was 
 always present in him, as in one form or other it was 
 in most of his family. Exaggerated asceticism was 
 not enough for him. He was devoured by melancholy 
 at not having seen Jerusalem, and he determined on
 
 i JOINVILLE AND ST. LOUIS 21 
 
 a second expedition. It was even more absurdly 
 planned and disastrously executed than the first. 
 After three years of preparation he sailed on the 1st 
 July 1270 for Tunis of all places in the world. The 
 plague broke out in the army. Louis died there in 
 August, so did his son the Comte de Nevers ; so did 
 the Papal Legate, and many others. The French 
 returned to Sicily, and lost eighteen ships in a storm. 
 When they landed, the King of Navarre and his 
 wife, Louis IX. 's daughter, died of the plague caught 
 at Tunis. On the journey home the wife of Philip 
 III., Louis's successor, died, after giving birth to a 
 child who died also. The dismal catastrophe of this 
 crusade, the last expedition which deserved the name, 
 was an appropriate practical comment on the value of 
 the vein of fanatical asceticism which ran through 
 the character of St. Louis. It is impossible to read 
 his history without feeling that nothing but the 
 accident of his age saved him from a full participa- 
 tion in the Albigensian persecution. Whether there 
 was much more moral justification for the crusades, in 
 which he spent so much of the substance of France, 
 is a question too wide, and also too hackneyed, to be 
 discussed here.
 
 II 
 
 FROISSART'S CHRONICLES l 
 
 Froissart's chronicles probably throw more light on 
 certain aspects of the period to which they refer, than 
 is thrown by any other single writer upon any other 
 period. What Boswell did for the literary society of 
 which Johnson formed the centre, what St. Simon 
 did for the Court of Louis XIV., Froissart did for the 
 military life of the fourteenth century. His history 
 extends over a period of seventy -three years, be- 
 ginning with the accession of Edward III. in 1327, and 
 ending with the coronation of Henry IV. of England 
 in 1400. He appears to have been born himself in 
 1337, and he must have lived into the fifteenth century, 
 though the date of his death is not known. His 
 whole life was devoted to the production of his book. 
 He was continually engaged either in collecting 
 materials for it or in making use of them. This 
 appears from many passages in which he describes his 
 
 1 Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining 
 countries from the latter part of the reign of Edward II. to the 
 coronation of Henry IV., by Sir John Froissart. By Thomas 
 Johnes Esq. In two volumes. Bohn 1862.
 
 essay ii froissart's chronicles 23 
 
 various journeys and their common object — namely, 
 to collect information. ' I, John Froissart,' he says in 
 one place, ' set myself to work at my forge to produce 
 new and notable matter relative to the wars between 
 France and England and their allies . . . which 
 excellent matter I shall Avork upon as long as I live ; 
 for the more I labour at it the more it delights me, 
 just as a gallant knight or squire at arms who loves 
 his profession the longer he continues in it so much 
 the more delectable it appears.' l 
 
 Notices indeed are scattered over the latter half of 
 his work which show that he had hardly any other 
 occupation in life than that of collecting news. Speak- 
 ing of one of the attempts made in the time of Richard 
 II. to make a permanent peace between England and 
 France he says, ' I who at the time resided at Abbe- 
 ville to learn news ' 2 — Abbeville being the scene of the 
 treaty. But the most characteristic passage of all is one 
 in which he gives an account of his modus operandi : ' I 
 may perhaps be asked how I became acquainted with 
 the events in this history to speak so circumstantially 
 about them. I reply to those who shall do so that I 
 have, with great attention and diligence, sought in 
 divers kingdoms and countries for the facts which 
 have been or may hereafter be mentioned in it ; for 
 God has given me grace and opportunities to see and 
 make acquaintance Avith the greater part of the 
 principal Lords of France and England. It should 
 be known that in the year 1390 I had laboured at 
 1 II. 548. - 561.
 
 24 HORAE SABBATICAL essay 
 
 this history thirty-seven years, and at that time I was 
 fifty-seven years old ; a man may therefore learn much 
 in such a period when he is in his vigour and well 
 received by all parties. During my youth I was 
 five years attached to the King and Queen of 
 England, and kindly entertained in the household of 
 King John of France and King Charles his son. I 
 was in consequence enabled to hear much during 
 those times, and for certain the greatest pleasure I 
 have ever had was to make every possible inquiry in 
 regard to what was passing in the world, and then to 
 write down all that I had learnt.' : 
 
 The result of the uninterrupted and sedulous 
 gratification of these tastes for many years of his life 
 together was that he succeeded in producing an 
 enormous historical picture, which, whatever may be 
 its defect in detail, may at all events be trusted to 
 give a vivid general representation of its subjects. I 
 will try to give some indications of the nature of the 
 principal passages. The task is not so formidable as 
 it might appear to be from the extent of the work. 
 Johnes's translation of Froissart contains six thick 
 volumes in common 8vo, or 1500 closely -printed 
 pages in royal 8vo ; but by far the greater part of 
 the work is composed of matter so uniform in its 
 character that it is comparatively easy to point out 
 and illustrate the most striking passages. 
 
 The first words of the first chapter 2 state correctly 
 the object of the whole book. 'To encourage all 
 1 II. 258. 2 I. 3.
 
 II 
 
 FftOISSAKT'S CHRONICLES 25 
 
 valorous hearts, and to show them honourable 
 examples, I, John Froissart, will begin to relate ' etc. 
 The one eternal subject of the apparently endless 
 history is war. Other things come in incidentally, 
 but the general impression which Froissart gives is 
 that the age in which he lived was completely given 
 over to fighting, and cared about nothing else whatever. 
 
 Besides the great war between France and England 
 which lasted with occasional and very ill -observed 
 truces for about a hundred and twenty years — there 
 were subsidiary wars almost too numerous to mention 
 — wars between England and Scotland, Avars between 
 the French and the Flemings, wars between Ghent and 
 Bruges, three-sided wars in Brittany, wars between 
 France and Navarre, wars in Spain, wars in Portugal, 
 wars in Beam, wars in the different provinces which 
 fell by degrees under the power of the Duke of 
 Burgundy, wars in the county of Foix, wars, in a 
 word, wherever there was an independent or semi-in- 
 dependent feudal ruler. The possession of Gascony 
 by the Black Prince let loose the Gascons against the 
 French in every direction, and to crown all, the Free 
 Companies carried on wars on their own private ac- 
 count, which were neither more nor less than murder, 
 robbery, and arson on a gigantic scale, and conducted 
 for no other object than that of collecting plunder. 
 
 These wars, moreover, were very different from 
 those of later times. A war in the fourteenth century 
 seemed to have meant unlimited license to every one 
 who could raise a small force to fly at the throats of
 
 26 HOEAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 every one else who had anything to lose. We learn 
 from other authorities what were the practical results 
 of wars thus conducted. Great parts of France were 
 reduced to the condition of a desert, which it ceased 
 to be worth while to cultivate. The population took 
 refuge in caves, and endured a degree of misery which 
 has probably been seldom exceeded at any period of 
 history. Such is the picture as drawn by modern 
 historians of the result of the English wars in France, 
 but except by an effort of reflection no one would 
 ever be led to suspect its existence simply by reading 
 Froissart. His history flows on in an interminable 
 stream of narratives of petty contests, the interest of 
 which has long since entirely ceased. Castle after castle 
 is besieged and taken, town after town burnt, skirmish 
 after skirmish won or lost ; but it never seems to occur 
 to the chronicler that there is anything shocking in 
 his story, or that any one can recognise in it anything 
 but a delectable record of magnificent exploits. 
 
 With Joinville war between Christians at least 
 is a great evil, and the preservation of the lives 
 and property of his subjects is the great duty of 
 a feudal lord — a greater and more pressing duty 
 even than crusading. Comines again is full of 
 moral reflections on the iniquitous and monstrous 
 character of many of the events which he witnessed, 
 but Froissart, Tinsouciant Froissart,' as M. Michelet 
 calls him, is perfectly at ease in his conscience, and 
 never feels shocked at anything that he has to record. 1 
 
 1 I. 54.
 
 ii froissart's chronicles 27 
 
 In Edward Ill's first invasion of Picardy 'A troop 
 of English and Germans came to Origny St Benoit, 
 a tolerably good town but weakly enclosed so that it 
 was soon taken by assault, robbed and pillaged, an 
 abbey of nuns violated, and the whole town burnt. 
 They then marched towards Guise and Ribemont. 
 The King of England came and lodged at Vehories, 
 where he remained a whole day while his people 
 overran all the country thereabouts and laid it waste. 
 The King then took the road to La Flamenque on his 
 way to L'Eschelle in Tierache. The marshals with 
 the Bishop of Lincoln accompanied by upwards of 
 500 lances crossed the river Trisaque entered the 
 Laonnois near the estate of the Lord of Coney and 
 burnt St. Gouvin and the town of Marie.' Learning 
 the approach of the main French army they lay 
 one night at Var below Laon, and the next day 
 returned to the main army, as they had learnt from 
 some of their prisoners that King Philip of France 
 was come to St. Quentin with 100,000 men and there 
 intended to cross the river Somme. 1 They 'burnt in 
 their retreat a very good town called Crecy sur Selle 
 with a great many others as well as villages in that 
 neighbourhood.' The French, entering Hainault 
 'came to the town of Haspres which was a large 
 handsome town though not fortified; nor had the 
 inhabitants any fear for they had never the smallest 
 notice of war being declared against the country. 
 The French on entering the town found every one 
 
 1 I. 60.
 
 28 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 within doors. Having taken and pillaged what they 
 pleased they burnt the town so completely that 
 nothing but the walls remained.' l The French were 
 fired upon from Huesnoy by cannon 'which flung 
 larcre iron bolts in such a manner as made the French 
 afraid for their horses so they retreated and burnt 
 Grand Warguy and Petit Warguy, Frelaines, Hamary, 
 Maitre Semery, and Oirtre, Jariten, Turques, etc., and 
 the Hainaulters fled from their towns to Valenciennes. 
 The French afterwards encamped their battalions 
 upon the hill of Valenciennes where they lived in a 
 rich and splendid manner.' The Duke of Normandy, 
 who commanded on this occasion, ' gave orders for his 
 army to dislodge and enter Hainault and burn and 
 destroy everything without exception.' 
 
 The burning of twenty-four other towns and the 
 devastation of large tracts of country is mentioned in 
 the same chapter. The only observation made is as 
 follows. After staying for a night at Main and Fonte- 
 nelles ' they burnt Main and Fontenelles and also the 
 convent which belonged to Madame de Valois, sister- 
 german to the King of France. The Duke was much 
 vexed at this and had those who set it on fire hanged. 
 In their retreat they completed the burning of the town 
 of Tire and its castle, the mills were also destroyed.' 2 
 It would be easy to fill pages with similar extracts, 3 
 
 i I. 65. - I- 67-69. 
 
 3 See e.g. invasion of Normandy, I. 154-158. Treatment of 
 
 Auvergne by the Black Prince I. 210. A few persons survived 
 the ravages by the assault, I. 248.
 
 II froissart's chronicles 29 
 
 but difficult to find a single expression of pity or 
 disapproval unless indeed churches are attacked. 
 
 In describing, for instance, the storm of Durham by 
 the Scotch, Froissart says, 'All were put to death 
 without mercy and without distinction of persons or 
 ranks, men, women, children, monks, canons, priests ; no 
 one was spared, neither was there house or church left 
 standing. It was pity thus to destroy in Christendom 
 the churches wherein God was served and honoured.' x 
 
 Froissart draws the line above profanity. An 
 English squire profaned the elements of the sacrament 
 at a village called Koney in order to steal the chalice, 
 and having struck the priest with his gauntlet ' his 
 horse began to caper and to play such violent tricks 
 that no one dared to approach him. After many 
 plunges they both fell to the ground with their necks 
 broken' (it was rather hard upon the horse), 'and 
 were immediately turned into dust and ashes. His com- 
 panion seeing this made a vow that from henceforward 
 they would never violate the sanctity of any church.' 2 
 
 The places in which he shows genuine pity are 
 very few. I have noted one or two : Limoges, having 
 gone over to the French, was retaken by the Black 
 Prince and was not only sacked and burnt but all the 
 population massacred. Upon this Froissart goes so 
 far as to say, ' It was a most melancholy business for 
 all ranks, ages, and sexes, to cast themselves on their 
 
 1 I. 99. The famous story of the sparing of the lives of the 
 men of Calais is perhaps entitled to notice on the same ground. 
 I. 185-186. ~ I. 262.
 
 30 HORAE S ABBA TIC AE ESSAY 
 
 knees before the prince begging for mercy, but he 
 was so inflamed with passion and revenge that he 
 listened to none, but all were put to the sword 
 wherever they could be found even those who were 
 not guilty ; for I know not why the poor were not 
 spared who could not have had any part in this 
 treason, but they suffered for it and indeed more than 
 those who had been the leaders of the treachery. 
 There was not that day in the city of Limoges any 
 heart so hardened, or that had any sense of religion, who 
 did not deeply bewail the unfortunate events passing 
 before their eyes ; for upwards of 3000 men, women, 
 and children were put to death that day. God have 
 mercy on their souls ! for they were veritably martyrs.' 1 
 He observes too, in reference to the wars between 
 the men of Ghent and the Earl of Flanders, that 
 they were caused by the devil. ' You know wise men 
 think that the devil, who is subtle and full of artifice, 
 labours night and day to cause warfare wherever 
 he finds peace and harmony,' and he accord- 
 ingly did so in Flanders. 2 'The devil, who never 
 sleeps, put it in the heads of the people of Bruges to 
 make a canal from the river Leys.' He also contrived 
 quarrels between some of the inhabitants and the 
 Earl of Flanders, and so by trifling events stirred up 
 war between Ghent, Bruges, and the Earl of Flanders. 
 The cause of the war lay a good deal deeper than 
 Froissart supposed, but it is something that he admits 
 that war is in any case a work of the devil. 
 1 I. 453, 454. 2 I. 575.
 
 II ~ 
 
 froissart's chronicles 31 
 
 Kepulsive as this way of regarding war is to our 
 modern view, it must be owned that there are many 
 passages in Froissart, which enable us to understand 
 the view which he took of war, and to appreciate its 
 attractive and romantic as well as its brutal side. 
 The actual belligerents, the fighting men themselves, 
 treat each other throughout with distinguished 
 courtesy, and much more in the spirit of competitors in 
 a game of skill and strength than in that of real deadly 
 enemies. Great part of the book consists of accounts 
 of tournaments, single combats, captures, rescues, and 
 ransoms, and it is remarkable to observe in how very 
 many cases, the most desperate personal encounters end 
 without loss of life or even without serious wounds. 
 
 A single illustration will be enough upon this 
 point. Certain English and Navarrese knights were 
 on their journey to Cherbourg under a passport 
 from the Constable of France. They stopped to 
 dine at Chateau Josselin. 'When they had dis- 
 mounted at the inn, like travellers who wished to 
 repose themselves, the knights and squires of the 
 castle came to visit them, as brother soldiers who 
 always see each other with pleasure particularly the 
 French and English. ' A French squire, John Boucmel, 
 met an English squire, Nicholas Clifford, and insisted 
 on having three courses with a lance with him, as 
 each had a high reputation as a man-at-arms ; Clifford 
 made a variety of excuses, but Boucmel insisted on 
 tilting, and at last the constable, who was at the 
 castle, the inn being in the town below, insisted on
 
 32 HORAfi SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 keeping them there all night that they might fight 
 in the morning. They fought accordingly, and at the 
 first course ' Clifford struck with his spear John 
 Boucmel on the upper part of his heart, but the point 
 slipped off the steel breastplate and pierced the hood 
 which was of good mail and entering the neck cut 
 the jugular vein and passed quite through.' Boucmel 
 of course was killed on the spot. Clifford 'was 
 exceedingly vexed for having by ill-fortune slain a 
 valiant and good man-at-arms.' The constable, how- 
 ever, remarked that ' such things were to be expected 
 in similar combats.' He then said to the English 
 'Come, come to dinner, for it is ready.' Clifford, 
 being deeply distressed, refused to go, but the 
 constable fetched him almost by force. 1 
 
 The whole book, as most people know, is full of such 
 traits, but it may be doubted whether the true inference 
 is as generally drawn as it ought to be. People in those 
 days were not more romantic, certainly not more 
 humane than they are at present ; but the gentry of all 
 countries formed a class with common feelings, habits, 
 and sentiments, whose only chance of rising in the 
 world, and in particular of making fortunes, was by 
 distinctions in war. A battle comprised the attractions 
 of a prize-fight and a lottery. To take a valuable 
 prisoner was a piece of good luck which might and 
 often did make a man's fortune ; and there were besides 
 the prospects of unlimited pillage amongst the towns- 
 people and peasants who felt the whole edge of the war. 
 
 1 I. 634-636.
 
 n froissart's chronicles 33 
 
 Many passages, especially in the latter part of 
 Froissart (which is also much the best part of the 
 hook), set this in a striking light. He continually 
 observes upon the extreme fondness of the English 
 for war, and it is plain from various passages near 
 the end of the book that the unpopularity of Richard 
 II. arose to a very great extent from his wish to 
 produce if possible a durable treaty between France 
 and England. 
 
 The following passages illustrate this. 'Many 
 persons will not readily believe what I am about 
 to say though it is strictly true, that the English 
 are fonder of war than of peace. During the reign 
 of King Edward of happy memory, and in the 
 lifetime of his son the Prince of AVales, they made 
 such grand conquests in France and by their victories, 
 and ransoms of towns, castles, and men, gained such 
 wealth that the poorest knights became rich, and 
 those who were not gentlemen by birth, by gallantly 
 hazarding themselves in these wars were ennobled 
 for their valour and wealth.' Richard II. did all in 
 his power to make a durable peace, but ' the majority 
 of the commons were desirous of war ; and two- 
 thirds of the young knights and squires knew not 
 how to employ themselves — they had learnt idleness 
 and looked to war as the means of support.' 
 
 So eager were they for war that they were rather 
 pleased than otherwise at the prospect of an invasion 
 which was threatened in 13SG. Froissart says, 'The 
 great lords such as prelates, abbots, and rich citizens 
 
 VOL. T D
 
 34 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 were panic-struck, but the commonalty and poorer 
 sort held it very cheap. Such knights and squires 
 as were not rich, but eager for renown, were 
 delighted and said to each other : " Lord, what fine 
 times are coming, the King of France intends to visit 
 us ! He is a valiant king and of great enterprise, 
 there has not been such a one in France these three 
 hundred years. He will make his people good men- 
 at-arms, and blessed may he be for thinking to invade 
 us, for certainly we shall be all slain or made power- 
 fully rich ; one or the other must happen." ' : 
 
 The pleasant side of the sort of life which was led 
 by the feudal aristocracy in Froissart's days, is best 
 shown by the accounts which he gives of some of his 
 acquaintances at the court of the Count of Foix, his 
 account of his residence at which is one of the most 
 interesting parts of the whole book.' 2 He visited the 
 Count at his capital, Orthes in Beam, in 1388. His 
 journey thither was made in the company of a knight 
 of Foix called Sir Espaign, who told him histories all 
 the way about the different skirmishes which had 
 occurred in the places by which they passed. The 
 stories are all of the same kind, about sieges, strata- 
 gems, and battles. One of the most curious relates 
 how a certain knight called the Bourg d'Espaigne 
 once carried a donkey with a load of wood on his 
 back up twenty -four steps, and threw the donkey 
 
 1 II. 196. 
 
 2 Vol. ii. All the early part of vol. ii. is occupied by Frois- 
 sart's tour to Foix.
 
 ii froissart's chronicles 35 
 
 and the wood all in a heap on the fireplace of the 
 hearth. 1 
 
 On his arrival Froissart found Count Gaston de 
 Foix the handsomest, the most prudent, and yet the 
 most splendid prince he had ever seen. His accounts 
 of his habits and court are too long to quote, but it is 
 one of the most interesting passages in Froissart. 
 
 The following is a summary of the principal 
 points in it. ' In short, everything considered, though 
 I had before been in several courts of kings, dukes, 
 princes, counts, and noble ladies, I Avas never at one 
 which pleased me more, nor was I ever more delighted 
 with feats of arms than at this of the Count of Foix. 
 
 i " 
 
 ' Three years ago I saw him play a ridiculous trick which I 
 will relate to you. On Christmas Day when the Count de Foix 
 was celebrating the feast with numbers of the knights and 
 squires, as is customary, the weather was piercing cold, and the 
 Count had dined with many lords in the hall, which has a 
 large staircase of twenty-four steps. This gallery is heated by 
 a fire when the Count inhabits it, otherwise not, and the fire is 
 never great, for he does not like it. It is not for want of blocks of 
 wood, for Beam is covered with wood, plenty to warm him if he 
 had chosen ; but he accustomed himself to a small fire. When 
 in the gallery he thought the fire too small, for it was freezing 
 and the weather very sharp, and he said to the knights around 
 him, "Here is but a small fire for this weather." Ernauton 
 d'Espaigne instantly ran downstairs, for from the windows of 
 the gallery he had seen a number of asses laden with billets of 
 wood for the use of the house, and seizing the largest of these 
 asses with his load, threw him over his shoulders and carried 
 him upstairs, pushing through the knights and squires who 
 were round the chimney, and flung ass and load, with his feet 
 upwards, on the dogs of the hearth, to the delight and astonish- 
 ment of all at the strength of the squire who had carried with 
 such ease so great a load up so many steps' (ii. 87).
 
 36 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 There were knights and squires to be seen in every 
 chamber, hall, and court, going backwards and for- 
 wards, and conversing on arms and amours. All 
 intelligence from distant countries was there to be 
 learnt; for the gallantry of the court had brought 
 visitors from all parts of the world. It was there I 
 was informed of the greater part of those events which 
 had happened in Spain, Portugal, Arragon, Navarre, 
 England, Scotland, and on the borders of Lanquedoc, 
 for I saw during my residence knights and squires 
 arrive from every nation.' 
 
 Froissart passed a considerable time in this feudal 
 paradise enjoying himself in every way to perfection, 
 but especially in acquiring information. One of his 
 pieces of good fortune in this respect, was the 
 opportunity which he enjoyed of hearing the history 
 of a certain Gascon squire called 'le bastol de 
 Mauleon,' who may be taken as a typical example of 
 the military adventurers of that age. 
 
 He was about fifty when Froissart knew him, and 
 ' arrived at the Hotel of the Moon, where I lodged, in 
 grand array, having led horses with him, like a great 
 baron, and he and his attendants were served on plate 
 of gold and silver.' . . . ' One night as we were sitting 
 round the fire chatting and waiting for midnight, which 
 was the hour the Count supped,' Mauleon's cousin asked 
 him to tell his adventures, which he did accordingly. 
 Mauleon first served at Poitiers under the Captal de 
 Buch, where he made three prisoners, who paid him 
 4000 francs. He then went to Prussia under the
 
 ir FROISSART'S CHRONICLES 37 
 
 Captal de Buch. Next he was employed in putting- 
 down the Jacquerie. Afterwards he served under 
 the Count of Foix in Picardy, and the King of England 
 against the French, ' and gained very large sums of 
 money.' 
 
 After the peace between England and France 
 he became a free companion, and at the battle of 
 Brejnais overpowered the Constable of France, where 
 he and his friends 'enriched themselves by good 
 prisoners and by the towns and castles which they 
 took in the Archbishopric of Lyons.' He then formed 
 part of a body hired b} r the Pope at Avignon for 
 60,000 francs. Part of them went into Italy, but 
 others, of whom Mauleon was one, stayed in France, 
 Avhere they had possession of many towns and castles, 
 and ransomed the whole country, and they could 
 ' only be freed from us by well paying.' They were 
 nominally in the service of the King of Navarre, but 
 in reality were carrying on war on their own account. 
 Mauleon at this time held, with forty lances, a castle 
 called Le Bee d'Allier, 'where I made great profit.' 
 He was on one occasion taken prisoner by a cousin, 
 who ransomed him on the field for 1000 francs, and 
 gave him a passport home to the Bee d'Allier. 
 
 He went on a raid with an English knight, Sir John 
 Aymeiy, but fell into an ambush and was again taken 
 prisoner. He was set free, and went to Brittany, 
 where ' I made such good prisoners they paid me 
 2000 francs.' Thence he went into Spain with Sir 
 Hugh Calverley, then back again into Gascony, where
 
 38 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 lie fought for the Black Prince. Most of his com- 
 panions were killed in the course of time, but ' I have 
 guarded the frontiers and supported the King of 
 England, for my estate is in the Bordelois ; and I 
 have been at times so miserably poor that I had not 
 a horse to mount ; at other times rich enough, just 
 as good fortune befell me.' He held various castles, 
 one in particular, 'which has been worth to me, as 
 well by compositions as by good luck, 100,000 francs.' 
 This valuable castle he took by disguising himself 
 and some of his companions as women who had gone 
 out to draw water. As there was no guard at the 
 gate but a cobbler mending shoes, they easily took 
 possession. At the time of telling his story he was, 
 he said, doubtful how to act. ' I am in treaty with 
 the Count d'Armagnac and the Dauphin d'Auvergne, 
 who have been expressly commissioned by the King 
 of France to buy all towns and castles from the cap- 
 tains of the free companies. Several have sold their 
 forts and gone away. I am doubtful whether I shall 
 sell mine' (ii. 101-107). 
 
 There is not a word in Froissart's account of 
 Mauleon's adventures which indicates that he thought 
 them in the least degree disreputable or worthy of 
 blame. On the contrary, he displays throughout the 
 most lively satisfaction in his society, and appears to 
 have regarded with respect, not to say admiration, a 
 man w T ho, according to our modern standard, was 
 simply a robber on a large scale. 
 
 The following solilocpiy, which he puts into the
 
 ii froissart's chronicles 39 
 
 mouth of one Aymerigon Marcel, is a good description 
 of the pleasures of such a life. ' There is no pleasure 
 nor glory in this world like what men-at-arms such as 
 ourselves enjoyed. How happy were we when riding 
 out in search of adventures, we met a rich abbot, a 
 merchant, or a string of mules well laden with 
 draperies, furs, or spices from Montpellier, Beciers, 
 or other places ; all was our own, or at least ransomed 
 according to our will. Every day we gained money. 
 The peasants of Auvergne and Limousin loved us, 
 and provided our castle with corn, oats, hay, good 
 wine, fat hens, sheep, and all sorts of poultry ; we 
 lived like kings, and when we went abroad the 
 country trembled ; everything was ours both in going 
 and returning. How did I and the Bourg de Copaire 
 take Carlat? and how did I and Perrot le Bearnois 
 win Chalnet? How did we — you and I — without 
 other assistance, scale the strong castle of Marquel 
 that belongs to the Count Dauphin 1 I only kept it 
 five days, and was paid down on a table 5000 francs 
 for it, of which I gave back 1000 from love to the 
 Count's children. By my troth this was a profitable 
 and pleasant life, and I feel myself much reduced by 
 selling Alosse, which was strong enough to resist any 
 force that could be brought against it, and was besides, 
 at the time of my surrendering, so plentifully stored 
 with provisions and other necessaries that it would 
 not have needed anything for seven years ' (ii. 450). 
 
 Froissart does afterwards speak of these people as 
 ' robbers,' but though one or two such expressions
 
 40 HOBAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 occur in his pages, and though there may perhaps 
 be some degree of conscious irony in Marcel's soliloquy, 
 such feelings are altogether exceptional in him. On 
 the whole he is perfectly satisfied with the age in 
 which he lives, the notion of reform or even of 
 reproof hardly presents itself seriously to his mind. 
 
 He gives, for instance, without observation of any 
 sort, as the last words of Geoffrey Teate, captain of 
 the Castle of Ventadour x the following among other 
 observations : ' I beg you ' (his followers) ' will tell me 
 if you have taken any steps, or have thought of 
 electing any one able to govern and lead you as men- 
 at-arms ought to be governed and led, for such has 
 been my manner of carrying on war, and in truth I 
 cared not against whom. I did indeed make it under 
 shadow of the king of England's name in preference 
 to any other, but I have always looked for gain and 
 conquest wherever thej^ may be had, and such should 
 ever be the conduct of adventurous companions who 
 are for deeds of arms and to advance themselves.' 
 
 One of the most striking illustrations of the 
 
 perfect ease and satisfaction with which Froissart 
 
 regarded the existing state of things is to be found 
 
 in his account of the various outbreaks which took 
 
 place in his time on the part of the peasantry against 
 
 the nobility. He describes the jacquerie simply as a 
 
 1 II. 387. The whole history of Ventadour, its importance, 
 its stories, the organisation of the garrison, and the manner in 
 which it was captured, is highly illustrative of the fourteenth 
 century, but est modus in rebus, see II. 9, 314, 387, 428, and 
 I. 568.
 
 ii FROISS ART'S CHRONICLES 41 
 
 modern writer would describe any ordinary crime, 
 without a word of explanation even of the causes of 
 the revolt, or of pity for the fearful (though not 
 undeserved) punishment which it met with. His 
 account of Wat Tyler's insurrection goes rather more 
 into detail, and is curious on several accounts and 
 especially on account of its callousness, and the utter 
 ignorance which it shows of principles which in our 
 days are universally familiar. 
 
 After describing Ball's sermons at some length he 
 concludes with the following observation. ' In order 
 that gentlemen and others may take example and 
 correct wicked rebels, I will most amply detail how 
 this business was conducted.' 1 Farther on he tells, with- 
 out the smallest mark of disapprobation, the manner in 
 which Richard II. got out of his difficulties for the 
 moment, by promising the insurgents general enfran- 
 chisement, and giving them letters under his seal 
 granting it, 2 and how he afterwards got the letters 
 back and tore them up, 3 and hanged or beheaded 
 upwards of 1500 persons in various parts of the 
 country for having obtained them. 
 
 Such being the general style and tone of Froissart's 
 work, it is natural to ask what can be collected from 
 his book as to his opinions and those of his age on 
 
 1 I. 654, 666, 667. 2 I. 666, 667. 
 
 3 667. This was one of the earliest instances of the much 
 contested power of martial law. See charge of C. -J. Cockhurn 
 in the cases of Nelson and Brand. Several passages in Froissart 
 illustrate this subject, hut he is so loose a writer and knew so 
 little of law, that what he says is not worth quoting.
 
 42 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 great subjects 1 Froissart was a priest, and for this 
 as for other reasons, it is natural to look first at the 
 light which his book throws on the religious condition 
 of the as;e which he described. The result is curious. 
 
 Every page of Joinville is stamped deep with the 
 impress of religion. Comines never misses an oppor- 
 tunity of dwelling after his manner on the pro- 
 vidential government of the world, but M. Michelet's 
 strange remark that the word God is not to be found 
 in Shakespeare would be far less unjust if applied to 
 Froissart. It is not so much the word as the thought 
 that is wanting, and that not only in Froissart him- 
 self, but in the persons about whom he writes and 
 the general nature of the events which he has to relate. 
 His book suggests that religion, and morals too, were 
 in his time under an almost total eclipse, and that the 
 only substitute for them, such as it was, which his 
 writings show to have existed was polished manners, 
 as between gentlemen. The only observation which 
 I have noticed of what may be called a pious 
 character in the whole book occurs in the description 
 of the sudden attack of madness which came upon 
 Charles VI. when in his march against Brittany. ' It 
 was manifestly the work of God, whose punishments 
 are severe, to make his creatures tremble.' 
 
 Here follows a reference to Nebuchadnezzar, and 
 then Froissart observes, 'To speak truly, God the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three in name 
 but one in substance, was, is, and ever will be of as 
 sufficient power to declare his works as from the
 
 ii feoissart's chronicles 43 
 
 beginning, and one ought not therefore to be surprised 
 at whatever wonderful things happen.' 
 
 There is a little, but not very much more, trace of 
 ecclesiastical as distinguished from religious feeling in 
 Froissart. He refers several times to the great schism 
 between the Urbanists and the Clementists, which 
 lasted through nearly the whole of the period of 
 which he writes. His tone upon the subject is that 
 of a sensible man of the world who hated to see his 
 profession lowered in influence and public estimation 
 by the disputes of its members. As to the dissen- 
 sions between the clergy and the nobles, he says, ' To 
 satisfy the people and excuse the great barons, I 
 may say, that as there cannot be a yolk of an egg- 
 without its white, nor a white without the yolk, so 
 neither the clergy nor the lords can exist independ- 
 ently of each other, for the lords, not being ruled 
 by the clergy, would degenerate into beasts' (ii. 145). 
 
 The secret contempt of the priest for the noble, 
 which peeps out at the end of this passage, is all the 
 more remarkable because it is so seldom and so 
 shortly expressed. The tacit assumption in the last 
 sentence that the clergy could not possibly dispense 
 with the support of the nobility and that the Church was 
 essentially an aristocratic institution is also notable. 
 
 These observations are contained in an account of 
 one Friar John de la Eoche-Tailtade, who enforced 
 the doctrine that it was necessary for the clergy to 
 bear their honours meekly, by a parable showing 
 how a certain bird, 'a prodigiously handsome bird,'
 
 44 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 was born without feathers, and was on account of his 
 beauty supplied with feathers by others. Becoming 
 proud, those who had lent their feathers reclaimed 
 them, whereupon the bird begged for mercy and 
 ' promised henceforward never to risk by pride or 
 presumption the loss of his feathers.' His friends 
 agreed to his conditions. ' We will gladly see thee 
 fly among us so long as thou shalt bear thyself 
 meekly, for so it becometh thee, but if ever thou 
 shalt act arrogantly we will pluck thee bare and 
 leave thee in the naked state we found thee.' 
 
 The fortunes of John de la Roche-Tailtade are worth 
 notice. He gave the obvious interpretation of the 
 parable, and the cardinals ' would willingly have put 
 him to death but they could not find any just cause for 
 it. They suffered him to live, but confined him a close 
 prisoner, for he proposed such deep questions and ex- 
 amined so closely the Scriptures that he might perhaps, 
 had he been at liberty, have led the world astray.' 1 
 
 The view which is disclosed by this story of 
 the relation between the Church and the nobles, and 
 of the necessity of the feathers to the prodigiously 
 handsome bird, is delightfully simple and natural. So, 
 too, is the fate of poor John de la Roche-Tailtade. 
 Elsewhere 2 Froissart describes him as a prophet who 
 ' made many books full of much science and learning,' 
 and foretold many events ' which he never could 
 have foretold as a prophet but by means of the 
 ancient Scriptures and the Holy Spirit.' Froissart 
 1 II. 145, 146. '- I. 280.
 
 n froissart's chronicles 45 
 
 obviously regarded him as on the whole a dangerous 
 character. 
 
 Small as is the part allotted to religious feeling or 
 reflections in Froissart's pages, there is a fair share of 
 superstition and plenty of ignorance. Several instances 
 of this occur in the account which he gives of the siege 
 of the French and English jointly, during one of their 
 truces, of the town of Africa, a fortress in Morocco. 
 
 The Saracens sent to ask the Christians why 
 they attacked people who had never offended them 1 
 Hereupon 'twelve of the greatest barons in the 
 army assembled in the Duke of Bourbon's tent, 
 and the messenger and interpreter being called in, 
 the last was ordered to tell him from the lords 
 present "that in consequence of their ancestors 
 having crucified and put to death the Son of God 
 called Jesus Christ, a true prophet, without any cause 
 or just reason, they were come to retaliate on them 
 for this infamous and unjust judgment. Secondly, 
 they were unbaptized and infidels in the faith to the 
 holy Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ, and had no Creed 
 of their own. For those and other causes they held 
 the Saracens and their whole sect as enemies, and 
 were come to revenge the injuries they had done to 
 their God and Faith.'" Upon this 'the Saracen 
 laughed heartily and said they made assertions with- 
 out proof, for it was the Jews who had crucified Jesus 
 Christ and not they.' l 
 
 Various miracles occurred at the siege. The 
 1 II. 471.
 
 46 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Genoese had a dog which belonged to no one in 
 particular, and always barked when the Saracens 
 came out, whence he was called the dog of our Lady. 
 
 'Through the grace of God and the Virgin 
 Mary a remedy was found for a swarm of flies in the 
 shape of a thunderstorm. The Virgin herself and a 
 company of ladies dressed in white appeared to and 
 frightened the Saracens. 1 Probably this was because 
 the business was in the nature of a Crusade, but there 
 are some though not many miracles reported on other 
 occasions. The oddest story by far in the whole book 
 relates to a rapping spirit, who appears to have be- 
 haved himself in a castle in the Pyrenees, in the 
 fourteenth century, in the very same way in which 
 Wesley's Ghost behaved at Epworth, in the eighteenth, 
 and the ghosts of our own time in Europe and 
 America. He was, however, a very superior sort of 
 ghost, as, unlike his successors, he had something to 
 say for himself, and anticipated the electric telegraph. 
 The story is this : — 
 
 Raymond of Corasse, a Baron of Foix, had a suit 
 about tithes against a priest of Catalonia, to whom he 
 refused to do justice though the priest got judgment. 
 The priest said he would send a champion whom the 
 baron should fear, and took his departure. Three 
 months after, while the baron and his wife were in 
 bed, 'There came invisible messengers who made such a 
 noise, knocking about everything they met with in the 
 castle, as if they were determined to destroy all within 
 
 1 II. 472, 473.
 
 II froissart's chronicles 47 
 
 it, and they gave such loud raps at the door of the 
 chamber of the knight that the lady was exceedingly 
 frightened. On the following night the noises and 
 rioting were renewed, but much louder than before, 
 and there were such blows struck against the door 
 and windows of the chamber of the knight that it 
 seemed they would break them down.' The knight 
 got up and asked who was there. The ghost (who 
 was able, it seems, to talk) said his name was Orthon 
 and he was sent by the priest. The knight said, 
 ' Serving a clerk will not be of much advantage to 
 thee, I beg thou Avilt therefore leave him and serve 
 me.' Orthon, who ' had taken a liking to the knight ' 
 said, ' Do you wish it 1 ' — ' Yes,' replied the knight, 
 ' but no harm must be done to any one within these 
 walls.' — 'Oh no,' answered Orthon, 'I have no power 
 to harm any one, only to awaken thee and disturb 
 thy rest or that of other persons.' At last it was 
 settled that Orthon was to serve the knight, and he 
 accordingly called frequently, and told him news from 
 all parts of the world for five years. ' Two or three 
 times every week he visited the knight and told him 
 all the news of the countries he had frequented, which 
 the knight wrote immediately to the Count of Foix, 
 who was much delighted therewith, as there is not a 
 lord in the world more eager for news from foreign parts 
 than he is.' Being pressed to appear to the knight, 
 Orthon did so, first in the shape of two straws and 
 then in the shape of a ' sharp pointed lean sow.' 
 Unluckily the knight set his dogs at the sow and so
 
 48 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 affronted Orthon and broke off the connection. The 
 story is introduced to explain the alleged fact that 
 the Count of Foix knew of the battle of Algerbarola 
 in Portugal, in which the French and Bearnese were 
 defeated with great loss by the Portuguese and 
 English, the day after it was fought, 1 though the 
 news did not arrive by the ordinary route for ten 
 days. The story was told with much mystery. ' He 
 drew me aside to a corner of the vault of the Chapel 
 of Athes and thus began his tale.' 
 
 One of the most interesting of the matters to be 
 collected from Froissart is his estimate of the char- 
 acter of the different nations which he had occasion 
 to describe, and his accounts of their manners and 
 customs. His observations on national character are 
 mere passing remarks. The notion of set disserta- 
 tions on such a topic had not occurred to him. 
 Indeed the limits of race and nation were then but 
 ill fixed. Froissart constantly speaks of people 
 becoming Englishmen and Frenchmen ; in the sense 
 of taking the side of the French or the English. He 
 constantly speaks of Gascons as Englishmen, and on 
 the other hand remarks that in England he thought 
 a Hainaulter was called a Frenchman 'for all who 
 speak the langue d'oil are by English considered as 
 Frenchmen, whatever country they come from.' 2 He 
 makes hardly any general observations on the French 
 character, but a good many on that of the English. 
 It is pleasant even at this distance of time to read his 
 1 August 1385. 2 II. 5, 69.
 
 ii FROISSART S CHRONICLES 49 
 
 laudatory observations on the warlike qualities of our 
 ancestors (who however continually met their match). 
 For instance, in speaking of the battle of Otterbourne, 
 he says, a ' Of all the battles that have been described 
 in this history great and small, this was the best 
 fought and the most severe ; for there was not a man, 
 knight, or squire who did not acquit himself gallantly 
 hand to hand with his enemy. It resembled somewhat 
 that of Cockerel' 2 which was as long and hardily 
 disputed.' 'The English and Scotch are excellent 
 men-at-arms, and whenever they meet in battle they 
 do not spare each other ; nor is there any check to 
 their courage as long as their weapons endure.' 
 
 So in speaking of the army which the Black 
 Prince took into Spain, he says, ' The prince had with 
 him the flower of chivalry, and there were under him 
 the most renowned combatants in the whole world.' 
 Otherwise, however, he had not a very good opinion 
 of the English. He says, 'Consider how serious a 
 thing it is when the people rise up in arms against 
 their sovereign, more especially such a people as the 
 English. In such a case there is no remedy, for they 
 are the worst people in the world, the most obstinate 
 and presumptuous, and of all England the Londoners 
 are the leaders, for to say the truth they are very 
 powerful in men and in wealth. 
 
 1 II. 368. 
 
 2 I. 319, 22, fought on the 24th May 1364. The French 
 under Du Guesclin defeated the English and Navarrese under 
 the Captal de Buch. 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 HOKAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 Iii the city and neighbourhood there are 24,000 
 men completely armed from head to foot and full 
 30,000 archers. This is a great force, and they are 
 bold and courageous, and the more blood is spilt the 
 greater is their courage.' l 
 
 He speaks too of their 'hot and impatient 
 temper,' 2 and describes their behaviour to the Gas- 
 cons very unfavourably. ' I was at Bordeaux when 
 the Prince of AY ales marched to Spain, and witnessed 
 the great haughtiness of the English, who are affable 
 to no other nation than their own ; nor could any of 
 the gentlemen of Gascony or Aquitaine, though they 
 had ruined themselves by their wars, obtain office or 
 employment in their own country, for the English 
 said they were neither on a level with them nor 
 worthy of their society, which made the Gascons 
 very indignant.' He says, indeed, in describing his 
 visit to England, ' that the English are courteous 
 to strangers ; ' but it is easy to recognise in these re- 
 marks the stubborn courage and intense self-reliance, of 
 which we are accustomed to boast, in connection with 
 that unsympathetic harshness of character, which we 
 have had such bitter cause to regret. A character- 
 istic little touch is introduced in 3 the description of 
 the feelings with which the English received the news 
 of the French victory over the Flemings at Roserque. 
 We can, as it were, hear the voice of John Bull growling 
 to us his descendants over an interval of five hundred 
 years. When the English knights conversed together 
 
 1 II. 694. " I. 548. 3 I. p. 756.
 
 ii FIlOISSAttT'S CHRONICLES 51 
 
 on the subject they said, ' Ha, by Holy Mary, how 
 proud will the French be now for the heap of 
 peasants they have slain ! I wish to God Philip van 
 Artevekle had had 2000 of our lances and 6000 
 archers, not one Frenchman would have escaped death 
 or imprisonment ; by God they shall not long keep 
 this honour,' etc. etc. Might not this have been said 
 in any club in London apropos of the news of Magenta 
 or Solferino 1 
 
 The Scotch came off even worse than the English 
 at Froissart's hands. 'The Scots,' he says, 'are a 
 wicked race, and pay not any regard to times or 
 respites but as it suits their own convenience.' l Else- 
 where he observes that a horse was missed, ' for a 
 Scotsman (they are all thieves) had stolen him.' 2 
 There are two passages which give a very clear 
 notion of the state of Scotland, but they are too long 
 to quote. One is an elaborate account 3 of the Scotch 
 manner of making war, the other an account 4 of the 
 quarrels between the Scotch, and the French who came 
 to help them against the English, and were all but 
 starved to death by their allies. 
 
 Froissart was never himself in Ireland, but one of 
 the best passages 5 in the book is the account which 
 he gives, on the relation of a squire called Henry 
 Castide, of their manners. Castide had been taken 
 prisoner by an Irish chief and lived with him seven 
 years, during which time he married his daughter. 
 
 1 II. 567. 2 II. 363. 
 
 3 I. 18, 20, 23, 24. 4 II. 55. 5 II. 575-578.
 
 52 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 From his connection with Ireland he was appointed 
 to take charge of four petty kings, who had sworn 
 obedience to the English government, and to give 
 them an English education. He describes their 
 savage habits (e.g. ' They had another custom I knew 
 to be common in the country which was the not 
 wealing breeches '), and how he gradually accustomed 
 them to civilisation, as then understood. Nothing 
 can be more thoroughly kind, judicious, and gentle- 
 manlike than his whole account of his treatment, or 
 than the treatment itself. He describes the Irish as 
 mere savages : ' The inland natives are unacquainted 
 with commerce, nor do not wish to know anything of 
 it, but simply to live like wild beasts.' x 
 
 I may say in conclusion a word or two as to the 
 literary merits of Froissart. His power of narrative 
 has never probably been exceeded, and the force and 
 beauty of particular passages of his book are too well 
 known to require illustration. The only misfortune 
 is that they are imbedded in such a mass of matter 
 which has lost whatever interest it once possessed. 
 As instances I may refer to the exquisite story of 
 Edward III. and the Countess of Salisbury, the 
 account of the battle of Otterbourne, the account of 
 the death of Queen Philippa. It may perhaps interest 
 some readers, who may not have read it, to see the 
 story told in the words of Lord Berners — the spelling- 
 only being altered. 
 
 ' There fell in England a heavy case and a common, 
 1 I. 427.
 
 it froissart's chronicles 53 
 
 howbeit it was right piteous for the king, his children, 
 and all his realm, for the good Queen of England that 
 so many good deeds had done in her time, and so 
 many knights succoured, and ladies and damsels 
 comforted, and had so largely departed of her goods 
 to her people, and naturally loved always the nation 
 of Hainault, the country where she was born. She 
 fell sick in the castle of Windsor, the which sickness 
 continued on her so long that there was no remedy 
 but death ; and the good lady whenever she knew and 
 perceived that there was no remedy but death, she 
 put out of her bed her right hand, and took the king 
 by his right hand, who was right sorrowful at his 
 heart. Then she said : " Sir, we have lived in peace, 
 love, and great prosperity, and all our time together. 
 Sir, now I pray you at our departing that you will 
 grant me three desires." The king right sorrowfully 
 weeping, said : " Madam, desire what you will, I grant 
 it." — " Sir," said she, " I require you first of all to all 
 manner of people such as I have dealt with in their 
 merchandise on this side the sea and beyond, that it 
 may please you to pay everything that I owe to them 
 or to any other ; and, secondly, Sir, all such ordin- 
 ances and promises as I have made to the churches, 
 as well of this country as beyond the seas, where I 
 have had my devotions that it may please you to 
 accomplish and fulfil the same. Thirdly, Sir, I 
 require you, that it may please you to take none other 
 sepulture whensoever it shall please God to call you 
 out of this transitory life, but beside me in West-
 
 54 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay ii 
 
 minster." The King all weeping said: "Madam, I 
 grant all your desire." Then the good lady and 
 queen made her the sign of the cross, and commended 
 her husband to God, and her youngest born prince 
 who was then beside her.'
 
 Ill . 
 
 PHILIPPE DE COMINES 1 
 
 The memoirs of Comines probably contain a larger 
 amount of matter of general and permanent interest 
 than any other book of the fifteenth century. In 
 general vigour of mind, in shrewdness of observation, 
 in all that we mean by mother-wit, their author was 
 a man of the very highest class. He had, moreover, a 
 turn for generalising and moralising upon the events 
 which came under his notice, which gives his memoirs 
 a kind and degree of interest quite peculiar to them- 
 selves. His reflections show us, with the utmost 
 possible distinctness, what was the tone of thought 
 current in his day amongst the most vigorous men of 
 the age, — men who took their views from the facts 
 which they saw around them, and who had not been 
 affected in any appreciable degree by the revival of 
 learning, which was then in its infancy. 
 
 Comines was just twenty years older than Erasmus 
 
 1 Memoires de Philippe de Comines, par Wile. Dupont, 1840.
 
 56 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 (born 1466), and he died thirty years before Luther 
 (1546). The whole furniture of his mind, all his 
 principles of thought and action, were derived from 
 intimate intercourse with the men of action of his day 
 — Louis XL, Charles the Bold, and their various 
 generals and ministers, the last kings and nobles of the 
 Middle Ages. No writer, accordingly, sets in so strong 
 and definite a light, or illustrates in such a variety of 
 ways, the spirit by. which that age was informed or 
 the general principles which its leading men belieyed 
 and acted upon. As, however, his reflections are 
 inextricably mixed up with the facts to which they 
 refer, and as the outline of these facts is less familiar 
 to ordinary readers than their general purport and 
 bearing, it is necessary to give some short account 
 of the connection and sequence of the events in order 
 to make the observations themselves intelligible. 
 
 Louis XL succeeded to the crown on the death of 
 his father Charles VII, which took place on the 22d 
 July 1461. Politically, his position was most un- 
 favourable and precarious. In fact he was rather the 
 head of a confederacy than an actual sovereign. 
 
 The Dukes of Burgundy ruled almost as inde- 
 pendent princes over a heterogenous mass of provinces 
 which included Belgium, Picardy and the north-eastern 
 side of France, as far south almost as the borders of 
 Switzerland. Brittany was independent, or nearly 
 so, under its dukes. Navarre and Foix were inde- 
 pendent in the south. The Count of St. Pol held an 
 important district between the territories of the King
 
 Ill 
 
 PIIILIITE DE COMINKS 57 
 
 of France and the Duke of Burgundy, including the 
 frontier towns on the Somme — Amiens, Ahheville, 
 and St. Quentin, which stood pledged to the Duke 
 of Burgundy for 400,000 crowns, and opened to him, 
 and therefore to his English allies, a road by which 
 invaders could advance straight upon Paris at their 
 pleasure. 
 
 Besides these real feudatories, who were more or 
 less in the position of independent sovereigns, there 
 were a host of nobles who aspired with hopes of 
 success to gaining for themselves a similar position. 
 Within less than four years after Louis's accession 
 (December 1464) they formed for this purpose the 
 association called the Ligue du Bien Publique, the 
 principal members of which were the Duke of Berry, 
 the King's younger brother, the titular King of 
 Sicily, and his son the Duke of Calabria, the Count 
 of Armagnac, the Duke of Orleans, and his brother 
 the Duke of Angouleme, the Duke of Bourbon, and 
 the Counts of Nevers, St. Pol, Tancarville, and Pen- 
 thievre. 1 The head of the conspiracy was Charles the 
 Bold, then Count of Charolais. Their object in general 
 terms was to compel Louis to parcel out France into 
 appanages, over which they were to have rule. 
 
 With this view their armies, headed respectively 
 by Charles the Bold, the Duke of Brittany, and the 
 Duke of Bourbon, took the field against Louis in the 
 spring of 14G5. Louis marched against the latter 
 and speedily compelled him to sign an armistice. 
 1 Rene, the King of Sicily, ruled in Provence.
 
 58 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 He then returned towards Paris, and at Mont-1'Hery 
 encountered the army of Charles the Bold advancing 
 from the north. An indecisive action between them 
 took place on the 16th July 1465, in which one wing 
 of each army defeated the wing of the enemy's army 
 which was opposed to it. After the battle Louis 
 continued his march to Paris, whither, after some 
 delay, he was followed by Charles the Bold. After 
 some indecisive attempts at a siege the war was 
 ended by the treaty of Conflans (29th October 1465), 
 by which Louis made enormous concessions to the 
 different princes, giving in particular the Duchy of 
 Normandy to his brother the Duke of Berry, and re- 
 turning to Charles the Bold the towns on the Somme 
 which about two years before (September 1463) he 
 had redeemed from Duke Philip. 
 
 So far the princes had triumphed. The rest of 
 the reign of Louis was occupied principally by the 
 successful efforts which he made to reduce them to 
 the position of subjects. The principal thing which 
 enabled him to do so was the excessive rashness 
 and presumption of his rival Charles the Bold, of 
 which, however, Louis took advantage in most cases 
 with consummate skill, though at least on one memor- 
 able occasion his over-cunning nearly ruined him. 
 
 Liege, and the towns on the Meuse, especially 
 Dinant, had always been favourable to France and ill- 
 affected to the Dukes of Burgundy. Charles the 
 Bold marched against them in November 1465 as 
 soon as the treaty of Conflans was concluded. By
 
 in rillLIPPE DE COMINES 59 
 
 January 146G he had extorted great concessions 
 from Liege, and in the following August he utterly 
 destroyed Dinant and inflicted further humiliations 
 on Liege, which tried to help it. Louis took the 
 opportunity of stirring up a quarrel between his 
 brother and the Duke of Brittany, under the cover of 
 which he dispossessed his brother of Normandy with 
 very little resistance (January 146G). On the 15th 
 June 1467 Duke Philip of Burgundy died, and was 
 succeeded by his son, who soon after his succession 
 fell into new and still more serious quarrels than 
 before with Liege, which was again encouraged to 
 revolt by the agents of Louis. On the 1 2th Novem- 
 ber Charles entered the town by a breach in the wall, 
 executed many of the citizens, and suppressed the 
 franchises of the town. Louis took the opportunity 
 of attacking the Duke of Alencon and deposing him 
 from his duchy. He further fortified his position by 
 domestic measures. He put into the hands of Tristan 
 l'Hermite, the provost -marshal, a summary power 
 of jurisdiction exactly corresponding to what has been 
 so much discussed in our own times under the name of 
 martial law. He assembled the states-general at Tours, 
 which sat only for eight days, but made unbounded 
 professions of obedience, and he encouraged up to a 
 certain point the formation of militia amongst the 
 great towns, and in particular at Paris. These 
 measures at once proved and extended his popularity 
 with the mass of the population who, on the whole, 
 rather admired the 'bonne et roide justice' of Tris-
 
 60 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 tan, and were willing to support Louis to any extent 
 against the princes. He accordingly assumed the 
 offensive, and marched forces into Brittany, which 
 compelled the Duke of Brittany and the Duke of 
 Berry to sign a treaty at Ancenis (10th September 
 1468), by which they gave up their alliance with the 
 Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Berry renouncing 
 his pretensions to Normandy, and contenting himself 
 with a pension instead of an appanage. 
 
 Louis was now in a position to attack the Duke 
 of Burgundy openly, but he was too jealous of his 
 generals to give any one of them so important a task. 
 He preferred to try the effect of a personal interview 
 with the Duke, and went for that purpose to Peronne 
 on the 9th October 1468. Whilst he was there in the 
 power of his rival the news arrived of a fresh out- 
 break at Liege, which had been excited by Louis's 
 manoeuvres. In order to save his life Louis was 
 compelled to join Charles in an attack upon Liege, 
 and to give a new appanage to his brother the Duke 
 of Berry. He accordingly assisted in the storm of 
 Liege (31st October), at which the town was burnt and 
 the people massacred, and gave his brother the Duchy 
 of Guienne instead of Champagne and Brie, which he 
 had promised to give him. The object of giving the 
 larger and more important province was to separate 
 him as far as possible from the Duke of Burgundy. ' 
 
 About this time Louis began to try to injure 
 Charles by intrigues with England. About eighteen 
 years had passed since the final expulsion of the
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES <>l 
 
 English from France (1450), but Charles the Bold 
 had preserved and extended his father's relations 
 with the English. He had married Margaret the 
 sister of Edward IV., and there was much commercial 
 intercourse between England and the Low Countries. 
 Louis XL accordingly favoured the Lancastrians, and 
 having entered into relations with Warwick, then in 
 disgrace in his government of Calais, did all in his 
 power to favour his descent into England (September 
 1470), which led to the expulsion of Edward IV. 
 Edward, however, returned in the following spring, 
 and re-established himself by the victories of Barnet 
 and Tewksbury (14th April, 4th May, 1471). This 
 policy naturally irritated Edward on the one hand 
 and Charles on the other, but its failure was almost 
 recompensed by the birth of a Dauphin, afterwards 
 Charles VIII., on the 30th June 1470, and the death 
 of the Duke of Guienne, the king's brother, on the 
 24th May 1472. Charles accused Louis of having 
 poisoned his brother, and marched an army into 
 France, which failed before Beauvais. On this 
 occasion St. Pol, in his capacity of Constable, acted 
 the part of a double traitor, doing his best to 
 betray Beauvais to Charles; but failing to join him 
 openly or effectually, Charles retired from France, 
 and proceeded to negotiate with the Emperor of 
 Germany, Frederic III., the erection of his states into 
 a kingdom (September 1473). Louis upon this made 
 a more serious attack than before on the remaining 
 princes of the Ligue du Bien Publique.
 
 62 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 The Count of Armagnac's capital, Lectoure, was 
 taken, he was killed, his wife poisoned, and the town 
 destroyed. The Duke of Alencon was taken prisoner, 
 was condemned to death, but kept in prison. The Duke 
 of Lorraine died (August 1473), it was said, of poison. 
 The Count of Maine died April 1473. The house of 
 Bourbon was represented by daughters, and, in a 
 word, the coalition of the princes of the blood was at 
 an end. In eight years from the battle of Mont- 
 l'Hery the only enemies whom Louis had left were 
 the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Brittany, and the 
 Count of St. Pol. Death and his own use of his 
 opportunities had freed him of the rest. His enemies, 
 however, were as bitter as ever. The Duke of 
 Burgundy concluded a treaty with Edward IV. in 
 July 1474, which led to an invasion from Calais in 
 May 1475. The consequences of this might have 
 been almost fatal to Louis if the Duke of Burgundy 
 had not chosen to spend the winter of 1474-75 in 
 besieging Neuss in the Bishopric of Cologne, by way 
 of carrying out designs into which he had entered, 
 of extending and consolidating the scattered parts of 
 his dominions and revenging himself on the Emperor 
 for refusing to make him a king. The siege of Neuss 
 did not succeed, and prevented Charles from assisting 
 Edward, who was induced by all sorts of wily flatteries 
 on the part of Louis to sign with him the treaty of 
 Pequigny (29th August 1475), which provided for 
 seven years' truce between England and France, and 
 ridded France for the time of the j)resence of the
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 63 
 
 invaders. The Duke of Burgundy, not discouraged 
 by his check before Neuss, formed a scheme for the 
 conquest of Lorraine and Alsace, and set out to besiege 
 Nancy. Before he did so he made a separate truce 
 with Louis, one article of which bound him to give 
 up St. Pol, who, having been driven by the king 
 from St. Quentin, had taken refuge at Mons in the 
 Duke's dominions (26th August). St. Pol was accord- 
 ingly given up on the 24th November, and was tried, 
 condemned, and (19th December 1475) executed as 
 a traitor at Paris. 
 
 Louis and Charles were now left face to face, but 
 the rashness of the latter soon delivered his rival from 
 all danger. Charles employed the period of peace on 
 which he had entered in invading Switzerland. The 
 Swiss called upon Louis for help, according to former 
 promises, but he left them to themselves. They soon 
 showed that they wanted no help. Charles's army 
 was routed at Granson, 3d March 1476. 
 
 He underwent a murderous defeat at Morat on the 
 22d June. These reverses encouraged Rene, the son 
 of the titular King of Sicily, to make an attack upon 
 Lorraine, which Charles had conquered, and he accord- 
 ingly possessed himself of the Duchy and of its capital 
 Nancy, which was besieged by Charles in the latter 
 part of October. Rene - with 8000 Swiss marched to 
 raise the siege, and Charles was defeated and killed 
 in the neighbourhood of the town on the 5th January 
 1477. 
 
 Without the loss of a moment Louis proceeded to
 
 64 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 take possession of the greater part of the states of 
 Mary of Burgundy, the heir and daughter of Charles, 
 on the ground that she was his ward in chivalry, and 
 not contenting himself with this he raised an insurrec- 
 tion against her and her principal counsellors in the 
 Flemish towns. She sent an embassy to him from the 
 states of Ghent to treat of peace, instructed amongst 
 other things to say that she would be guided in all 
 respects by the advice of the states. He gave the 
 ambassadors a letter written in part in her own hand, 
 in which she said she would be guided by three of her 
 father's ministers, of whom the Chancellor Hugonet 
 and Humbercourt were two. This so enraged the 
 people of Ghent that Hugonet and Humbercourt were 
 put to death. Louis, however, did not succeed alto- 
 gether in detaching the Flemings from the Duchess. 
 Indeed, in betraying her confidence he overreached 
 himself, for he prevented her from marrying the 
 Dauphin, which, notwithstanding their difference of 
 age (she was twenty and he eight), she was not indis- 
 posed to do. To secure herself a protector she married 
 Maximilian of Austria (19th April 1477), through 
 whom began the long connection of the Low Countries 
 with the Empire. He was at first vigorously sup- 
 ported by the Flemings, but was obliged to give up 
 the Duchy of Burgundy to Louis (August 1480). 
 
 In the spring of 1480 the King's health began to 
 fail. He had an illness from which he never fully 
 recovered. His fortunes, however, culminated in the 
 most extraordinary manner. Bene, the titular King
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 05 
 
 of Sicily, died 10th July 1480, and Louis united 
 Provence to France ; Mary of Burgundy died 27th 
 March 1482, and the states of Burgundy, who were 
 disgusted with Maximilian, made a treaty with Louis at 
 Arras (23d December 1482) by which they agreed that 
 her daughter Margaret of Austria, a child of two years 
 of age, should be delivered over to Louis to be educated 
 by him till she was old enough to be married to the 
 Dauphin ; and in the meantime he received possession 
 of the county of Burgundy, Charolais, and Artois 
 as her dowry. Finally, Edward IV. died 9th April 
 1483, leaving England under the government of his 
 unfortunate infant son, and in a condition in which 
 Louis had nothing to fear from it. Louis was thus 
 triumphant at home and abroad. The Duke of 
 Brittany was the only one of his vassals who still 
 retained any independence. He was the unquestioned 
 and substantial ruler of the rest of France, inter- 
 preting that word in a wider sense than had ever 
 belonged to it before. He did not live, however, to 
 enjoy his triumph. He died on the 30th August 1483. 
 
 Such is a very short outline of the principal events 
 which Comines witnessed, and in one of which he 
 played a part by no means unimportant. Let us 
 now turn to his own observations upon them. The 
 principal dates in his own career are as follows : — 
 
 He was born at Commynes on the Lys in 1447. 
 He entered the service of Charles the Bold (then 
 Comte de Charolais) in 1464. He passed to the 
 service of Louis XL (8th August 1472), receiving from 
 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 him grants, and especially a grant of the principality 
 of Talmont, which were afterwards the cause of 
 litigations which embittered his later life. He served 
 Louis XI. till his death in August 1483. He passed 
 several years in litigation with the La Tremoille family, 
 who contested the grant of Talmont, and was finally 
 imprisoned in 1487 for two years and banished from 
 court till 1492. He was again taken into favour by 
 Charles VIIL, accompanied him in his Italian expedi- 
 tion in 1493-95, remained with him till hisdeath in April 
 1498, and then retired into private life till his own 
 death on the 18th October 1511 at the age of sixty-four. 
 
 He begins his work with a prologue 1 addressed to 
 the Archbishop of Vienne, a statesman, a scholar, a 
 physician, and more or less an astrologer, for it is said 
 that he predicted to Charles the Bold some of the 
 principal events of his life. His object, says Comines, 
 is principally to commemorate Louis XL 
 
 The Kingwas not perfect certainly — ' Perfection be- 
 longs to God alone ; but when in a prince virtue and 
 good qualities are more prominent than vice, he is 
 worthy of great honour and praise,' inasmuch as princes 
 have greater temptations than other men. Upon the 
 whole Comines ' never knew a prince who had fewer 
 vices than Louis,' though he had known many. The 
 book, he adds, is written at the archbishop's request, 
 — ' a gentleman of excellent conditions ' — and he, the 
 author, hopes that the archbishop means to use it as 
 materials for a book upon the subject to be written 
 
 1 I. 1-4.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 67 
 
 in Latin. It is obvious that Comines himself knew 
 no Latin, and did not think much of French. 
 
 The first book of the memoirs 1 contains an account 
 of the war of the public good, and in particular of the 
 battle of Mont-1'Hery (27th July 1465), a clumsy, 
 indecisive scuffle, not quite unlike the battle of 
 Sheriffmuir, in which each army beat half the other. 
 Comines's description of it is full of curious reflections, 
 the effect of which is heightened by the way in which 
 he passes from shrewd practical 2 observations to the 
 most refined speculation. Many of the Burgundian 
 nobility, he says, fought on foot, 'for amongst the 
 Burgundians at that time those who dismounted with 
 the archers were held in most honour, and a great 
 number of the gentry always did so, that the common 
 people might be more encouraged and might fight 
 better ; this they learned of the English whom Duke 
 Philip had served in France in his youth.' The 
 English were good soldiers, and 'tres grans cappi- 
 taines.' However, 'when God was tired of doing 
 them good, they fell into trouble, and the House of 
 York usurped the realm, or had it by a good title, 
 I can't say which, for of such things heaven dis- 
 poses.' 
 
 Comines adds farther on, 'Archers are the best 
 of troops, but they ought to be in thousands, and 
 ill mounted so that they may not be afraid of losing 
 their horses, — indeed they need not have any. More- 
 over, those who have never seen anything are better 
 
 1 I. 5, 113. 2 3, 33.
 
 68 HORAE SABBATIC AE ESSAY 
 
 in this business for a single day than those who have 
 much experience. This is also the opinion of the 
 English who are the flower of the archers of the 
 world.' The superiority of soldiers who do not know 
 their danger to those who do is not a very uncommon 
 remark in our own days, but the observant and rather 
 cynical vein which tends to it is relieved in the case 
 of Comines by one of quite a different order. The 
 horse, he says, did not wait for the foot at Mont- 
 l'Hery according to the orders given. ' And in this 
 God showed that battles are in his hand, and that he 
 disposes of victory at his pleasure. And I do not 
 believe that the human mind can sustain and set in 
 order so great a number of people, nor that matters 
 pass in the field as they are planned in the chamber ; 
 and any one who believed in himself to the point of 
 thinking so would be mistaken towards God if he 
 had natural reason.' 
 
 I suppose Comines means that men ought to act 
 for the best, and recollect that God overrules their 
 conduct, and that this is one of the ways in which 
 the works which he has commenced are accomplished. 
 ' However, every man ought to do what he can and 
 what he ought, and to admit that it is one of the 
 ways of accomplishing the works which God has some- 
 times commenced by small movements and occasions, 
 and by giving the victory sometimes to one sometimes 
 to another, and this is so great a mystery that king- 
 doms and great lordships sometimes are desolated by 
 it, and others increase and begin to reign.'
 
 HI THILIPrE DE COMINES 69 
 
 He goes on to describe the extreme confusion of the 
 battle. The Burgundian men-at-arms charged their 
 own archers and rode over them. On account of the 
 long peace hardly 50 out of 1 200 ' knew how to put a 
 lance in rest,' none of the servants were armed and 
 there were no regular troops. They thus broke 
 themselves. However, 'God who orders such mys- 
 teries ' determined that the right wing of the Count of 
 Charolais should win, which it accordingly did. ' I 
 was with him that day and was less frightened than 
 I ever was afterwards, because I was young (he was 
 eighteen) and knew nothing of danger ; but I was 
 surprised that any one should dare to defend himself 
 against such a prince as my master, for I thought he 
 was the greatest of all.' 1 What with the dust, the 
 high corn, the inexperience and absolute want of 
 discipline of the troops, everything fell into the wildest 
 confusion, and Comines had occasion to make many 
 shrewd observations. Louis and Charles, he said, 
 ought to have thought highly of those who stood by 
 them so well on this occasion, ' but they behaved like 
 men not like angels. Men lost their estates and 
 offices for having run away, and they were given to 
 others who had run ten leagues farther. One man 
 on our side lost credit and was banished from his 
 master's presence, and a month afterwards he had 
 more credit than before.' 2 Charles stayed on the 
 field, considering that he had "won the day, and cer- 
 tainly he was a remarkable man. ' Great princes ought 
 
 i 39. 2 47.
 
 70 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 to know that favour and good fortune comes from 
 God. I will say two things of him, one is, I think 
 no man ever worked harder in all opportunities for 
 bodily labour. The other is, I never knew a hardier 
 man. I never heard him say he was tired or saw 
 him appear to be frightened, and I was seven years 
 in the wars with him, always in the summer, and 
 sometimes winter and summer too.' 
 
 The interval between the battle and the treaty of 
 Conflans is made by Comines the occasion of several 
 curious observations and reflections. Whilst the 
 Burgundian army was lying at Estampes before it 
 marched to Paris, the Duke of Berry, Louis XL's 
 brother, who, by the final treaty became Duke of 
 Normandy, was talking about the battle. 'He was 
 very young and had never seen such actions, and it 
 seemed by his words that he was pained by them, 
 for he spoke of the great number wounded whom he 
 had seen on the side of the Count of Charolais, and 
 showed by his words that he should have wished that 
 this enterprise had never been undertaken than to 
 see so many evils happen by him and in his cause.' 
 Charles the Bold was disgusted at this weakness and 
 observed, 'Did you hear what that man said 1 ? He 
 is overcome by seeing 700 or 800 wounded men going 
 about the town who are nothing to him, and whom 
 he does not know. He would soon be overcome if 
 the matter in any way affected him himself, and 
 would be just the man to make terms readily and 
 leave us in the mud ; and on account of the old wars
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 71 
 
 which have formerly happened between his father 
 and mine, both parties ' (i.e. Louis XL and the French 
 princes) ' would readily join to turn upon us, so it is 
 necessary to look out for friends.' This ' imagination,' 
 and nothing else, says Comines, caused Charles the 
 Bold to send an embassy to England to make an 
 alliance with Edward IV., ' and many such works are 
 done in this world by imagination, especially amongst 
 great princes, who are much more suspicious than 
 other people by reason of the doubts and warnings 
 suggested to them very often on account of flattery 
 and without any need.' * 
 
 In speaking of the Burgundian party in Paris, 
 Comines says that they hoped to get offices or places 
 'which are more desired in this city than in any 
 other in the world, for those who have them get out 
 of them what they can and not what they ought ; 
 and there are unpaid offices which are sold for more 
 than fifteen years' purchase of their fees.' This 
 introduces a chapter 2 headed ' Digressions on state 
 offices and ambition from the example of the English.' 
 The Duke of Bedford, when Eegent of France and 
 living at Paris, had never less than 20,000 crowns a 
 month ; 3 and when he and others returned to England 
 they did not choose to diminish their state, whence 
 arose civil war which led ultimately to the establish- 
 ment on the throne of Henry VII. 'Thus it is not 
 at Paris or in France only that people fight for the 
 worldly goods and honours, and princes and great 
 
 1 I. 56-58. 2 Bk. I. ch. vii. 1-66. 3 I. 67.
 
 72 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 lords ought to fear greatly to allow parties to arise 
 in their households, for from thence the fire runs 
 over the provinces, but I think this happens only by 
 divine disposition ; for when princes and realms have 
 been very prosperous and rich and do not acknow- 
 ledge the source whence such graces proceed, God 
 raises up enemies male or female against them, 
 whom no one could expect, as you may see by the 
 kings mentioned in the Bible.' l 
 
 Paris, however, suggests more practical observations 
 to Comines. The following little bit of description 
 is very picturesque. 'I must say that this town of 
 Paris is well situated in the Isle of France, to be 
 able to supply two such strong armies, for we were 
 never in want of provisions, and inside Paris they 
 hardly perceived our being there. Nothing rose in 
 price except bread, and that rose one denier only ; 
 for we did not hold the upper rivers which are three, 
 namely, Marne, Youne, and Seine, and other small 
 ones which fall into them. Taken altogether I never 
 saw a city surrounded by better or more fruitful 
 country, and the quantity of goods arriving there is 
 almost incredible. Since that time I have been at 
 Paris with King Louis half a year without stirring, 
 lodged at the Tourelles and eating and sleeping 
 with him as a rule, and since his death for twenty 
 months against my will, kept a prisoner in his palace, 
 where I saw from my windows whatever came up 
 the Seine from Normandy. Incomparably more 
 
 .. ■ 'I. 70.
 
 Ill 
 
 PHILIPPE DE COMINES 73 
 
 came than I should ever have believed had I not 
 seen it.' 
 
 The description of Paris introduces a further di- 
 gression on some vices and virtues of Louis XL It 
 is introduced by a remark on the necessity of keeping 
 your party out of the way of people who can seduce 
 them, especially of a ' prince who wishes to gain 
 people, Avhich is a great grace which God gives to 
 princes who know how to do it, and is a sign that he 
 is not stained by that foolish vice and sin of pride 
 which procures hatred towards all persons ' (who are 
 proud). 'For which reason when people come to 
 such negotiations as treaties of peace, they should be 
 made by the most trustworthy servants whom princes 
 have and men of middle ages so that their weakness 
 may not lead them to make a dishonourable bargain, 
 or to frighten their master on their return more than 
 necessary.' It is in illustration of this that Comines 
 describes Louis XL 'I have entered on this matter 
 because I have seen much cheating in this world, and 
 in that on the part of many servants towards their 
 masters, and they cheat princes and lords who are 
 proud and will not hear people speak more often 
 than the humble who listen to them willingly. Of 
 all that ever I knew the wisest in getting out of 
 scrapes in time of adversity was King Louis XL our 
 master ; and the most humble in words and in dress, 
 and the one who worked hardest to gain a man who 
 could serve him or hurt him, and he did not give up 
 on being once refused by a man whom he was trying
 
 74 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 to gain, but continued making large promises and 
 actually giving money and estate to one whom he 
 knew to please him. And those whom he had turned 
 out of their places in time of peace and prosperity he 
 bought back very dear when he needed them, and used 
 them and bore no grudge against them for the past. 
 He was naturally a friend to people of middling condi- 
 tion, and the enemy of the great, who could do without 
 him. No man ever listened so much to people or 
 inquired into so many things as he did or wished to 
 know so many people ; for to say the truth he knew 
 all people of authority and worth who were in England, 
 Spain, Portugal, the Lordships of the Dukes of 
 Burgundy, and in Brittany, as well as his own sub- 
 jects, and these habits and manners of his saved his 
 crown, if we consider the enemies whom he had made 
 on his accession to the realm. But, above all, his 
 great liberality served him, for as he was wise in 
 adversity ; so on the contrary, as soon as he thought 
 he was in security or even in a truce, he set himself 
 to discontent people by small means which were of 
 little use to him, and he could hardly bear to be at 
 peace. He spoke of people highly, and as readily in 
 their presence as in their absence, except those whom 
 he feared, who were many, for he was a sufficiently 
 timid character. When his talk had done him some 
 harm, or when he suspected that it had, and wished 
 to set it to rights, he spoke thus to the person in 
 question. I know my tongue has done me much 
 harm ; also at times it has given me great pleasure.
 
 Hi PHILIPPE DE COMINES 75 
 
 It is at all events right that I should make amends. 
 He never used these private speeches without doing 
 some benefit to the person to whom he spoke, and he 
 never did small ones.' 1 
 
 Comines concludes this character of his hero by 
 dwelling on the advantage of his early adversities and 
 contrasting him with the common run of the French 
 nobility. ' Their education has no other end but to 
 make them fools as to dress and as to words. They 
 know nothing of literature. Not a single man of sense 
 is put about them. They have governors to whom 
 people speak of their affairs, but to themselves nothing ; 
 the governors do their business, and I know lords who 
 have not thirteen livres' rent in money who are proud 
 of saying " Speak to my people," thinking by such 
 expressions to imitate the very great. So I have often 
 seen their servants make a profit of them, making 
 them well understand that they were fools.' 
 
 Besides the interest which attaches to the de- 
 scription of Louis XI. contained in this passage, it 
 deserves notice as being one of many illustrations 
 afforded by Comines's memoirs of the contempt which 
 he felt for the average princes of his day, and of the 
 decree in which his admiration of Louis XL was due 
 to the fact that he considered him superior to the 
 natural weaknesses of his class. Comines hated and 
 despised crowned heads as a rule, and his book is full 
 of cynical maxims and reflections about them. Upon 
 the treaty of Conflans he observes, ' Thus you may 
 
 1 I. 84, 85.
 
 76 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 see that it is almost impossible that two great Courts 
 should agree on account of the reports and suspicion 
 which they continually feel. Two great princes who 
 wished to love each other well ought never to see each 
 other, but to send good and sensible men to each other 
 who might discourse with them and make up quarrels.' 
 
 This amiable sentiment is by way of commentary 
 on the affair of Peronne, repeated more fully in 
 another part of the book. If two princes meet it is 
 probable that they will hate each other. ' It is great 
 folly for two great princes, who are, as it were, 
 equal in power, to see each other unless they are 
 very young, which is the time when they think of 
 nothing but their pleasures ; but as soon as they have 
 been seized with the desire of increasing at each 
 other's expense, even if there were no danger to their 
 person (which is almost impossible), still their ill-will 
 and envy increase.' 1 
 
 At all events, their servants are sure to quarrel ; 
 ' the servants cannot but talk of past times, and one 
 side or the other will take offence. The team of one 
 must be better equipped than that of the other, whence 
 mockeries, which marvellously displease those who are 
 mocked ; and when they are of different nations their 
 language and dress are different, and what pleases the 
 one displeases the other. Of the two princes, it 
 generally happens that one is handsomer and more 
 agreeable than the other, of which he is vain and for 
 which he likes to be praised, and this cannot be done 
 
 1 I. 163.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINBS 77 
 
 without blaming the other. The first days after 
 they have gone good stories are put about, and 
 afterwards by habit, by carelessness, by way of con- 
 tinuation they are told at dinner or supper, and then 
 on each side they are reported.' * 
 
 Nothing can exceed Comines's hatred for princes. 
 He gravely compares the relative demerits of the fools 
 and the rogues, under which heads most of his many 
 royal acquaintances appear to have come. Farther on 2 
 he says, ' I have known two kinds of princes, some so 
 subtle and suspicious that one could not know how to 
 live with them, and they always thought that they were 
 being deceived. The others trusted their servants 
 sufficiently, but they were so heavy and understood 
 their business so ill that they could not know whether 
 they were treated well or ill. The latter are easily 
 turned from hatred to love and love to hatred, and 
 though there are very few good ones of either sort, 
 either of those with whom there is no great business, 
 or of those with whom there is no security, still I 
 should prefer to live under the wise rather than the 
 foolish, for there are more ways of escaping from 
 them and propitiating their favour; for with the 
 ignorant it is impossible to find any expedient, for 
 business must be done, not with them, but with their 
 servants, of whom many often deceive them. How- 
 ever, every one must serve and obey them in their 
 own territories as a matter both of duty and force. 
 All well considered, our only hope must be in God ; 
 
 1 I. 170. " I. 112.
 
 78 HORAE SABBATIOAE essay 
 
 for in him lies all our strength and all our goodness 
 which can be found in nothing in this world ; but this 
 we all find out late and after we have had need of it. 
 However, better late than never.' 1 There is a sort of 
 cumbrous resignation in the very run of these sen- 
 tences, which shows how completely Comines had 
 brought himself to regard princes as inevitable 
 evils, against which there was no refuge except in 
 God. 
 
 Various other passages are scattered through the 
 book which show his opinion of princes very plainly. 
 I will refer to a few of them. ' It is a great advan- 
 tage to princes,' he observes, ' to have read histories 
 in their youth, in which may be seen in plenty the 
 meetings, the great frauds, cheats, and perjuries, which 
 some of the ancients committed towards each other, 
 taking and killing those who had put trust in their 
 assurances. I do not say that all did so, but the 
 example of one is enough to make many others wise 
 and put them on their guard.' 'I cannot help 
 blaming ignorant princes. Almost all lords are sur- 
 rounded by clerks and men of the long robe (as is 
 natural), and they are useful if they are good and 
 very dangerous if they are bad. They always have 
 in their mouths some law or history, and the best 
 which can be found may easily be ill applied, but wise 
 men who had read would not be abused, nor would 
 their people be so bold as to tell them lies. Do not 
 think that God has established the office of king or 
 
 i 163, 192, 156.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 79 
 
 prince to be exercised by fools or by those who, from 
 vainglory, say " I am no clerk, I leave matters to my 
 council. I trust to them." And then without giving 
 any other reason, go and amuse themselves.' x This is 
 followed by a curious practical application from the 
 case of Louis XL, which shows amongst other things 
 that Comines recognised the distinction between read- 
 ing and mother- wit. He (Louis) was well read enough. 
 
 ' He liked to ask and hear about all sorts of things. 
 His natural sense was fearfully good, which takes 
 precedence of all the other sciences which can be 
 learnt in this world, and all the books Avhich are 
 written would be useless if they did not bring to 
 memory past events, and if it were not that you see 
 more in one book in three months than twenty men 
 in a row, living one after the other, could Avith their 
 eyes see and learn by experience.' 
 
 The conception of history, as a vast Newgate 
 calendar, which is shown by the first part of this 
 passage, and the glimpse which the end of it gives 
 of the nature of purely personal governments ad- 
 ministered by ignorant and idle boys, are both char- 
 acteristic. Boys or men, however, it is all the same. 
 The only effect of maturity is a development of the 
 power of lying. ' Here you may see,' says Comines, 
 after describing some of the intrigues between Louis 
 and Charles, ' the miserable condition of princes who 
 cannot by any means take security against each other. 
 These two had made a final peace not fifteen days 
 
 1 I. 157.
 
 80 I10KAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 l>efore, and solemnly sworn to keep it honourably ; 
 still confidence could not be found by any means 
 whatever.' 
 
 After describing the transactions which ended in 
 the treaty of Confians, Comines proceeds to relate 
 his experiences of the wars between Charles the Bold 
 and Liege and the destruction of Dinant. Dinant, 
 he observes, had been separated from Liege. ' It is 
 the true sign of the destruction of a country when 
 those who ought to hold together separate and 
 abandon each other. This I say as well of princes 
 and lords in alliance as of towns and communities ; 
 but as every one, I suppose, has heard and read ex- 
 amples of this I say only that King Louis, our master, 
 better understood this art of separating people than 
 any other prince I have ever seen or ever known.' 
 He goes on to describe how Dinant was taken and the 
 prisoners drowned before Bouvines. (' I do not know 
 whether God allows it on account of their great 
 wickedness, but the vengeance was cruel for them.') l 
 And he proceeds to describe the peace made between 
 the Duke and Liege, and the manner in which the 
 people of Liege broke the treaty and were attacked 
 a second time by the Duke for not fulfilling it. 
 Before making the attack a consultation was held as 
 to what was to be done with the hostages given by 
 the town for the fulfilment of the original treaty. 
 Comines's account of it is very curious. 'A little 
 before he set out he had had the question debated 
 
 1 I. 115-117.
 
 in HIILirPE BE COMINES 81 
 
 whether he should put his hostages to death, or what 
 he should do with them. Some thought he ought to 
 put them all to death, and amongst others the Lord 
 de Contay (of whom I have often spoken) was of this 
 opinion ; and I never heard him speak so ill or so 
 cruelly as this time. The wisest are sometimes mis- 
 taken, very often either from being passionate about 
 the matter of discussion, or from love, or from hatred, 
 or from wishing to contradict each other, and some- 
 times on account of the state of their persons, for 
 what is done after dinner ought not to be regarded 
 as a council. Some may say that people who commit 
 any of these faults ought not to be a prince's council. 
 To which I answer that we are all men, and if you 
 want people who never talk foolishly, and are never 
 more moved at one time than at another, you must 
 look for them in heaven, for you cannot find them 
 amongst men. On the other hand, you will always 
 find at council people who will speak very well and 
 wisely, though they are not generally in the habit of 
 doing so, and thus one corrects another.' l 
 
 Eeturning to the particular council, Comines goes 
 on to state the opinion of Humbercourt (afterwards 
 executed by the people of Ghent), ' one of the wisest 
 and best-instructed knights I ever knew, which was, 
 that in order to put God on his side in every respect, 
 and to show all the world that he was not cruel or vin- 
 dictive,' Charles ought to return the three hostages. 
 His advice was taken, and it is fair to say that De 
 
 1 I. 123-125. 
 VOL. I G
 
 82 HORAE SABBATIC AE ESSAY 
 
 Contay's opinion appears to have been regarded as 
 monstrous. 'After the said Lord de Contay had 
 given this cruel sentence against those poor hostages, 
 part of whom had become hostages from mere good- 
 ness, one of the persons present whispered to me, 
 " Look well at that man ; though he is very old he is 
 in very good health, but I would bet heavily that he 
 will not be alive in a year from this day, which I say 
 on account of the terrible opinion he has expressed." 
 And so it happened, for he did not live long ; but 
 before he died he served his master well one day in 
 battle.' l 
 
 The history of the operations before Liege contains 
 some curious remarks. The Liegeois attacked Duke 
 Charles (his father had died some time before) in 
 order to make him raise the siege of St. Tron and 
 were defeated. 2 ' They lost 6000 men, which seems a 
 great deal to every one who does not care to lie ; in 
 my time I have seen in many places that where one 
 man was killed people speak of a hundred, because 
 they think it will give pleasure, and with such lies 
 the masters are often deceived.' The people of Liege 
 were thoroughly beaten. Two days after the battle 
 ' the pride of this foolish people thoroughly changed 
 and for slight loss.' Comines moralises on this. ' If 
 the wrong party were wise he would risk nothing 
 with those who have run away, but would be on his 
 guard and try to find something to conquer to put 
 them in heart and take away their fear. In every 
 
 1 I. 124-126. 2 131, 132.
 
 Hi PHILIPPE DE COMINES 83 
 
 way lost battles have long tails and are bad for the 
 losers.' He proceeds to describe very pithily the 
 way in which victory gives confidence and defeat 
 produces discouragement, and ends with his usual 
 remark — ' On this I speak from what I have seen, 
 and such grace comes from God alone.' 
 
 This indeed is Comines's invariable result. In 
 speaking of the success which Charles had in his cam- 
 paign of 1467 against Liege, he says i 1 'And thus I 
 conclude that he won great honour and glory in this 
 campaign, and it came to him solely by the grace of 
 God against all reason, and he would not have dared 
 to ask for what he got ; and according to human judg- 
 ment he received all these honours and advantages on 
 account of the grace and goodness he had shown to 
 the hostages as before mentioned. I am glad to say this 
 because princes and others at times complain as if they 
 were discomfited when they have pleased or benefited, 
 saying that this is unfortunate for them, and that 
 for the future they will not pardon so lightly, or be 
 liberal, or show favour, all of which appertains to 
 their office. I think of such language as this and 
 that those who act so show a cowardly heart ; for a 
 prince or any one else who never was deceived should 
 be a mere fool not knowing good or evil or the 
 difference between them.' 
 
 Comines follows at considerable length the course 
 of events which ended in the storm of Liege by the 
 united forces of Louis and Charles. His principal 
 
 1 I. 139, 140.
 
 84 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 observation upon them is the one which I have 
 already quoted about the importance of keeping 
 princes apart if they are to be on good terms. The 
 story is in every way degrading. 1 Comines despised 
 but pitied them. In describing the Duke's entry 
 into Liege he says : ' The people is a poor thing, 
 unless it is led by some chief Avhom they fear and 
 reverence, but there are hours and times when their 
 fury is much to be feared.' 2 Few were killed when the 
 town was taken, not more, Comines thinks, than about 
 two hundred. He himself saw only four dead bodies, 
 three men and a woman, but the misery endured was 
 very great. ' I return to speak a little of the poor 
 people who fled from the city. These poor wretches 
 fled over the Ardennes with their wives and children.' 
 Many were killed. A knight of the country routed 
 a great band, and by exaggerating the number of 
 killed — and there were in reality plenty 3 — made 
 his grace with Charles. 
 
 Others died of cold and hunger, and no 
 wonder for the whole country was laid waste by 
 the Burgundians, who divided their army into 
 two bands the better to destroy the country;' 
 and the frost was so intense that ' for three 
 days the wine was served out in lumps cut with 
 hatchets, for it was frozen in the barrels, 4 and the 
 ice had to be broken up into pieces, which people 
 carried away in their hats or baskets.' Having 
 
 1 See also this brought out in Michelet, Bk. xv., etc. 
 2 I. 194. 3 I. 197. 4 I. 203.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 85 
 
 described the fall of Liege, Comines proceeds to give 
 an account of the various intrigues which were 
 carried on between the King, his brother, the Duke 
 of Guienne, and the Duke of Burgundy, showing 
 how by degrees Louis contrived to remedy the effects 
 of his false step in putting himself in the power of 
 the Duke at Peronne, and to get rid of the treaty 
 which he had signed as the price of his liberation. 
 His chief methods being to separate his enemies by 
 setting them against each other, and the great means 
 which he used for that purpose being bribery, as 
 regarded his brother and the Constable of St. Pol, 
 and the Duke of Burgundy's overreaching pride and 
 ambition, which gave him the opportunity of setting 
 the others against him. The most characteristic pass- 
 age in this part of the book is Comines's reflection 
 on the Duke of Burgundy, whom few men knew so 
 well. After saying that the Duke could not make 
 up his mind to marry his daughter to the Duke of 
 Guienne, he proceeds : ' I think that he would not 
 have liked to have a son, and that he would never 
 have married his daughter as long as he lived, but 
 would always have kept her by him to keep people 
 waiting on him who might serve and help him, for 
 he aimed at so many great objects that his life was 
 not long enough to accomplish them : and they were 
 things almost impossible, for half Europe would not 
 have contented him. He was bold enough for any 
 undertaking. His person could endure the necessary 
 labour. He was powerful enough in men and money ;
 
 86 I-IORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 but he had not enough sense or shrewdness 1 to 
 manage his undertakings. For other things being 
 favourable to making conquests, everything comes to 
 nothing unless very strong sense is present, and this, 
 I think, must come from God. If any one could 
 have taken some of the qualities of the King, and 
 some of his qualities, he might have made a perfect 
 prince. No doubt, in point of sense the King over- 
 matched him ; in the end he showed it by what he 
 did.' 
 
 The intrigues which took place between Louis and 
 Charles, Warwick and Edward IV., furnish Comines 
 with the occasion of making some observations upon 
 English affairs which have great interest for us. Re- 
 ferring shortly to the wars of the Roses, he says :' There 
 had been in England seven or eight pitched battles, 2 
 
 1 ' Malice.' The word as used by Comines contains exactly 
 the same implied compliment to the intellectual merits of 
 wickedness as our own 'shrewd.' 
 
 2 His editor observes that there were twelve between 1455 
 and 1471, viz. — 
 
 1. St. Albans 1455 
 
 2. Bloreheath 1459 
 
 3. Northampton 1460 
 
 4. Wakefield 1460 
 
 5. Mortimer's Cross 1461 
 
 6. St. Albans 1461 
 
 7. Towton 1461 
 
 8. Hexham 
 
 9. Banbury 
 
 10. Stamford 
 
 11. Barnet 
 
 1463 
 1470 
 1470 
 1471 
 
 12. Tewksbury 1471
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 87 
 
 and eighty lords and princes of royal houses died 
 cruelly, as I have already said ; and those who were 
 not dead were refugees in the house of the Duke 
 of Burgundy. They were all young lords, for their 
 relations were dead in England ; and the Duke of 
 Burgundy had received them into his house as his 
 relations on the side of Lancaster before his marriage. 
 I saw them in such great poverty that beggars are 
 not so poor. I saw a Duke of Exeter walking bare- 
 foot after the Duke's train, begging his bread from 
 house to house without naming himself. He was 
 the nearest of the line of Lancaster and had married 
 the sister of King Edward. He was afterwards re- 
 cognised and had a little pension to live upon. The 
 Somersets and others were there. They have all 
 been bribed since into these battles. Their fathers 
 and relations had pillaged and destroyed the king- 
 dom of France, and possessed most of it for many 
 years. Those who lived in England and their 
 children ended as you see, and then people say God 
 does not punish people any more as he used in the 
 days of the children of Israel ; he endures bad 
 princes and bad people 1 It is very true, indeed, that 
 he no longer speaks to men as he used, for he has 
 left examples enough in this world to be believed ; 
 but you may see when you read this, in addition to 
 what you know besides, that none or few of these 
 bad princes and others having authority in this world, 
 who use it cruelly and tyrannically, remain un- 
 punished ; but it does not always come at a given
 
 88 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 day or at the time which those who suffer 
 desire.' 1 
 
 After some account of the expedition of Warwick, 
 the expulsion of Edward IV., and his return and 
 re-establishment by the battle of Barnet, 2 Comines 
 makes a curious observation on English battles. 3 
 'Their custom in England is that when they have 
 gained a battle they kill no one, especially not the 
 common people (the common people know that every 
 one tries to please them because they are the strongest), 
 nor do they fine any one. 4 For which reason when 
 the king had gone no harm was done to his party. 
 Moreover, King Edward had told me that in all the 
 battles which he gained, as soon as he got the upper 
 hand he mounted on horseback and cried out that 
 the people were to be spared and the lords killed, 
 and of the lords none or very few escaped.' 
 
 Comines, of course, moralises over Edward. He 
 despises him for being expelled from England so easily. 5 
 1 What excuse could he allege for having made such a 
 loss and all by his own fault, except by saying "I 
 never thought it would happen " 1 Well ought a prince 
 to blush if he is a grown-up man at having to make 
 such an excuse ; for it cannot be allowed. This is a 
 good example for princes who never doubt or fear 
 
 1 231, 232. " Sept. 1470 ; 14th April 1471. 3 245. 
 
 4 I cannot nnderstand this ; the law of forfeiture was then in 
 full force. Perhaps Comines may have heard an indistinct 
 report of the effect of the device of uses which was principally 
 intended to defeat the law of forfeiture, and which the statute 
 of uses was intended to defeat. 5 247.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 89 
 
 their enemies, and should put them to shame.' Their 
 servants may natter them and call it courage, but the 
 wise will be of a different opinion. 'It is very 
 honourable to fear what one ought to fear and to 
 provide against it.' * 
 
 Comines himself was a good deal employed by the 
 Duke of Burgundy in negotiating with the English, 
 in particular at Calais. It was the first time I ever 
 knew ' that the affairs of this world are unstable.' 2 
 He had, however, learnt some other things. Being 
 at Calais, which was held for Warwick and Edward 
 IV. during Edward's expedition, he was asked for 
 news : ' I answered on every occasion that King 
 Edward was dead, and that I was well assured of it, 
 although I well knew the contrary.' There is some 
 humour in the contrast between the coolness of this 
 statement and the moralising vein of the whole book. 
 He makes a curious observation on the battle of 
 Barnet, and one much opposed to our common con- 
 ception of the king-maker. 3 'Warwick never would 
 fight on foot, but when he had set his people to work 
 his custom was to mount on horseback. If matters 
 went well for him he was in the melly. 4 If they 
 went ill he took himself off early. This time he was 
 forced by his brother, the Marquis of Montague, a 
 very valiant knight, to dismount and send away the 
 horses.' Edward put many people to death after this, 
 for ' he had conceived great hatred against the people 
 
 1 254. 2 254. 3 260. 
 
 4 Mr. Kinglake has authorised the use of this word.
 
 90 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 of England ' on account of their love for Warwick. 
 In leaving the subject Comines remarks, ' Of all the 
 people in the world the English were most inclined to 
 these (pitched) battles.' 1 
 
 I may here refer to several observations on the 
 English character which occur in different parts of 
 Comines, and which are slightly connected with the 
 main stream of his narrative. The English, he says, 
 are very civil 2 ('tres honorables '), but they are very 
 stupid. 'Never was there a treaty between the 
 English and the French in which the sense and 
 cleverness of the French did not show itself superior 
 to those of the English. It is indeed a common 
 saying with the English, which I have heard in 
 treating with them, that they always or generally 
 have got the best of their battles with the French, 
 but loss and damage in the treaties they have had 
 with them.' Elsewhere he observes : ' Without doubt 
 the English are not so subtle in treaties as the French, 
 and whatever people may say they are clumsy in 
 business, but you must have a little patience and not 
 debate with them angrily. 3 This clumsiness applied 
 to war as well as to peace. Speaking of the Duke of 
 Burgundy's plan of getting helped by the English, he 
 says, ' If he had wanted their help he would have had 
 to keep them in sight for a whole season to help them 
 to provide for and lodge themselves, and to teach them 
 
 1 262. 
 
 2 252, ' Le sens des Francois et leur habillete ne se mon- 
 strant par dehors celle des Anglois,' 267; and see I. 337. 
 
 3 368.
 
 Ill 
 
 PHILIPPE DE COMINES 91 
 
 things necessary to be known in our continental wars ; 
 for nothing can be more stupid and clumsy than they 
 when they first crossed the straits, but in a very little 
 time they became excellent soldiers, wise and hardy.' 
 
 The merits of the English government, however, 
 struck him quite as much as the roughness of the 
 nation. 2 Edward IV. could not help Charles the 
 Bold without the consent of Parliament. ' The King 
 cannot undertake such a business without assembling 
 his Parliament, which is a great and holy thing ; and 
 the kings are stronger and better served when they 
 do so, in such matters. When the estates are 
 assembled the King declares his intention, and asks 
 aid of his subjects, for no aids are raised in England 
 unless it is to pass into France or to go to Scotland, 
 or other such expenses ; they give then very liberally 
 and willingly, especially to pass into France.' 3 In 
 another famous passage, he says : ' In my opinion, of 
 all the countries in the world that I know England is 
 the one in which the public interests are best treated, 
 where there is least violence done to the people, and 
 where no buildings are broken down or destroyed in 
 war, but the grief and loss falls on those who make 
 the war.' 4 
 
 Comines's account of the various intrigues between 
 
 1 337. 
 
 2 'En Angleterre les choses y sont longues car le Roy ne 
 peult entreprendre une telle ceuvre sans apeller son parlement 
 (que vault autant a dire comme les trois Estats) qui est chose 
 tres juste et saincte et en sont les rangs plus fort et niieux.' 
 
 3 314. 4 II. 142.
 
 92 HOKAE SABBATIC AE essay 
 
 Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, which at last resulted in 
 the sacrifice by Charles of the Constable of St. Pol, are 
 interesting principally on account of a few incidental 
 observations which he makes upon their general char- 
 acter. The picture of Louis flattering the English, 
 deceiving St. Pol, and overreaching Charles the Bold, 
 partly by treaty and partly by deceit, is too intricate 
 to be reproduced in miniature. Very shortly their 
 purport was as follows : St. Pol had betrayed in 
 turn Louis XL, Charles the Bold, and his nephew by 
 marriage, Edward IV. ; although Louis had paid 
 him enormously in land and power to secure his 
 fidelity, and though he had been one of the principal 
 agents in inviting Edward into France to help Charles. 
 He was no doubt one of the very worst and most de- 
 ceitful of the men of that age. By various artful 
 devices Louis bought off Charles on the one hand, and 
 Edward on the other, and made them aware of the 
 character of St. Pol. To illustrate the general effect 
 of the story I will quote three passages which show in 
 general terms how matters stood between Louis and 
 Charles, Louis and St. Pol, and Charles and St. Pol. 
 
 ' It may appear hereafter,' says Comines, f to those 
 who read this, that there was no great good faith 
 in these two princes ' (Louis and Charles), ' or that 
 I speak ill of them. I should be sorry to speak ill of 
 either. Every one knows that I am obliged to the 
 King, but to continue what you, my Lord Archbishop 
 of Vienne, have required of me, I must tell part of 
 what I know, however it may have happened. But,
 
 Ill PHILIPPE DE COMINES 93 
 
 if you think of other princes, you will consider these 
 great noble and notable and our King very wise ; for 
 he left his kingdom increased and at peace with all 
 his enemies.' He then says that he will consider 
 which of the two wished to cheat the other, in order 
 that any young prince who happened to read the book 
 might be on his guard. And he adds : * ' To tell my 
 opinion I think it clear that each prince meant to cheat 
 the other, and that their objects were very similar.' 
 
 As between Louis and St. Pol matters were still 
 worse. The King very much wished to see St. Pol 
 and offered him terms to come. 2 ' The Constable was 
 very willing to come, provided that the King would 
 swear by the Cross of St. Lou d'Angers, 3 to do no 
 harm to his person, and not to consent to any one 
 else doing it ; and he said that he might just as well 
 make this oath to him as to the Seigneur de Lesent 
 which he had formerly done. The King replied that 
 he would not take that oath to any one, but that he 
 was content to take any other oath that the Con- 
 stable chose to ask for. You can well understand 
 that the King and also the Constable were in great 
 trouble of mind ('grant travail d'esprit'), for not a 
 single day passed for a period of time without messen- 
 gers about this oath going from one to the other. 
 And for one who would well consider it, this is a 
 miserable life of ours to take so much time and trouble 
 
 1 278, 279. 2 I. 341. 
 
 3 A bit of the true Cross kept at the Church of St. Lou at 
 Angers.
 
 94 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 in wasting life, in saying and writing so many things 
 nearly opposite to our thoughts.' 
 
 To make the combinations complete I must give 
 an instance of the relations which Louis managed to 
 establish between St. Pol and Charles the Bold. 
 St. Pol sent an ambassador, Louis de Creville, to 
 Louis, who arrived at the same time as an ambassador 
 from Charles. Louis put Charles's ambassador 
 together with Comines behind a curtain, and led on 
 De Creville to talk of the Duke of Burgundy and 
 his indignation at the moment against the English. 
 'And in saying this, Louis de Creville, thinking to 
 please the king, began to mimic the Duke, and to 
 stamp on the ground, and swear by St. George and 
 call the King of England Blancborgne (Blackburn), the 
 son of an archer of that name, and every sort of 
 mockery which could possibly be used about a man. 
 The King laughed greatly and told him to speak out, 
 and said that he began to be a little deaf and that he 
 must say it again. The other began again with right 
 good will. M. de Contay, who was with me behind 
 the curtain, was greatly astonished and never could 
 have believed whatever had been said to him the 
 words he heard.' l 
 
 The result of a long train of ingenious devices 
 and negotiations of which these stories show the 
 character, was, as I have already said, that St. 
 Pol was sacrificed by the Duke of Burgundy 
 and executed by Louis (19th Dec. 1475). The 
 
 1 357, 358.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 95 
 
 observations of Comines on the folly of St. Pol 
 on the one hand, and the mixture of vice and folly 
 on the part of the Duke of Burgundy on the 
 other, are very characteristic. As St. Pol, after 
 enumerating his resources and referring to his con- 
 nection with Edward IV. who had married his niece, 
 and to the advantage which he might easily have 
 made of the enmity between the King and the Duke, 
 who never agreed in anything in all their lives but in 
 this' — i.e. attacking him — Comines continues, 1 'We 
 must see that the deceiver Fortune had looked on 
 him with an evil eye, or rather we must answer that 
 these great mysteries do not come from fortune, and 
 that fortune is nothing but a poetical fiction, and that 
 God must have abandoned him, when we look at the 
 matters above mentioned, and at others which I have 
 not referred to, and if it appertained to a man to 
 judge (which it does not, especially not to me), I should 
 say that what reasonably must have been the cause 
 of his punishment, was that he had always laboured 
 with all his power to keep up the war between the 
 King and the Duke of Burgundy, for on that was 
 founded his great authority and great estate.' ... 'It is 
 probable and certain that he was removed from the 
 grace of God, in having made himself the enemy of 
 these three princes, and in not having a single friend 
 who dared to lodge him for one night ; no other 
 fortune put her hand to it.' 2 As for the Duke of 
 Burgundy, he says that he behaved very ill to the 
 
 1 395, 396. 2 395, 396.
 
 96 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Constable, and that he soon ' received damage and thus 
 to see the things which God has done in our time 
 and does every day, it seems that he will leave 
 nothing unpunished ; and one can evidently see that 
 these strange works come from him, for they are 
 beyond the course of nature, and are sudden punish- 
 ments, especially against those who are violent and 
 cruel, who in general cannot be small personages, 
 but very great, either lords or of princely authority.' 
 
 The principal reason which induced Charles to 
 deliver St. Pol to Louis was his anxiety to get posses- 
 sion of Nancy, which he was besieging when St. Pol 
 was given up. 1 He took it a few days afterwards, 
 and made it the point of various ambitious schemes 
 for extending still further the limits of his hetero- 
 geneous empire. 
 
 In the following spring he invaded Switzerland, 
 and suffered the defeats of Granson (3d March) 
 and Morat (22d June). Nancy in the meantime was 
 retaken by Rene, the nephew of the old King of 
 Provence (19th October), and in the winter was 
 besieged by Charles, who was killed in front of it 
 (Gth January 1476). Comines gives a full account 
 of these transactions. 
 
 I will refer only to a few characteristic remarks 
 on the principal actors in them. As to Louis, 
 he observes that after the battle of Granson he 
 ' had very great joy, and was displeased only at 
 
 1 St. Pol was executed at Paris, 19th December 1475. 
 Nancy was taken 30th November 1475.
 
 Ill 
 
 PHILIPPE DE COMINES 97 
 
 the small number of men killed.' After Morat, 
 his sister, the Duchess of Savoy, appealed to him 
 for protection against Charles, who had entered 
 Savoy after the battle, and had put her under a sort 
 of guard near Dijon. She was very much afraid of 
 her brother, but she found means to join him, and 
 what was still better, to leave him safely. ' They 
 were very glad to part from each other, and remained 
 ever afterwards a good brother and sister till death.' l 
 
 As to the Duke of Burgundy, ' his grief at the loss 
 of the battle of Granson was so great, and so troubled 
 his spirits that he fell very ill. He was so ill that 
 whereas his natural heat was such that he never drank 
 wine, but generally drank tisanne and ate preserved 
 roses to cool himself, his grief affected his constitution, 
 so that he was obliged to drink strong wine without 
 water ; and to draw the blood from his heart they put 
 lighted tow to his blisters and thus applied heat to 
 the region of the heart. 2 About this, my lord, you 
 know more than I, having helped to treat him in 
 this illness, and having made him shave his beard, 
 which he allowed to grow; and I think he never 
 was so wise as before after this illness, but that his 
 sense was much diminished.' 
 
 ' Such are the passions of those who never suffered 
 adversity, and can find no remedy for it, and in par- 
 ticular proud princes ; for in these and similar cases 
 
 1 II. 37-39. 
 
 2 II. 39. Mettoieut des estouppes ardentes dedans des 
 ventouses. 
 
 VOL I. H
 
 98 HORAE SABBATIC AE ESSAY 
 
 the first refuge is to return to God, and consider 
 whether we have in any way offended him, and to 
 humble ourselves before him, and confess our mis- 
 deeds ; for he it is who determines such cases, nor 
 can any one find any error in his judgments. 
 
 'Next to this it does great good to talk to one friend 
 if possible, and boldly to lament one's faults to him, 
 and not to be ashamed to show our grief before that 
 special friend, for that lightens and comforts the 
 heart.' x The Duke, however, was too proud for this, 
 and determined to try to retake Nancy. ' It would 
 have been better for him not to be so obstinate, 
 but God prepares these extraordinary resolutions 
 for princes when it pleases him to change their 
 fortune.' 2 
 
 The siege of Nancy began in the winter of 1475-76. 
 A gentleman of Provence, Seffron by name, tried to 
 enter the town to join the Duke of Lorraine, who 
 commanded there. 
 
 He was taken prisoner. ' The Duke of Burgundy 
 commanded him to be immediately hanged, saying 
 that when a prince has opened a siege and made 
 his artillery fire upon a place, those who try 
 to enter it are worthy of death by the laws of war. 
 However, this is not the practice in our wars, which 
 are more cruel than the wars of Italy and Spain 
 where this custom prevails. 3 Seffron begged for his 
 life, saying that he had a secret of importance to tell 
 the Duke, which was the treason of Campo Basso his 
 
 1 II. 40. " II. 46. 3 II. 48.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 99 
 
 general. He was, however, executed. ' It would 
 have been better for the Duke not to be so cruel, and 
 to have heard him humanely.' He might then have 
 escaped, and his house might have stood and been 
 increased ; ' but probably God had otherwise arranged 
 since the dishonourable trick which the Duke had 
 played upon the Count of St. Pol.' l 
 
 A little farther on Comines go so far as to say, 'You 
 have heard how God made the Count of Campo Basso 
 commissary to execute vengeance for the business of 
 the Constable at the proper place, in the proper manner, 
 and far more cruelly,' i.e. than Charles had treated St. 
 Pol. Comines preaches a striking little funeral sermon 
 on Charles the Bold. It is an excellent specimen both 
 of his manner and of the habitual cast of his thoughts. 
 It begins with a story, glides off into a character, and 
 is full of reflections. 2 'I have since seen a seal at 
 Milan which I have often seen hanging to his doublet. 
 It was a ring, and had a gem 3 engraved on a cameo 
 with his arms, which was sold at Milan for two ducats. 
 The person who took it from him was a bad servant 
 of his bedchamber. I have often seen him dressed 
 and undressed in great reverence, and by great per- 
 sonages, and at this last hour his honours had left 
 him, and he and his house perished, as I have said, 
 at the place where he consented from avarice to give 
 up the Constable ; and soon afterwards, God pardon 
 his sins, I saw him a great and honourable prince, as 
 
 1 II. 52. 2 II. 65. 
 
 3 One of the emblems of the Golden Fleece.
 
 100 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 much esteemed and in request amongst his neighbours 
 at one time as any prince who ever was in Christendom, 
 and perhaps more. 
 
 ' I saw no reason why he should incur the wrath 
 of God sooner than others, except that he con- 
 sidered all the graces and honours which he had 
 received in this world as proceeding from his own 
 sense and virtue without, as he ought, attributing 
 them to God ; for in truth he had good and virtuous 
 qualities. No prince ever excelled him in the desire 
 to support the great and keep them in good order. 
 His favours were not very great, because he wished 
 every one to feel them. No one gave audience more 
 liberally to his servants and subjects. When I knew 
 him he was not cruel, but he became so before his 
 death, which looked as if he would not last long. He 
 was very magnificent in dress and other things, indeed 
 rather too much. He higbly honoured ambassadors 
 and strangers ; they were very well treated and re- 
 ceived by him. He desired great glory, which was 
 what caused more of his wars than any other thing, 
 and he would willingly have resembled those ancient 
 princes of whom so much has been said after their 
 death ; as bold as any man who reigned in his day. 
 Well, all these thoughts are finished, and everything 
 has turned to his shame and prejudice, for those who 
 win always have the honour.' 1 
 
 He then goes on to describe the sufferings produced 
 by the death of Charles in his various dominions, of 
 
 1 II. 65-67.
 
 Ill 
 
 rillLIPPE DE COMIXES 101 
 
 which he observes : ' I have never known any lordship 
 or country, size for size, or even of much larger extent, 
 so abundant in riches, in furniture, and in buildings, 
 and also in all sorts of prodigality, expense, feasting, 
 and cheer as his territories were when I knew him ; 
 and if those who were not there at the time I refer to 
 think that I say too much of them, others who were 
 there like me will perhaps say that I say too little.' 
 
 After describing the death of the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, Comines goes on to describe the manner in 
 which Louis XI. received the intelligence. 1 
 
 He got the news by means of the post which he had 
 established, and ' was so overjoyed at the news that 
 he hardly knew how to behave,' although the first 
 letter did not mention the Duke's death. 
 
 He behaved in a very characteristic manner to his 
 own nobility on the occasion.' 2 'He sent into the 
 town of Tours for all the captains and other great per- 
 sonages and showed them these letters. They all 
 testified great joy, and it seemed to those who looked 
 into matters very close that many of them forced 
 themselves to do so, and that, notwithstanding their 
 behaviour, they would have preferred the Duke's fate 
 to be different. The cause might be that the King 
 was greatly feared, and they doubted whether, if he 
 found himself freed from his enemies, he would not 
 wish to make many alterations, especially in estates 
 and offices ; for there were many in the company who 
 had been opposed to him in the matter of the Public 
 1 II. 70. 2 II. 73.
 
 102 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Good, and some in the matter of his brother the Duke 
 of Guienne. 
 
 After having talked with them for a time, he 
 heard the Mass, and then had the table laid in his 
 chamber, and other members of his council were 
 there. As he dined he talked over these matters ; 
 and I know well that I and others noticed how those 
 who were at table would dine, and with what appetite; 
 but, to tell the truth (whether from joy or sorrow, I 
 do not know), not one seemed to me to eat half his 
 fill. They were not ashamed to eat before the 
 King, for every one there had often eaten with 
 him before.' 1 
 
 Louis lost no time after the death of Charles in 
 taking possession of his dominions. I have already 
 sketched very shortly the steps by which this was 
 effected. Comines's account of the matter enters a 
 good deal into details, which have lost much of their 
 interest, but they suggest to him reflections which 
 form far the most interesting part of his work. In- 
 deed the last three chapters of the fifth book 2 would 
 give any one who does not care to read the whole 
 work a very good notion of the general view of 
 thought by which it is pervaded. They are intro- 
 duced by the following remark upon the town of 
 Ghent, suggested by the narrative which he had just 
 given of the troubles caused there by the breach of 
 confidence of Louis towards Mary of Burgundy, which 
 ended in the execution of Humbercourt and Hugo- 
 
 1 II. 73. 2 132, 164; xviii., xix., xx. ; II. 117-153.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 103 
 
 net (?) l 'I cannot think why God has so preserved 
 this town of Ghent, from which so much mischief 
 has come, and which is of so little use to the territory 
 in which it is situated, and of much less to the prince, 
 and is not like Bruges, which is a great depot for 
 merchandise, and a great place of meeting for foreign 
 countries, and in which, perhaps, more merchandise 
 is sold than in any other town in Europe, and its 
 destruction would cause irreparable damage.' The 
 answer to the difficulty is that the case of Ghent is 
 merely an illustration of the working of a general 
 law. 2 ' I think that God has created nothing in this 
 world — man or beast— without making something- 
 contrary to it to keep it in fear and humility.' The 
 turbulence of Ghent is thus intended as a reproof 
 to the love of pleasure, which specially distinguished 
 the Low Countries. And this is not the only 
 nation to which God has given a string, ' for he has 
 given the English as a check to the French, the 
 Scotch to the English, Portugal to the Spaniards. 
 I don't mention Granada, because the Moors are 
 enemies to the Christian faith, still Granada has been 
 a great trouble to Castille ' (the tacit assumption that 
 the divine government extends only to Christian 
 countries is very characteristic). ' To the princes of 
 Italy (most of whom hold their territories without any 
 title, unless it is given to them by heaven, and of that 
 we can only guess), who rule cruelly and violently 
 over their people in the matter of taxation, God has 
 
 1 II. 131. - II. 132.
 
 104 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 given as a check the republics of Italy, such as Venice, 
 Florence, Genoa, sometimes Bologna, Sienna, Lucca, 
 and others which in many things are opposed to the 
 nobility and the nobility to them. Each, too, has an 
 eye on its fellows, to prevent their increase.' 
 
 After giving a good many other examples of this 
 perpetual opposition, by which every prince and nation 
 is punished for its faults, Comines diverges with a long 
 and not very systematic discourse about the faults 
 which require all this punishment. The principal 
 cause, he says, of the evils of life is the stupidity 
 ('bestiality') of the princes, and the wickedness of 
 others who are better informed. Knowledge, he says, 
 makes the good better and the bad worse, but, on 
 the whole, it is a good thing, partly because it makes 
 people ashamed of their own vices, partly because it 
 makes them ' fear the punishment of God, of which 
 they have more knowledge than the ignorant, who 
 have neither reading nor experience. Ill-informed 
 princes do not know how far the power and superiority 
 which God has given them over their subjects extends.' 
 
 Upon the whole, however, he thinks that 'we 
 must conclude that neither natural reason, nor 
 our own sense, not the fear of God, nor the love of 
 our neighbours prevent us from being violent towards 
 each other or from keeping each other's property or 
 taking it away from each other by every means in 
 our power.' Hence, ' God is probably almost forced 
 and constrained or summoned to display various signs, 
 and to beat us with many rods by our stupidity, or,
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 105 
 
 as I rather think, our wickedness ; but the stupidity 
 and ignorance of princes is very dangerous, and much 
 to be feared, because upon them depends the pros- 
 perity or adversity of their territories.' l 
 
 This reflection leads Comines to discuss at length 
 the political evils of his time, and in particular to 
 give an elaborate account of the condition of France 
 and the French government which is full of interest. 2 
 He introduces it by observing that soldiers ought to 
 be regularly paid, and that when their pay falls into 
 arrear they grievously oppress the population. He 
 then goes on thus. ' Is there in the world a king or 
 lord who has power beyond his own demesne to lay 
 taxes on his subjects without the consent of those 
 who are to pay, unless by tyranny and violence 1 
 
 ' It may be said that there are occasions when the 
 assembly of the states cannot be waited for, and that 
 to assemble the states would put off the commence- 
 ment and undertaking of the war too long. Do not 
 be in such a hurry. There is time enough; and I 
 tell you that kings and princes are much stronger 
 when they take their subjects' advice and are feared 
 for it by their enemies. When you have to defend 
 yourself you see the cloud come from a distance, 
 especially when they are foreigners, and in such a 
 case good subjects should refuse nothing and make 
 no complaints.' After some further observations 
 in the same strain he adds : ' Of all the lordships in 
 the world 3 that I know, England is the one where 
 1 II. 136, 137. - Ch. xix., II. 141, 153. 3 II. 143.
 
 106 IIORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 the public interests are best cared for, where the 
 least violence is done to the people, and where no 
 buildings are destroyed or knocked down in war, and 
 the bad luck and misery falls upon those who make 
 the war.' 1 
 
 This favourable view of England leads him to 
 say that the natural disposition of the French is such 
 as to make inexcusable in their kings to tyrannise 
 over them. The people, he says, are naturally loyal. 2 
 ' Our king is of all lords in the world the one who 
 has least cause to say, "It is my privilege to levy 
 what I please on my subjects." Neither he nor any 
 one else has that privilege, and those who say he has 
 to raise his reputation for greatness do him no honour, 
 but cause him to be hated and feared by his 
 neighbours, who for no consideration would be under 
 his rule, and indeed some of his subjects would be 
 glad to be out of it. If our king or those who wish 
 to praise and honour him said, "I have such good 
 and loyal subjects that they refuse me nothing that 
 I ask of them ; and I am more feared, obeyed, and 
 served by my subjects than any other prince who 
 lives in the world, and they endure more patiently 
 all evils and hardships and less remember past evils " 
 — I think that would be a great credit to him.' He 
 goes on to prove his point by reference to the pro- 
 ceedings of the States-General of Tours held in 1483. 
 After a good many discursive observations and 
 illustrations upon various points he works round 
 1 II. 142. 2 II. 142, 143.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 107 
 
 again to his favourite reflections upon the divine 
 government. 1 'The greatest evils come from the 
 strongest, for the weak seek only patience. It is hy 
 the care of the great that we know the power and 
 justice of God. As for misfortunes that happen to 
 one poor man or to a hundred no one notices them ; 
 everything is ascribed to his poverty or folly, or if he 
 gets drowned or breaks his neck, inasmuch as he is 
 alone, people hardly care to hear about it. If a 
 misfortune falls upon a great city people do not 
 speak of it so much as of the misfortunes of princes. 
 
 ' We must say then why the power of God shows 
 itself rather against the great than against the small ' 
 (the preceding observations seem to imply that the 
 difference is only that in the case of the poor it is 
 not noticed, but this want of system is very charac- 
 teristic of Comines). ' It is because there are plenty 
 of people to punish the little and the poor when they 
 give cause ; indeed, they are often punished enough 
 without giving any cause, either as an example to 
 others or to get their goods, or perhaps by the fault 
 of the judge, and sometimes they do deserve it well 
 and justice must be done ' — but who is to punish the 
 great and how come they to want punishing 1 ' I say 
 it is for want of faith, and in the case of the 
 ignorant for want both of faith and of sense, but 
 principally for want of faith, from which I think 
 proceed all the evils in the world, and in particular 
 the evils of those who complain of being oppressed 
 
 1 II. 146.
 
 108 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 by others and by superior force. For if a poor man 
 who had true and good faith, be he who he might, 
 believed firmly that the pains of hell are such as they 
 really are, and also believed that he had wrongfully 
 taken the property of another, or that his father 
 or grandfather had taken it and that he held it 
 (whether duchies, counties, towns, or castles, furniture, 
 a meadow, a pond, a mill, each according to his 
 condition), and firmly believed as we ought to believe, 
 " I shall never enter Paradise unless I make satisfac- 
 tion and return what I wrongfully possess," is it 
 credible that any prince or princess in the world 
 would keep anything from his subject or his 
 neighbour, or put any one to death wrongfully, or 
 keep him in prison, or take from one to enrich 
 another (which is the most cruel of their trades), or 
 make base designs against their relations or servants 
 for their pleasure as in the case of women or the 
 like 1 On my faith, no. It is not credible. If then 
 they had firm faith, and believed what God and the 
 Church order as under pain of damnation, knowing 
 their days to be so short, and the pains of hell so 
 horrible and without any end, or remission for the 
 damned, would they act as they do 1 ? We must 
 conclude that they would not, and that all evils 
 arise from want of faith.' 
 
 He then enters at length into the history of 
 the enormous ransom which King John paid to 
 get out of the hands of the English, whereas the 
 worst which Edward III. could have done to him
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 109 
 
 was not 'one hundredth thousandth part as bad 
 as the least pain of hell ; ' and concludes thus 
 — ' There are no princes or but few who if they 
 hold a town of their neighbour's will choose to give 
 it up upon any remonstrance, or for fear of God, or to 
 avail the pains of hell. Yet King John gave all that 
 merely to deliver his person from prison j I say then 
 that it is want of faith, which causes all our evils.' 
 
 Comines need not by the way have gone so far 
 for his illustration. The tenacity with which he 
 himself clung to property which he had derived 
 from a most unjust grant of Louis XL, proved clearly 
 enough that all the terrors of another world were 
 overbalanced in his own estimation by present wealth. 
 
 Having concluded his reflections, Comines returns 
 to his history and describes at length the various 
 intrigues which were connected with the attainment 
 of Louis XL's great object, — the appropriation of the 
 dominions of Charles the Bold, and Comines's own 
 embassy to Florence. This part of the memoirs 
 contains little that is of special interest till we come 
 to the death of Louis XI. 
 
 Comines returned from Italy a little before the 
 battle of Guinegate (7th August 1479), in which 
 the Flemings fought, on behalf of the Archduke 
 Maximilian, a drawn battle with the French army. 
 Louis was much vexed at the news, but determined to 
 make peace if possible with the archduke, and to 
 attend, as we should say, to internal reforms. ' He 
 desired with all his heart to be able to make great
 
 110 HOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 reforms in his kingdom, and in particular to shorten 
 trials, and thereby to reform the procedure of the 
 Parliament not to diminish their number or authority, 1 
 but he had several things on his mind for which he 
 disliked them. Moreover, he much desired that the 
 whole realm should use one customary law, and one 
 set of weights and measures, and that all the customs 
 should be written in French in a fair book to avoid the 
 chicanery and plunder of the advocates, which is greater 
 in this realm than anywhere else in the world.' 
 
 These plans, however, were cut short by a fit 
 from which he never quite recovered. 2 He was 
 aware of his danger and was greatly alarmed at 
 it, and took the most extraordinary measures to pro- 
 long his life. 3 He sent for a kind of saint from 
 Calabria — a hermit who ' at twelve years of age 
 settled in a cave where he lived till the age of forty- 
 three, when the king sent one of his household to 
 fetch him. 4 When the hermit came Louis fell on his 
 knees before him, 5 'that it might please him to 
 prolong his life.' Comines obviously believes in the 
 hermit, and says that he ' seemed inspired by God ' 
 in what he said, and displayed supernatural know- 
 ledge, but he did his employer no particular good. 
 Louis, however, tried other expedients. He deter- 
 mined, in the first place, to conceal his condition from 
 his subjects. ' He inflicted severe punishments to 
 be feared, and for fear of losing his authority, for so 
 
 1 II. 209. " I. 2211-14. 3 II. 228, 231. 
 
 4 II. 229. 5 231.
 
 hi PHILIPPE DE COMINES 111 
 
 he told me. He changed offices and dismissed 
 soldiers, diminished or took away pensions in all 
 directions, and told me a few days before his death 
 that he passed his time in making and unmaking 
 people ; and he made himself more talked of through 
 the kingdom than he had ever done, and this he did 
 for fear he should be supposed to be dead, as I have 
 said few people saw him, and when they heard of 
 the things which he did every one doubted and could 
 hardly believe that he was ill.' 1 
 
 He undertook new schemes, he made expensive 
 purchases, 'he bought a good horse whatever he 
 cost, or a fine mule in countries where he wished 
 to be thought well, for he did not do so in this 
 kingdom. He sent to buy dogs everywhere. In 
 Spain he bought allans. 2 In Brittany little grey- 
 hound bitches, greyhounds, and spaniels, for which 
 he paid a high price ; at Valence little hardy dogs 
 which he paid for at a higher price than their 
 owners asked for them ; he sent to Sicily to buy a 
 particular mule from an officer of the country, and he 
 paid twice its value ; at Naples he bought horses. 
 He bought curious beasts on all sides. In Barbary 
 he bought a sort of little lions, not larger than small 
 foxes, which they call aditz. He sent to Denmark 
 and Sweden for two kinds of beasts, one called elks, 
 which have bodies like stags, are as big as buffaloes, 
 and have thick and short horns; the others called 
 
 1 II. 232. 
 2 Especes de chiens grand, fort, et couragenx.
 
 112 HOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 reindeer, which are in body and colour like bucks, 
 except that their horns are larger, for I have seen a 
 reindeer with fifty-four points. For six of each of 
 these beasts he paid to merchants 4500 German 
 florins. When these creatures were brought to him 
 he took no notice of them, and generally did not 
 speak to those who brought them. In fact he did so 
 many things of this sort that he was more feared by 
 his neighbours and subjects than he had ever been ; 
 this was his object and he acted thus with this view.' 
 ' He continued and even pressed on all the negotia- 
 tions in which he was engaged, and extended his 
 influence over Flanders, Brittany, Spain, Italy, and 
 Switzerland. The kings of Scotland, the kings of 
 Portugal, and his allies, and part of Navarre did as he 
 pleased. His subjects trembled before him. What 
 he commanded was instantly accomplished without 
 difficulty or excuse.' He did not, however, neglect 
 the spiritual arm. ' Touching the things which were 
 thought necessary for his health, they were sent to him 
 from all parts of the world. The last Pope Sixtus ' 
 (Sixtus IV.) ' being informed of his illness, and hearing 
 that as a matter of devotion the King wished for the 
 altar-cloth on which my lord St. Peter sang mass, 
 sent it him at once with several other relics which 
 were returned. The holy jar which is near Eheims, 
 which had never been removed from its place, was 
 brought to him in his chamber at Plessis, and was on 
 the sideboard when he died. He intended to be 
 anointed from it as he had been at his coronation,
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 113 
 
 and many people thought that he wished to anoint 
 his whole body, which is not likely, for the said holy 
 jar is very small and there is not much in it. I saw 
 it at the time I speak of, and also when the King was 
 buried at Nostre Dame de Clery. 
 
 'The present Sultan' (Bagazet II.) 'sent him an 
 ambassador who came as far as Riez in Provence, but 
 the King would not hear him nor allow him to come 
 further. This ambassador brought him a great roll of 
 relics which are still at Constantinople in the posses-, 
 sion of the Sultan. He offered them to the King with 
 a large sum of money, if the King would be good 
 enough to keep in prison the Sultan's brother who was 
 in France, under the protection of the knights of 
 Rhodes, and is now at Rome under the protection of 
 the Pope.' The only effect of all this devotion was 
 that 'one favour God gave him.' He lived longer 
 than the other princes of his day 'but not much.' 
 'All had their good and bad points, for all were 
 men ; but without flattery he had more royal and 
 princely qualities than any of them. I have seen 
 them all and know their powers.' 1 
 
 His fear of death was almost entirely moral. 
 He retained all his faculties. 'Never in all his 
 illness did he complain, as all kinds of people 
 do when they are ill. At least I do, and I have 
 seen others do so, and they say that to complain 
 eases one's sufferings.' 2 His illness lasted from 
 Monday till Saturday night. ' Here,' says Comines, 
 
 1 252. 2 256. 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 HOEAE SABBATIC A.E essay 
 
 ' I would compare the evils and pains which he caused 
 to others with those which he suffered himself hefore 
 he died ; for I hope they will have taken him to 
 heaven, and that this caused part of his purgatory. 
 If they were neither so great nor so long as those 
 which he caused to others, he hore a different and 
 higher office in the world than they ; besides he had 
 never suffered personally, but was so much obeyed 
 that it seemed almost as if all Europe was made only 
 to obey him, whereby the little that he suffered 
 against his nature and habit was harder for him to 
 endure.' 
 
 Nothing can be more curious than the mixed 
 feelings with which Comines regards his hero's 
 sufferings. He looks on them as expiations for the 
 faults which had disfigured a great and good career ; 
 but he constantly keeps in view the faults of which 
 they were the expiation. He goes into this, after his 
 fashion, at great length, and in a wandering, gossipy 
 manner, which nevertheless is highly characteristic. 
 
 Certain persons, whom Comines does not name, 
 ' whom he had elevated too suddenly and without 
 occasion, one being his physician, took upon themselves 
 without fear to say things to so great a prince which 
 did not become them, and they did not observe the 
 reverence and humility which belonged to the occasion, 
 as those who were brought up in his court, or those who 
 had been a short time before driven away by his fancies, 
 would have clone : not just as two great personages 
 whom he had put to death in his time had had their
 
 Hi PHILIPPE DE COMINES 115 
 
 death signified to them by commissaries appointed for 
 the purpose, who declared their sentence to them in 
 few words. So did the three persons aforesaid 
 signify to our King his death in words short and rude, 
 saying, " Sir, we must do our duty, hope no more in 
 this holy man or in other things, for assuredly it is 
 all over with you, therefore think of your conscience, 
 for there is no remedy." . . . What pain it was to 
 him to hear the news. Never man feared death so 
 much, or did so many things to avoid it. Throughout 
 his life he had begged his servants and me, like the 
 rest, if we saw him under the necessity of dying, to 
 say nothing to him except " speak little," and that 
 we were only to move him to confess himself without 
 pronouncing that cruel word death, for he thought he 
 should never have the heart to hear such a cruel 
 sentence. However, he bore it bravely, and every- 
 thing else besides even to death itself, better than 
 any man whom I ever saw die.' 1 
 
 The mixture of sympathy and respect for the 
 king, with a recognition of the retributive justice 
 of his sentence which appears in these words is 
 still more strikingly displayed in what follows. 
 'His illness lasted, as I have said, from the 
 Monday to the Saturday evening, and I will 
 compare the misfortunes and sufferings which he 
 caused others to suffer, with those which he suffered 
 before he died, because I hope they will have got him 
 into heaven, and that this was in part the cause of 
 
 1 260.
 
 116 HOBAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 his purgatory' (i.e. here on earth). 'If his sufferings 
 were not so great or long as those which he inflicted 
 on others, he had a different and a higher place in 
 the world from theirs, and he had never suffered in 
 his own person hut had been so much obeyed, that it 
 seemed as if nearly all Europe had been made to obey 
 him, so that the little that he suffered against his 
 nature and custom was harder for him to bear. The 
 principal sufferings, however, which he underwent 
 were moral. For five or six months before his death 
 he suspected every one, and in particular all those who 
 were deserving of authority.' . . . 'If he had made 
 many people live in fear and suspicion under him he 
 was well paid for it ; whom could he trust when he 
 suspected his son, his daughter, and his son-in- 
 law V 1 
 
 His physician was an additional punishment. He 
 was so very ' rude that one would not say to a lacquey 
 the rude and outrageous things which he said to the 
 King, and the King feared him so that he dare not 
 send him away.' The physician had told him that 
 he would not live eight days after dismissing him. 
 'This so frightened him that ever afterwards he 
 flattered and paid him, which was a great purgatory 
 for him in this world, considering the great obedience 
 which he had had from so many honourable and 
 great personages.' 2 
 
 It is true, says Comines, that he had made cruel 
 prisons, such as iron cages, which ' many have since 
 
 1 262, 263. 2 264.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 117 
 
 suffered, I amongst the rest, who tasted of them under 
 the present King for eight months ; ' but in his last 
 days he made a larger and stricter prison for himself, 
 ' which, I think, was a great grace for him and part of 
 his purgatory, and I say so to show that there is no 
 man, of whatever dignity, who does not suffer either 
 secretly or in public, and in particular those who have 
 made others suffer.' This larger and stricter prison 
 was the palace of Plessis, which, says Comines, he 
 'caused to be enclosed with great iron bars in the 
 form of huge grates, and at the four corners of the 
 house four turrets of iron, good, large, and thick.' 
 He surrounded the castle with guards, and the 
 strictest rules were laid down as to admission to it. 
 Is it possible to keep a king ' who is to be honourably 
 guarded in a closer prison than that in which he kept 
 himself 1 ? The cages in which he kept others were 
 eight feet square, and he who was so great a King 
 had but a small court in the castle to walk in ; he 
 hardly ever came there, too, for he stayed in the 
 gallery, except when he went to mass through the 
 rooms without passing through the court. Can it be 
 said that this King did not suffer as well as others 
 when he thus shut himself up and had himself guarded, 
 and was so much afraid of his children and near 
 relations, and changed and moved every day his 
 servants and the companions of his meals, who were 
 dependent upon him for their property and honour, 
 and dared not trust any of them, and thus chained 
 himself with a strange chain and restraint 1 ? If the
 
 118 IIOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 place was larger than a common prison, he was greater 
 than common prisoners.' 1 
 
 Louis, Comines adds, had very little pleasure in 
 life. For the latter part of his life he was faithful to 
 his Queen, which, as Comines oddly observes, was no 
 doubt right ; hut was a great thing to do, considering 
 how many other ladies were ' at his orders,' and that 
 the Queen ' n'etoit point de celles ou on devoit prendre 
 grant plaisir mais au demeurant fort bonne dame.' 
 
 He was very fond of hunting, but in that 
 'he had almost as much fatigue as pleasure.' He 
 got up early and hunted late, and often came 
 home very tired and generally out of temper with 
 some one.' He was constantly engaged in war, but 
 that was very laborious. ' Whilst he was resting, his 
 mind was at work, for he had business in many 
 places, and took part in his neighbours' affairs as 
 readily as in his own ' ; when he was at war he 
 desired peace or truce ; when he had it he could 
 scarcely endure it. He mixed himself up in many 
 small matters in his kingdom, many of which he 
 might have avoided ; but such was his constitution, 
 and so he lived. His memory, too, was so good that 
 he remembered everything and knew everybody in 
 every country near him. He seemed, indeed, fitter 
 to govern a world than to govern a kingdom.' 2 
 
 After running through the chief events of his life, 
 Comines remarks upon it, ' At what time, then, can 
 one say that he enjoyed himself in all these affairs? 
 1 267-269. 2 273.
 
 in PHILIPPE DE COMINES 119 
 
 I think that from his infancy and innocence he had 
 nothing: hut suffering and labour till his death : and 
 that if all the good days, which he had in his life in 
 which he had more joy and pleasure than labour and 
 fatigue, were well counted, few would be found. I 
 think that there would be twenty days of labour and 
 sorrow for one of pleasure and ease.' 
 
 As his manner is, this leads Comines to make 
 similar remarks on others. Charles the Bold was no 
 happier. 1 'What ease had he? Always labour of 
 body and mind without pleasure. And what did he 
 get by his labour'? What need had he of it? He 
 who was such a rich lord and had so many towns 
 and lordships under his orders, where he might 
 have been so happy if he had pleased.' 
 
 He makes similar remarks about Edward IV. 
 and Mahomet II., and at last concludes with the 
 following passage — the most characteristic, perhaps, 
 in the whole book. 2 'Look, then, at the death 
 of so many great men in such a short time, who 
 laboured so hard to increase themselves and to get 
 glory, and have suffered for it so much in passions 
 and in troubles, and shortened their lives, and perhaps 
 their souls may suffer for it. In this I do not refer 
 to the aforesaid Turk, for I consider this point settled, 
 and that he is lodged with his predecessors. Of our 
 King I have hope (as I said) that our Lord will have 
 mercy on him and also on the others, if he pleases. 
 But to speak naturally, as a man who has no great 
 
 1 277. - 279.
 
 120 HOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 natural or acquired sense but some little experience, 
 would it not have been better for him and all other 
 princes and men of middling estate who have lived 
 under the great, and will live under those who rule, 
 to choose a middle course in these things 1 That is to 
 say, to be less careful, and to work less, and to under- 
 take fewer things, to have more fear of offending 
 God and oppressing the people and their neighbours 
 in the many cruel ways which I have sufficiently de- 
 scribed already, but to take harmless ease and pleasure. 
 Their lives would be the longer for it, illnesses would 
 come later, and their deaths would be more regretted, 
 and by more people, and would be less desired, and 
 they would fear death less. Can Ave see better ex- 
 amples to show that man is but a poor creature, and 
 that this life is miserable and short, and that great 
 and small come to nothing when they are dead 1 for 
 to every one their bodies are an object of horror and 
 detestation, and the soul when it leaves the body 
 must go to receive judgment, and their sentence is 
 given according to the works and deserts of the 
 body.' 1 
 
 Such is the picture drawn by Comines of the great 
 men with whom the most stirring part of his life was 
 passed. I have tried to reproduce it as fully as is 
 consistent with great condensation, because it appears 
 to me to show Avith unrivalled clearness hoAV in the 
 fifteenth century the most unhesitating religious belief 
 might be entertained by Avhat we should call a bad 
 
 1 289.
 
 in THILirrE DE COMINES 121 
 
 man, and how if this happened to be the case his 
 mind would be affected by it. 
 
 It is perfectly clear from Comines that both 
 Louis XL and Comines himself believed with an 
 absolute conviction of its truth in the current 
 creed of the day. They had, in the fullest measure, 
 that certainty which in these days so many people 
 long for with a passionate longing, and are willing 
 to buy at any price whatever. No one can deny 
 that it had a great effect upon them. It is 
 hardly too much to say that Comines's whole mind 
 was haunted at all times and at every point by a 
 belief in an invisible and immensely powerful and 
 artful man whom he called God, and whom he be- 
 lieved to be continually engaged in devising all sorts 
 of plans by which the visible rulers of the earth 
 might be outwitted and controlled, in order that effect 
 might be given to a set of general rules, constituting, 
 according to Comines's view, a code of supernatural 
 criminal law. 
 
 It was hopeless, no doubt, to try to outwit God, 
 but it was by no means impossible to effect bargains 
 and compromises with him, and by different ways 
 and means known to, and at the disposal of, the 
 priesthood to escape from the penalties which he 
 would otherwise have inflicted. 
 
 The moral effect of this belief is fully displayed by 
 every step in the history of Louis XL It did not make 
 him a good man. It had not, so far as we can judge, 
 the very smallest tendency in that direction. It did,
 
 122 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 however, beyond all doubt, impose a very strong 
 check on his conduct. It drove him into odd round- 
 about ways of doing outrageous things, and seems to 
 have made him feel when he was winning, much as a 
 boy feels when he does something which he particu- 
 larly wishes to do, taking his chance of being punished 
 if he is found out. 
 
 Christianity, regarded as a system by the opera- 
 tion of which he might very probably be punished, 
 had thus a considerable and a rather wholesome, 
 though a distorted and on the whole ignoble effect 
 on Louis XL As a system by which his heart 
 could be touched, by which the aims of his life could 
 be regulated and his feelings purified, it would seem 
 hardly to have affected him at all. His biographer 
 displays perhaps even more fully the same state of 
 mind. He does not disapprove of his hero, or even 
 like him much the less, on account of his admitted 
 inirpiities. Comines appears to regard his sins as 
 matters, so to speak, between him and his Maker, 
 which, if he chose to run the necessary amount of 
 risk, he was justified in committing as far as his 
 fellow-creatures were concerned. 
 
 Another matter upon which every page of Comines 
 throws a broad light is the extreme ignorance of the 
 times in which he lived. The complete absence of 
 any sort of literary or scientific training amongst the 
 aristocracy of his day is proved by half the passages 
 which I have extracted above ; and the general tone of 
 the whole book shows how the absence of such train-
 
 Ill 
 
 PHILIPPE DE COMINES 123 
 
 ing lowered the most conspicuous natural gifts into 
 something little better than cunning and violence. 
 It is melancholy to see how men like Louis XI. and 
 Charles the Bold, whose natural gifts were on a level 
 with those of the greatest modern statesmen, looked 
 upon politics as a mere field for personal ambition. 
 When either of them by any accident gets a glimmer- 
 ing notion of the importance of promoting the general 
 good of the state and improving its institutions, 
 Comines looks upon their virtue and wisdom as 
 something prodigious. The utmost that he appears 
 practically to expect of any one is that he will be 
 rather moderate, and not inhumanly cruel or treach- 
 erous in the pursuit of his personal objects.
 
 IV 
 
 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS 1 
 
 Montaigne (1533-1592), says Mr. Hallam, is the first 
 French classic — the first writer of whose works an 
 educated man is ashamed to be entirely ignorant. It 
 is scarcely necessary to give any minute account of a 
 book which is so familiar to almost every reader 
 as Montaigne's Essays. Most people have clipped into 
 it more or less extensively ; though it may be doubted 
 whether any one, in the absence of some special 
 motive or special sympathy with the author, ever 
 read it through. 
 
 Its proper use is to be treated as its author 
 treated other books. ' Je ne cherche aux livres,' 
 he says, 'qu'a m'y dormer du plaisir par un 
 honneste amusement.' ' Si ce livre me fasche, j'en 
 prends un autre, et ne m'y addonne qu'aux heures 
 oil l'ennuy de rien faire commence a me saisir.' The 
 Essays are just the sort of. book which may be taken 
 up at odd times, opened anywhere, and laid aside 
 at any moment ; and this, no doubt, is the manner in 
 
 1 Essais de Michel de Montaigne.
 
 essay iv MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS 125 
 
 which they are, and ought to be generally read. For, 
 after all that has been said in their praise, it must be 
 owned that they are long-winded to a degree, full of 
 repetitions of the same thought under a variety of 
 very similar forms, and as garrulous, vain, and egotist- 
 ical as the letters of a newspaper correspondent in 
 the middle of the long vacation. 
 
 Montaigne's delight in spilling himself over 
 reams of paper was a peculiarity in his own day, 
 and the undeniable vein of genius which runs 
 through his writings combined with the novelty 
 of the process to give it extraordinary interest. 
 Since his time we have been deluged with confes- 
 sions and self-revelations. Novelists and journalists 
 have vied with each other in beating out their own 
 and their neighbours' experiences, feelings, and 
 loose thoughts upon things in general into sheets 
 of literary tinfoil ; and Montaigne stands at the head 
 of an immensely large and by no means respectable 
 literary family. It would, however, be foolish to allow 
 this to blind us either to Montaigne's real merits, or 
 to the peculiar position which he undoubtedly fills in 
 literary history. 
 
 Times have changed since he wrote, and his 
 critics ought to remember that Bohemianism, as 
 we call it, was far more excusable in his day than 
 in our own. Irregularity, unsystematic shrewdness, 
 gay audacity in speculation have their place and their 
 use as well as more solemn qualities ; and if ever there 
 was an age in which an emphatic expression of such a
 
 126 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 turn of mind was needed, it was the age of fierce war 
 and passionate controversy in which Montaigne lived. 
 
 It ought also to he said of Montaigne tbat his 
 eternal babble and wandering were unaffected. He 
 was not himself a penny-a-liner, though he was the 
 father of the whole brood. He actually was what 
 the modern gossip wishes to be, and he lived at a 
 time when intelligent gossip was greatly required as 
 a counterpoise to fierce, ignorant, and overbearing 
 dogmatism. 
 
 The babble of the present day is bad because 
 it indisposes people to serious thought on serious 
 subjects, on which materials for serious thought 
 are available in any quantity. We live in an age 
 of real science, authentic history, and fruitful 
 inquiry, upon which men both can and ought to 
 exercise their faculties steadily and in earnest. Hence 
 the levity of style which so many modern writers 
 choose to assume in discussion and description is for 
 the most part mere idleness and self-indulgence ; for 
 it is seldom graceful enough to have an independent 
 artistic value. In Montaigne's time it was nearly 
 the only available weapon of offence against a harsh 
 tyranny which had so darkened counsel by words 
 without knowledge, that the first and most pressing 
 of all intellectual necessities was to get rid of the 
 burdens which it had laid on the minds of men. 
 
 The best thing to be said of Montaigne is that his 
 essays are a protest on behalf of human nature and 
 common sense against mock science, and that in his
 
 iv MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS 127 
 
 days there was hardly any true knowledge to be dis- 
 respectful to. ' Science,' he says, ' treats matters too 
 finely, in an artificial way, different from that which 
 is common and natural. My page makes love and 
 understands it. Eead him Leon the Jew or Ficinus ; 
 it is about him, his thoughts and his actions, yet he 
 understands nothing. I do not know my own com- 
 mon movements when I read about them in Aristotle. 
 They have been covered and dressed up in different 
 clothes to suit the schools, God prosper them ! If I 
 was in the trade I would naturalise art as they 
 artificialise nature.' (' Je naturaliserois l'art autant 
 comme ils artialisent la nature.') This appears to 
 us to be the true view, and the justification of his 
 scepticism, which, in our own days, would no doubt 
 have been far less thoroughgoing than he makes it. 
 
 It is difficult to choose particular specimens as 
 illustrations of Montaigne's way of thinking, because 
 characteristic sentences and illustrative points occur 
 in every part of the essays in a manner which baffles 
 all calculation, and without any apparent connection 
 with the matter ostensibly in hand. To take one 
 illustration amongst a thousand. Near the end of 
 the book (Book iii. chap. vi,), Montaigne gives a 
 striking sketch of the magnificence and luxury of the 
 old Eoman spectacles, and, passing from it, repeats 
 the reflection which every one makes, but which can 
 never be worn out, as to the indefinitely small pro- 
 portion which our knowledge of past times bears to 
 our ignorance of them.
 
 128 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 He justifies his general tone by the example of 
 the English. He says : ' Depuis que je suis nay, j'ay 
 veu trois et quatre fois rechanger celles des Anglois, 
 nos voisins ; non seulement en subject politique qui 
 est celuy qu'on veult dispenser de Constance, mais 
 au plus important subject que puisse estre, a scavoir 
 de la religion, de quoy j'ay honte et despit, d'autant 
 plus que e'est une nation a laquelle ceulx de mon 
 quartier ont eut aultresfois une si privee accointance 
 qu'il reste encores en ma maison aulcunes traces de 
 notre ancien cousinage, et chez nous icy j'ay veu telle 
 chose qui nous estoit capitale, devenir legitime ; et 
 nous, qui en tenant d'aultres, sommes a mesme, selon 
 l'incertitude de la fortune guerriere, d'estre un jour 
 criminels de leze majesty humaine et divine, nostre 
 justice tumbant a la mercy de l'injustice et en 
 l'espace de peu d'annees de possession prenant une 
 essence contraire. Comment pouvait ce dieu ancien 
 plus clairement accuser en rinimaine cognoissance 
 l'ignorance de l'estre divin, et apprendre aux hommes 
 que leur religion n'estoit qu'une piece de leur 
 invention propre a lier leur societe.' 
 
 Thence he diverges into a really beautiful set of 
 reflections on the discovery of America, full of that 
 delicate sense of humour which has become rare 
 amongst French writers. 
 
 ' Our world has just found another (and who can 
 say whether it is the last of the family, since the 
 daemons, the sibyls, and we were ignorant of this one 
 till the other day ?), as large, as full, and as well
 
 iv Montaigne's essays 129 
 
 limbed (membra) as itself, and yet so new and so 
 childish that we are still teaching it its a b c. It 
 is not yet fifty years since it was ignorant of 
 letters, weights and measures, dress, corn, and 
 vines ; it was still naked, and lived only on the sup- 
 plies of its nursing mother. ... It was a baby 
 world ; we have not whipped it and forced it into 
 our manners by our valour and natural force, nor 
 have we won it by our justice and goodness, nor 
 subdued it by our magnanimity.' 
 
 He goes on to show how great were the natural 
 gifts of the Mexicans and other natives of America, 
 and how little they had got except injury from the 
 superior knowledge of their conquerors. After several 
 pages about Cortes, Pizarro, and Montezuma, he 
 finishes the digression by returning to the subject of 
 the essay in which it occurs. 
 
 What was that subject 1 ? — Coaches. The connection 
 is as follows : the essay begins about sea-sickness, to 
 which Montaigne says he was very subject, though he 
 thought it was not caused, as Plutarch supposed, by 
 fear. He adds, that he hated travelling by coach, litter, 
 or boat, or in any other way than on horseback. This 
 reminds him that Mark Antony was the first person 
 who had a coach at Kome, that Heliogabalus had 
 his coach drawn by tigers, stags, dogs, etc., and that 
 Firmus preferred ostriches. ' The strangeness of these 
 inventions puts into my head the fancy that it is a 
 sort of pusillanimity in monarchs, and a proof that 
 they do not sufficiently understand their position, when 
 VOL. i K
 
 130 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 they labour to set themselves off and make a show 
 by excessive expenses.' This introduces the question, 
 what expenses are excessive 1 This brings up the 
 Roman shows. They introduce the passage which 
 we have already referred to, and after many pages of 
 that comes the conclusion : ' " Retumbons a nos 
 coches " ; instead of them, and of any other sort of 
 carriage, they' (the Peruvians) 'were carried on the 
 shoulders of men, and the last King of Peru, on the 
 day when he was taken, was carried thus on a golden 
 frame sitting in a chair of gold, in the midst of his 
 troops.' As his bearers were killed, others took their 
 places till the King himself was killed. With this 
 the essay abruptly concludes. This essay is as good 
 a specimen of the way in which Montaigne put down 
 upon paper whatever came into his head as any one 
 of scores of others which might be chosen instead 
 of it. 
 
 There is indeed one essay, and only one, which is 
 rather more systematic, and which may be considered 
 as the nearest approach to be found in Montaigne's 
 writings to a definite exposition of his views on the 
 subjects to which he attached real interest and im- 
 portance. It is the Apology of Raymond of Sebonde. 
 It fills 112 octavo pages, very closely printed in small 
 type, and sets forth — not, it is true, systematically 
 nor even consecutively, but at all events fully — the 
 views which have specially associated with the author's 
 name the reputation of universal scepticism. 
 
 We will try to give a concise account of it. It begins
 
 IV MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS 131 
 
 by saying that Pierre Bunel, ' a man of much reputa- 
 tion for knowledge in history,' after staying at Mon- 
 taigne with the essayist's father, gave him, on leaving, 
 a book called Thcologia Naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum, 
 Magistri Baimondi de Sebonde. It was written in bad 
 Spanish with Latin terminations, and Bunel thought 
 it would be very useful and appropriate to the time, 
 ' for it was then that the novelties of Luther began to 
 come into credit, and to shake our ancient faith in 
 many places ; in which he was quite right, foreseeing 
 well, by the principles of reason, that this malady 
 would rapidly degenerate into an execrable atheism.' 
 
 Old Montaigne laid the book aside, but a few days 
 before his death told his son to translate it into 
 French, which he accordingly did : — 
 
 ' I thought the imagination of this author beautiful, 
 the frame of his work well arranged, and his design 
 full of piety. As many people amuse themselves by 
 reading it, and especially the ladies, to whom we all 
 owe service, I have often been able to help them in 
 freeing the book from two principal objections which 
 are made to it. Its object is bold and courageous. 
 The author undertakes by human and natural reasons 
 to establish and verify against atheists all the articles 
 of the Christian religion ; in which, to tell the truth, 
 I find him so firm and so happy that I do not think 
 it possible to argue that case more powerfully.' 
 
 Of the author himself Montaigne says he knows 
 nothing except that he was a Spanish physician at 
 Toulouse who lived about two hundred years before
 
 132 H011AE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 his own age — i.e. in the fourteenth century; and that 
 ' Adrianus Turnebus, who knew everything, told me 
 that he thought the book must be some quintessence 
 taken from Thomas Aquinas, for that that genius 
 alone, full as it was of infinite erudition and wonder- 
 ful subtlety, was capable of such thoughts.' 
 
 The 'two principal objections ' which Montaigne 
 undertakes to answer in his apology are, first, that 
 Christians are wrong in wishing to support their 
 faith by human arguments, as it is to be conceived 
 only by faith, and by a particular inspiration of 
 divine grace ; and secondly, that the arguments of 
 Raymond are weak and inconclusive. His answer to 
 the first objection appears to be that the behaviour of 
 Christians in general shows that they are Christians 
 only by accident, and have little or no supernatural 
 faith : — 
 
 ' We find ourselves in a country where Christianity 
 is professed ; or we think of its antiquity, or the 
 authority of those who have maintained it, or we 
 fear its threats to unbelievers, or follow its promises. 
 These considerations ought indeed to be employed 
 upon our faith, but only as makeweights ; a different 
 religion, other witnesses, promises and threats of 
 another kind, might impress on us in the same 
 manner a different belief. We are Christians by the 
 same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.' 
 
 Hence we need all the arguments we can get, and 
 may be prepared by a writer like Raymond to receive 
 a supernatural faith. The answer to the second ob-
 
 lv MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS 133 
 
 jection is, apparently, that Eaymond's arguments are 
 no weaker than any others, that we know nothing, or 
 hardly anything, upon any subject, and that we are 
 too poor creatures to have a right to doubt the trutli 
 of Christianity : — 
 
 ' The method that I take to beat down this frenzy, 
 and which appears to me the most proper, is to crush 
 and tread under foot human pride and boldness ; to 
 make them feel the inanity, vanity, and nothingness 
 of man ; to snatch from their hands the weak arms of 
 their reason, to make them bow the head and bite the 
 earth under the authority and reverence of the divine 
 majesty. . . . Down with Think (' abattons ce cuider ') 
 the foundation-stone of the tyranny of the evil spirit.' 
 The rest of his apology is an outpouring of scepti- 
 cism which fits as awkwardly as possible to the highly 
 orthodox preface by which it is introduced. Indeed, 
 Montaigne's answers to the two objections with which 
 he has to deal, appear to prove, when put together, 
 that it is right to argue on religious matters, but 
 wrong to require good arguments. We ought to be 
 content with feeble and inconclusive ones, and to look 
 only at those which are used on the orthodox side. 
 To the ordinary human mind this method would prob- 
 ably appear to involve a good deal of waste of time. 
 An argument is simply worthless unless it establishes 
 what it asserts. Whatever may be the imperfections 
 of arithmetic, it is difficult to imagine a greater waste 
 of time than working sums wrong. 
 
 Having speedily got through the argumentative
 
 134 IIOKAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 part of his undertaking, Montaigne proceeds to heap 
 up, at an extraordinary and indeed tiresome length, 
 illustrations of the sceptical view of things. He 
 begins with a long sermon on the text that 'pre- 
 sumption is our natural and original malady,' in 
 support of which he gives all sorts of instances of the 
 superiority of beasts to men. Taken as a whole, it is 
 tedious and commonplace, but it is full of shrewdness. 
 It contains, for instance, the assertion which hasbeen so 
 often repeated and argued upon (by Coleridge amongst 
 others) in later times, that when a dog comes to four 
 cross roads he smells at two and runs down the third 
 without smelling, arguing that as his master was not 
 in road A up which he came, nor in B or C at which 
 he smelt, he must have gone down D. Hence the dog 
 is acquainted with what in these days is called the 
 third law of thought — the law of the excluded middle. 
 The difficulty is as to the fact. Beasts, he says, may 
 speak, for all we can tell, for we can say what we 
 have to say by signs : — 
 
 ' Quoi des mains ] nous requerons, nous promet- 
 tons, appellons, congedions, menaceons, prions, sup- 
 plions, nions, refusons, interrogeons, admirons, 
 nombrons, confessons, repentons, craignons, vergoi- 
 gnons, doubtons, instruisons, commandons, absolvons, 
 injurions, mesprisons, desfions, despitons, flattens, 
 applaudissons, benissons, humilions, mocquons, 
 reconcilions, recommendons, festoyons, rejouissons, 
 complaignons, attristons, descomfortons, desesperons, 
 estonnons, escrions, taisons, et quoi non 1 '
 
 iv Montaigne's essays 135 
 
 And he goes on to tell the story of Agis, who, when 
 asked by an ambassador after a long speech what 
 answer he was to carry home, said, ' That I have let 
 you speak as much and as long as you liked without 
 saying a single word.' ' Voila pas,' says Montaigne, 
 in French which it would be a shame to try to trans- 
 late, ' un taire parlier et bien intelligible 1 ' In his 
 comparison between men and beasts, Montaigne shows 
 perhaps rather too little than too much scepticism, 
 for he receives as perfectly authentic the most 
 wonderful fables about animals — as, for instance, 
 that ' in Thrace above Amphipolis ' the hunters and 
 the wild hawks go halves in their prey, and that on 
 the Palus Mieotis the wolves go and tear up the 
 fishermen's nets unless they honestly leave them half 
 the fish. He says, too, that 'storks give themselves 
 clysters with salt water.' 
 
 It is characteristic of Montaigne that his scepticism 
 never extends to matters of fact. He says, for instance, 
 that sportsmen say that if you want to find out which 
 is the best worth keeping of a litter of puppies, the 
 way is to carry them away from the kennel and keep 
 the one which the mother first brings back. It never 
 occurs to him to ask how, when all the rest are 
 drowned, you can possibly tell that the one so chosen 
 was the best. 
 
 After running on at immense length about the 
 inferiority of men to beasts, he gives several pages 
 to a declamation about the advantage of ignorance, 
 the whole of which merely shows that particular
 
 136 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 cases may be put in which particular pieces of know- 
 ledge have been injurious to particular persons. 
 Ignorance in regard to religion, and above all in 
 regard to the nature and attributes of God, is specifi- 
 cally praised as being the right and inevitable condi- 
 tion of man ; such ignorance he regards as another 
 form of faith, or at least as closely connected with it. 
 
 How the consciousness of hopeless ignorance can 
 produce any other result than that of diverting the 
 thoughts from the object of which we so know our- 
 selves to be ignorant, he does not think of explaining. 
 This, however, introduces the main subject of the 
 whole apology : — 
 
 ' If at last I am to inquire if it is in the power of 
 man to find what he seeks, and if this search, on 
 which he has been employed for so many centuries, 
 has enriched him with any new force or solid truth ; 
 I think he will confess, if he speaks according to his 
 conscience, that all that he has got by this long pur- 
 suit is to have learnt to know his weakness.' 
 
 This is the text of an elaborate attack on the philo- 
 sophy of his age, the effect of which is to assert that 
 it was mostly a matter of chopping logic, and con- 
 tained nothing solid. He begins with the natural 
 theology of the ancient philosophers, by contrasting 
 whose systems he is of course able to produce any 
 amount of evidence of the interminable nature of 
 the disputes which divided them, and of the slight- 
 ness of the grounds on which their theories were 
 built. Here and there striking passages occur. The
 
 iv montaigne's essays 137 
 
 following, for instance, is a neat expression of what 
 may be described as the fundamental position of 
 orthodox scepticism : — 
 
 ' Pythagoras made a nearer guess at the truth in 
 thinking that the knowledge of this first cause and 
 being of beings must be indefinite, imprescriptible, 
 and incapable of being declared ; that it was nothing 
 else than an extreme effort of our imagination to- 
 wards perfection, each man amplifying the idea 
 according to his capacity ; that if Numa tried to 
 model the devotion of his people on this plan, and to 
 attach it to a purely mental religion, without any 
 definite object and without any mixture of matter, 
 he undertook what could not be done ; the human 
 mind cannot sustain itself floating about in this 
 infinity of vague thoughts ; it is obliged to confine 
 them in some sort of image fitted to its capacity. 
 The divine majesty has thus, for our sakes, after a 
 fashion, allowed itself to be circumscribed within 
 bodily limits ; its supernatural and celestial sacra- 
 ments bear signs of our earthly condition ; it is 
 worshipped by outward signs and ceremonies ; for it 
 is man who believes and prays.' 
 
 Here, again, is a pointed statement of a thought 
 
 which has been systematically worked out by others, 
 
 and especially by Hobbes * : — 
 
 1 See the chapter on Speech in the Leviathan (Works, iii. 25, 
 pt. 1, ch. IV.) — 'The errors of definitions multiply themselves 
 according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into ab- 
 surdities which at last they see, hut cannot avoid without 
 reckoning anew from the beginning in which is the foundation
 
 138 HOKAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 ' Our language has its weaknesses and faults like 
 the rest. Most of the occasions of the troubles of the 
 world are grammatical. Our lawsuits arise out of 
 debates on the interpretation of the laws ; and most 
 of our wars from the difficulty of clearly expressing 
 the treaties and conventions between princes. How 
 many and what important quarrels have been pro- 
 duced in the world by doubts as to the meaning 
 of the one syllable Hoc' (i.e. 'hoc est corpus 
 meum '). 
 
 Another celebrated passage which occurs a little 
 farther on is the one to which Bossuet alludes when 
 he says that it is a pleasure to hear Montaigne make 
 his goose talk. 
 
 ' Why should not a goose say, Every part of the 
 universe is made for me ; the earth is for me to walk 
 upon, the sun lights me, the stars shed their influences 
 on me; I find such conveniences in the wind, such 
 others in the water; the vault of heaven regards 
 nothing so favourably as me. I am the darling of 
 nature. Does not man keep me, lodge me, serve me ; 
 does not he sow and grind for me ? And if he eats 
 
 of their errors. From whence it happens that they which 
 trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a 
 greater, without considering whether those little sums were 
 rightly cast up or not,— and at last finding the error visible, 
 and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way 
 to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their 
 books ; as birds that, entering by the chimney, and finding 
 themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a 
 glass window for want of wit to consider which way they came 
 in ; ' and see the whole chapter.
 
 iv MONTAIGNE S ESSAYS 139 
 
 me, he eats his fellow -men as well, and I eat the 
 worms which kill and eat him.' 
 
 It was probably also in Pope's mind when he wrote 
 his lines in the first book of the Essay on Man — 
 
 Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine ? 
 
 Earth for whose use ? Pride answers, ' Tis for mine.' 
 
 This attack on morals and natural theology is 
 followed by an equally vehement attack on physical 
 philosophy as understood in Montaigne's days, after 
 which he sums up by telling his readers that they 
 must maintain Raymond's arguments by all ordinary 
 means in the first instance, and resort to the argument 
 from general scepticism only in case of extreme 
 necessity. ' This last fencing trick must be employed 
 only as an extreme remedy ; it is a desperate stroke 
 in which you must throw away your own arms to 
 make your adversary abandon his, and a secret thrust 
 which you must use seldom and with reserve.' 
 
 As for himself, the general result is that he adheres 
 to his own religion because it is his : — 
 
 ' As I am incapable of choosing, I let others choose 
 for me ' (as if this was not the idlest of all ways of 
 choosing), ' and keep myself in the position in which 
 God has placed me ; otherwise I should be continually 
 rolling. Thus have I by the grace of God preserved 
 entire, without agitation or trouble of conscience, the 
 ancient doctrines of our religion, in spite of all the 
 sects and divisions which our age has produced.' 
 
 There is a good deal more to the same purpose, 
 but this is the essence of Montaigne's most elaborate
 
 140 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 discourse. The best answer to it, if it much requires 
 one, is to be found in the immense steps made since 
 his time in every kind of solid knowledge. Science 
 has, in the course of the last three centuries, attained 
 a position which makes general scepticism in good 
 faith hardly possible. 
 
 It has taught us, no doubt, that our ignorance 
 is unspeakably great, and that the languages in 
 which we have to express ourselves are very 
 imperfect instruments for describing the world 
 in which we live ; but it has also taught us, in a 
 manner which cannot be gainsaid, that there is a fixed 
 order in the world, and in our own thoughts, which 
 we can contemplate, and to a considerable extent 
 describe correctly in words. 
 
 To Montaigne's perpetual Que Scais-Je ? it would 
 be easy in these days to give a definite, though 
 it would be a lengthy answer, which would consist 
 of an enumeration of all the branches of science 
 which since his time have been put on a sound 
 basis, which have been proved, that is by refer- 
 ence to the testimony of the senses duly checked and 
 corrected by repeated observation. 
 
 As for the religious application of his argument, it 
 is enough to say that it makes as much against every 
 form of belief as for it. It may, in fact, be reduced to 
 this, that all religions being ecpially false, or at least 
 ecpially uncertain, there is no reason for changing the 
 one in which we happen to be brought up ; and even 
 this is incorrect, for the religion in which a man is
 
 IV 
 
 montaigne's essays 141 
 
 brought up may be exceedingly inconvenient and irk- 
 some, though not more false than any other. If an en- 
 lightened sceptic had been brought up a worshipper of 
 Bhowani it would be wise in him to consider whether 
 Christianity was not at all events a more convenient 
 creed, even if it were not more true. 
 
 Montaigne was, like Bayle, a good deal less sceptical 
 in practice than in theory. Indeed, it is pretty 
 obvious that his scepticism was only a convenient 
 mask beneath which he concealed a condemnation of 
 all existing forms of philosophy and religion. His 
 book is full of positive assertions of his own, especially 
 upon moral subjects. The first chapter of the third 
 book ' De l'utile et de l'honneste' abounds in instances 
 of this. He says, for example :— 
 
 ' There are false and effeminate rules in philosophy. 
 You have been taken by robbers who have released 
 you, having taken your oath for the payment of a 
 certain sum. It is wrong to say that an honourable 
 man will be released from his word, and need not pay 
 when he is at liberty. It is not so. What fear has 
 once made me will, I am bound to continue to will 
 without fear; and if it has forced my tongue only 
 without my will, I am still bound to make my words 
 good.' 
 
 Perhaps the most engaging quality in Montaigne, 
 at least to many readers, is his extreme humanity. 
 It is a good deal like the humanity of Comines. 
 Thus, for instance, in continuation of the passage just 
 quoted, he enters into an elaborate panegyric upon
 
 142 HOKAE SABBATTCAE ESSAY 
 
 Epaminondas praising in particular his humanity. He 
 observes : ' Let us not fear upon the authority of so 
 great a master to believe that some things are 
 unlawful, even against enemies, that the common 
 interest does not oblige us all to everything against 
 private interest nor are all things permissible to a man 
 of honour for the service of his king or of the common 
 cause of the laws ' (p. 508). 
 
 He seems to have been revolted at the harshness 
 which prevailed in his generation, and he never misses 
 an opportunity of protesting against it. The following 
 passages are pleasing illustrations of this : — 
 
 ' I think ill of the custom of forbidding children to 
 call their father, father, and of making them give 
 him a strange name as being more reverential, when 
 nature has provided sufficiently for this authority. 
 We call God Almighty, Father, and do not allow 
 our children to call us so. I have set this to rights 
 in my family. If I could not make myself feared I 
 would rather be loved ; there are so many defects in 
 old age, so much weakness, it is so open to contenrpt, 
 that the best gain that old men can have is the 
 affection and love of their family. Command and 
 fear are their arms no longer.' 
 
 These are fair illustrations of a tone which runs 
 through the whole of the essay. 
 
 A point which ought not to be omitted in a notice 
 of Montaigne, though it is not easy to examine it 
 fully, is his indecency. He is undoubtedly an in- 
 decent author, and his indecency is much more than
 
 TV MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS 143 
 
 mere plainness of speech. He constantly goes out of 
 his way, if he can be said to have any way to go out 
 of, to bring in indecent stories. It is, however, 
 difficult not to admit that his demerits in this 
 particular are closely connected with the naturalism 
 which is the main characteristic of all that he writes. 
 His one rule of composition seems to have been to 
 put down whatever came into his head, clean or 
 unclean ; and to have suppressed anything which he 
 was minded to tell, from a sense of modesty, would 
 have been opposed to his whole scheme. After all, 
 there is more grotesqueness and humour than pruri- 
 ence in Montaigne's indecencies. He has none of the 
 nastiness of Eabelais or Swift, and none of the brutal 
 half-mad vanity of Kousseau. 
 
 Upon the whole, it may be said of him that no 
 one ever succeeded so perfectly in the enterprise 
 which many people have undertaken of painting 
 a perfectly honest and complete portrait of one- 
 self ; but his success was rather a warning than 
 an example. It was due to the fact that the age in 
 which he lived was one in which a protest against 
 bigotry and science, falsely so called, and an honest 
 confession of ignorance, had accidental and exceptional 
 importance. 
 
 His garrulity, personal vanity, and affectation of 
 general scepticism were the arms by the use of 
 which he was able to protest at once effectively 
 and safely against the besetting sins of his genera- 
 tion. In a more humane and better instructed
 
 144 HORAE SABBATICAE essay iv 
 
 age such arts are not required, and if they are 
 employed, not for the legitimate purpose for which 
 Montaigne employed them, but because they suit the 
 real taste of the author, they are generally contempt- 
 ible and sometimes disgusting. 
 
 Except by way of protest against the temper of the 
 sixteenth century, it would not have been worth while 
 to make so much of the fact that Michel de Montaigne, 
 who lived in an unfortified house with a gallery here 
 and a study there, who liked Plutarch, who had an 
 ' esprit prime saultier,' and had an attack of stone 
 which he particularly disliked, who never pursued a 
 subject which he found difficult, and who did, thought, 
 and felt a thousand trivial things, did not know what to 
 make of the world in which they happened. The really 
 important point was, that his neighbours were quite 
 as ignorant as himself, not nearly so honest or so kind, 
 and quite ignorant of their own ignorance ; and this 
 Montaigne's peculiar style enabled him to assert very 
 effectively.
 
 HOOKER'S 'ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY 
 
 > i 
 
 If the value of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity be con- 
 sidered in relation to the age and the state of thought 
 prevalent at the time of its appearance, it will perhaps 
 be considered one of the most remarkable books in 
 English literature. It may, indeed, be said to have con- 
 tained in itself the germ from which several character- 
 istically English schools of thought ultimately grew. 
 
 It may be convenient just to mention that 
 Hooker was born in 1553 at Exeter, and died at 
 his living of Borne, three miles from Canterbury, 
 in the year 1600, and probably in the month of 
 November. His lifetime thus coincided very nearly 
 with the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1556-1603), and 
 with the second great outburst of Protestantism, 
 which began after the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, and 
 was thrown back in the later part of the century, by 
 the efforts of the Jesuits, aided by the great Roman 
 Catholic sovereigns, and especially by Philip II. 
 
 1 Eight Bootes of the Law of Ecclesiastical Polity, by Richard 
 Hooker. 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Hooker's earlier impressions must thus have been 
 those of hope and victory. He belonged to the party 
 of progress in the greatest crisis which the world had 
 seen for many centuries — a greater crisis in some 
 respects than any which has followed it. In his later 
 years, on the other hand, he must to some extent 
 have felt himself more or less upon the defensive, 
 though the firmness with which Protestantism was 
 settled in England, and the slightness of the com- 
 munication with foreign countries which existed in 
 those days, in comparison with what exists at present, 
 may have prevented him from perceiving the full 
 force of the turn in the tide. 
 
 The Ecclesiastical Polity has, so to speak, a triple 
 aspect. It is at once a philosophical, a theological, 
 and a political treatise ; and in order to do justice to 
 the importance of this, Ave ought to remember how 
 vast a change had, at that time, come over the litera- 
 ture of all Europe, and especially over that of England. 
 It was the age of the great revival of letters ; and 
 books were just beginning to be published which 
 were constructed on the classical, rather than on the 
 scholastic model. All that we now understand by 
 moral science — metaphysics, logic, theology, law in 
 all its various applications — had for centuries been 
 treated as so many branches of theology, and had 
 been investigated, if at all, by the scholastic methods. 
 Hooker was the first great English writer who broke 
 through these fetters, except for exclusively contro- 
 versial purposes ; and although he had in other parts
 
 V HOOKER'S ' ECCLESIASTICAL TOLITV ' U7 
 
 of Europe a few predecessors — as, for instance, 
 Machiavel (1469-1527) — and a few contemporaries, 
 as Bodin (1530-96) and Montaigne (1532-92), he is 
 undoubtedly entitled to a leading place in the class 
 of literature to which he belonged. 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that there were peculiarities 
 in his situation as an Englishman, which gave a degree 
 of practical importance to his writings that belonged to 
 those of no other man till we come to Grotius, in the 
 next generation. The Church of England, the theory 
 of which he did so much to form and to enunciate, was 
 an almost unique institution. It was the most im- 
 portant of the Protestant bodies. Its constitution 
 had more comprehensive aims, and was constructed on 
 more statesmanlike principles, than that of any other 
 church, and it was much more closely connected than 
 any other with the active political life of a great nation. 
 
 Our own experience has shown us in many 
 different ways how all English speculation is affected 
 by the closeness of its relation to practice. This 
 gives it on the one side great vigour and originality, 
 and, on the other, a fondness for details, and an 
 adaptation to immediate results, which more or less 
 hampers and narrows it. This peculiarity is to be 
 traced more or less in all our great writers, and we 
 know of no one in whom it is more conspicuous than 
 in Hooker. Sometimes Ave find him discoursing about 
 the essence of law and the broadest principles of 
 morals; and then again, Ave fall upon endless dis- 
 cussions Avith CartAvright as to the pettiest of petty
 
 148 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 matters — the turn of some particular phrase, or the 
 propriety of some small ceremony in the Prayer Book. 
 Of all the limitations which his character as an 
 Englishman imposed upon him, as on other English 
 theological writers, none probably has detracted more 
 from the permanent value of Hooker's writings, and 
 from those of others like him, than the necessity of 
 writing controversy. Most of our great theological 
 books are more or less controversial, and though this 
 occasionally gives them surprising spirit and precision, 
 it certainly impedes the flow and development of their 
 authors' thoughts, and encumbers their books with a 
 great deal of matter, the interest of which, such as it 
 was, has entirely died away. Most readers of Hooker 
 must have got very much tired of Cartwright and his 
 errors, but it is fair to say that few, if any, contro- 
 versial books are so little disfigured with the polemical 
 spirit as the Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 
 Upon the whole, it may be viewed as the first great 
 effort made in modern times to give the full theory of 
 a great institution, to show the ideal principles upon 
 which it was founded, and to indicate its substantial 
 agreement with that ideal. The number of books even 
 now which can claim such a character is by no means 
 great, and in that day it stood almost alone. 
 
 Taking this view in general of the character and 
 position of the Ecclesiastical Polity, we will now 
 attempt to give some sort of sketch of what we have 
 called its triple aspect — its aspect, namely, towards 
 philosophy, towards theology, and towards politics,
 
 V HOOKER'S 'ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY' 149 
 
 and to show how the principles which its author 
 inculcated, have been represented in the subsequent 
 history of the Church and State of England. The 
 work falls naturally into three great divisions. The 
 first contains the first and second books, though per- 
 haps the second book might with more propriety be 
 put in the second division. The second contains the 
 third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh books ; and the 
 third the eighth. These divisions may not unfairly 
 be taken to represent the three aspects of which 
 we have already spoken — the philosophical, the 
 theological, and the political respectively — though 
 the seventh book is closely connected with the 
 eighth. 
 
 The first book of Hooker is well known to every 
 one who has anything like a competent acquaintance 
 with English literature. Perhaps its most remark- 
 able quality is its extraordinary poetical power. 
 The magnificent sentences with which it ends, sum 
 up its doctrine with such an incomparable majesty 
 and nobility of phrase that we shall be pardoned for 
 repeating them, familiar as they are : — 
 
 ' Wherefore that here we may briefly end : of law 
 there can be no less acknowledged than that her 
 seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of 
 the world ; all things in heaven and earth do her 
 homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the 
 greatest are not exempted from her power; both 
 angels and men and creatures of what condition 
 soever, though each in different sort and manner,
 
 150 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the 
 mother of their peace and joy.' 
 
 This, it is hardly necessary to say, is^ the keynote 
 of Hooker. The Law of Nature is his name for that 
 majestic order which he believed to reign over all 
 things, divine and human, and to conform to which 
 is the great object of human life : — 
 
 ' All things do work, after a sort, according to law ; 
 all other things according to law whereof some 
 superior unto whom they are subject is the author ; 
 only the works and operations of God have been 
 both for their worker, and for the law whereby they 
 are wrought. The being of God is a kind of law to 
 his working, for that perfection which God is, giveth 
 perfection to that he doth.' 
 
 After much of this somewhat mystical but 
 marvellously eloquent extolling of the ultimate 
 principles of morals, as being, so to speak, identified 
 with the Divine existence — in which both the style 
 and the thought often recall Bossuet— Hooker goes 
 on to show how, in all created and imperfect beings, 
 there is ' an appetite or desire whereby they incline 
 to something which they may be, which as yet they 
 are not in act.' They are thus moved to seek their 
 law or the rule of their conduct, for 'that which 
 doth assign unto each thing the. kind, that which 
 doth moderate the force and power, that which doth 
 appoint the form and measure of working, the same 
 we term a law.' Eeason enables them to do so, and 
 therefore 'the sentence that reason giveth concern-
 
 v hooker's 'ecclesiastical tolity' 151 
 
 ing the goodness of those things that they are to do ' 
 is 'the rule of voluntary agents upon earth.' Its 
 main principles are self-evident, and the rest are to 
 be discovered by deduction from them. This natural 
 or rational law is, according to Hooker, the very 
 foundation of all consistent conduct, and is, as a 
 matter of fact, universal with but few, and those 
 insignificant exceptions ; and the highest of all the 
 laws which reason discovers is the love of God. 
 ' Something there must be desired for itself simply, 
 and for no other,' and this must be infinite, other- 
 wise it could not be infinitely desired. ' No good is 
 infinite but only God, therefore he is our felicity 
 and bliss.' The Scriptures are a supernatural law 
 forming a complement to the law of nature, and 
 resting on and guaranteed by it. 
 
 The second book is an argument to refute the 
 Puritanical view of the Bible as being a cyclopaedia 
 of all knowledge and all truth, so that nothing could 
 be affirmed to be right, or to be a duty, which could 
 not be expressly proved to be such out of the Bible. 
 Few passages in the whole work are more interesting 
 or vigorous than that in which this opinion is de- 
 nounced : — 
 
 1 Admit this, and mark, I beseech you, what would 
 follow. God, in delivering Scripture to His church, 
 should clean have abrogated amongst them the law 
 of nature, which is an infallible knowledge imprinted 
 in the minds of all the children of men, whereby 
 both general principles for directing of human actions
 
 152 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 are comprehended, and conclusions derived from them; 
 upon which conclusions groweth in particularity the 
 choice of good and evil in the daily affairs of this life. 
 Admit this, and what shall the Scripture be but a snare 
 and a torment to weak consciences, filling them with 
 infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, 
 and extreme despairs.' 
 
 After denouncing this doctrine, Hooker goes on 
 to describe at length the objects for which, in his 
 opinion, the Bible was written. He views it through- 
 out as being the natural ally of reason, resting itself 
 for its authority on reason, whereby alone its true 
 character could possibly be proved. ' The authority 
 of man, if we mark it, is the key which openeth the 
 door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture.' 
 
 These, amplified and illustrated in various ways, 
 are the points which form the philosophical intro- 
 duction to Hooker's great work. Their connection 
 with the rest of the book is not altogether clear, 
 though probably Mr. Hallam was right in thinking 
 that Hooker's object was to lay a foundation for his 
 distinction between laws which are, and laws which 
 are not, of perpetual obligation ; and to reach the 
 conclusion which is the fundamental principle of his 
 whole work, that the laws of Church government are 
 mutable and temporary. For it follows, from his view 
 of the case, that those laws only are of perpetual 
 obligation which can be shown to exist by self-evident 
 principles of reason, or which are declared perpetual 
 by express revelation contained in Scripture itself.
 
 v HOOKER'S ' ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ' 153 
 
 Whatever was the connection of the first book 
 of Hooker with the remainder of the work, its con- 
 nection with the subsequent course of moral and 
 political speculation in England was most important, 
 and is sufficiently manifest in all the great Church of 
 England theologians. The doctrine, thrown into a 
 very few words, is, indeed, nothing else than that the 
 ultimate tests of moral and religious truth are con- 
 science and reason. They are to be applied to all 
 subjects, and especially to all subjects connected with 
 Church government, using for their instruction all other 
 knowledge that may be available, and especially the 
 experience of past times, but using it in the spirit not 
 of servility to a tradition, but of free inquiry applied 
 to a profoundly interesting branch of knowledge, and 
 employed in solving one of the most difficult of all 
 the problems of the art of government. Hooker 
 preaches this doctrine Avith a degree of unction and 
 enthusiasm which it seldom excites, but which in him 
 was obviously sincere, and quite natural. 
 
 The effect of this great example on the subsequent 
 course of speculation in the Church of England has 
 been prodigious. It has supplied the High Church 
 school, from Laud downwards, with those affinities to 
 liberalism of which it has never altogether lost the 
 tradition ; and it gave the first example of another 
 kind of religious speculation which has been far more 
 powerful and widely influential. It would be difficult 
 to say whether Laud or Chillingworth had most in 
 common with Hooker, and both Laud and Chilling-
 
 154 HOKAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 worth stand at the head of a long line of intellectual 
 and spiritual descendants. 
 
 Hooker's liberalism deserves to be fully appreciated, 
 and we will accordingly give a few short passages from 
 his writings which show how strong it was, and how 
 directly it led to the well-known and more systematic 
 liberalism of Chillingworth, to say nothing of that of 
 Locke, whose essay on civil government is almost 
 entirely borrowed from Hooker. Take, for instance, 
 his appreciation of Aristotle : — 
 
 ' When once (the soul of man) comprehendeth any- 
 thing above (things of inferior quality), as the differences 
 of time, affirmations, negations, and contradictions in 
 speech, we then count it to have some use of natural 
 reason ; whereunto, if afterwards there might be 
 added the right helps of true art and learning, there 
 would undoubtedly be almost as great difference in 
 maturity of judgment between men therewith inured, 
 and that which now men are, as between men that 
 are now and innocents. Which speech if any con- 
 demn as being hyperbolical, let them but consider 
 this one thing ; no art is at the first finding out so 
 perfect as industry may after make it ; yet the very 
 first man that to any purpose knew the way we speak 
 of, and followed it, hath surely performed more in very 
 near all parts of natural knowledge, than sithence in 
 any one part thereof the whole besides hath done.' 
 
 Or take these general principles : — 
 
 ' The mind of man desireth evermore to know the 
 truth according to the most infallible certainty which
 
 v HOOKER'S ' ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ' 1 St 
 
 the nature of things can yield. Where we cannot 
 attain unto this, then what appeareth to be true by 
 strong and invincible demonstration, such as wherein 
 it is not by any way possible to be deceived, there- 
 unto the mind doth necessarily assent, neither is it in 
 the choice thereof to do otherwise. And in case these 
 both do fail, then, which way greatest probability, 
 thither the mind doth evermore incline. Scripture 
 being, with Christian men, received as the Word of 
 God, that for which we have probable, yea that for 
 which Ave have necessary reason, yea that which we 
 see with our eyes is not thought so sure as that which 
 the Scripture of God teacheth. . . . Now it is not 
 required, nor can be exacted at our hands, that we 
 should yield unto anything our assent than such as 
 doth answer the evidence which is to be had of that 
 we assent unto. For men to be tied and led by 
 authority, as it were, with a kind of captivity of 
 judgment, and though there be reason to the contrary 
 not to listen unto it, but to follow like beasts the first 
 in the herd, they know not nor care not whither, this 
 were brutish. Again, that authority of men should 
 prevail with men either against or above reason is no 
 part of our belief. Companies of learned men, be 
 they never so great and reverend, are to yield unto 
 reason, the weight whereof is no whit prejudiced by 
 the simplicity of the person which doth allege it ; but 
 being found to be sound and good, the bare opinion 
 of men to the contrary must of necessity stoop and 
 give place.'
 
 156 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Much of course might be said against Hooker's 
 theories, if we look at them in a critical spirit. His 
 language is by no means exact, and it is a serious 
 defect in his theory that he does not habitually feel, 
 though he sometimes refers to, the distinction between 
 a law and a moral principle. It is not quite unfair to 
 say of him that it is hard to understand how, accord- 
 ing to his principles, there can be such things as bad 
 laws ; but there are far more important things in the 
 world than the gift of an accurate use of language; and 
 Hooker ought rather to be valued for the richness 
 and magnanimity of his thoughts than blamed for 
 their occasional vagueness — a vagueness perhaps 
 inseparable from that love of the classics and revolt 
 from scholasticism for which he was so remarkable. 
 
 As was natural in a writer of that age, his view of 
 logic was essentially scholastic and imperfect. He 
 supposed that knowledge might be indefinitely in- 
 creased by arguing from self-evident first principles. 
 ' In all parts of knowledge, rightly so termed, things 
 most general are most strong. Thus it must be, 
 inasmuch as the certainty of our persuasion touching 
 particulars dependeth altogether upon the credit of 
 those generalities out of which the}^ grow.' According 
 to our modern views of the nature of knowledge, this 
 was a mistake ; but it was one which in Hooker's age 
 was a mistake on the right side, inasmuch as it tended 
 to strengthen men's belief in the powers of their own 
 minds, in the fixed and immutable character of truth, 
 and in the possibility of attaining to it by the efforts
 
 v HOOKER'S ' ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ' 157 
 
 of reason. Hooker affords in this respect a splendid 
 contrast to Montaigne and Pascal, and stands on 
 similar grounds with Bossuet, though his conclusions 
 were sufficiently dissimilar, and in our opinion much 
 more rational and consistent. It may not be generally 
 known that Hooker enunciates in so many words a 
 maxim much and justly quoted in our own times : 
 'No truth can contradict any other truth.' 
 
 The second aspect of Hooker is his theological 
 aspect. "We shall say but little of this, although the 
 theological part of the book is much the largest part of 
 it. It fills the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and perhaps 
 the seventh book (on Episcopacy). The third is by far 
 the most interesting. Its object is to prove that there 
 is no ground for the assumption that Scripture must 
 of necessity prescribe a form of Church government. 
 
 The essence of the book is that Church govern- 
 ment is a matter of expediency, like the govern- 
 ment of the State, that it belongs to that class of laws 
 which are mutable, according to the circumstances 
 to which they apply; and that we are to ascertain, 
 from past history, and from other general considera- 
 tions, what laws are best suited to the circumstances 
 of particular churches. The following sentences are 
 as emphatic as any in the book : — ■ 
 
 'For preservation of Christianity there is not 
 anything more needful than that such as are of the 
 visible church have mutual fellowship and society 
 with each other. . . . The Catholic Church is divided 
 into a number of distinct societies, every one of which
 
 158 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 is termed a church within itself. ... A church is a 
 number of men belonging unto some Christian fellow- 
 ship, the place and limits whereof are certain. . . . 
 The several societies of Christian men, unto every of 
 which the name of a church is given, must be endued 
 with correspondent general properties belonging unto 
 them as they are public Christian societies. And of 
 such properties common with all societies Christian, it 
 may not be denied that one of the very chiefest is 
 ecclesiastical polity.' 
 
 After an elaborate refutation of the opinion that 
 a system of Church government must necessarily be 
 revealed in Scripture, there follows an argument to 
 show how laws for the ' regiment ' of the Church 
 may be made by the ' advice of men following therein 
 the light of reason;' but that these laws, though entitled 
 to obedience whilst they last, are not unchangeable. 
 
 The next four books are devoted to the justifica- 
 tion of the laws actually made for the Church 
 of England. The fourth book is a defence of the 
 Church of England ceremonies against the charge of 
 being Popish ; and the fifth, which is far the longest 
 of the whole eight, contains an elaborate vindication 
 of the Church of England on all the points attacked 
 by the Puritans. Though considerable parts of 
 this book are of little interest in the present day, it is 
 in some respects the most remarkable part of the 
 whole work, for it includes by a sort of odd accident 
 an elaborate statement of the theology of the Church 
 of England as Hooker understood it.
 
 v HOOKER'S ' ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ' 159 
 
 The book consists of eighty-one chapters, many of 
 which relate to very small matters. The thirty-eighth 
 is ' of Music with psalms.' The sixty-fifth, of the cross 
 in baptism. The seventy-eighth relates to the attire of 
 ministers, etc. ; but the chapters from the forty-second 
 to the sixty-second contain a sort of body of theology 
 setting forth at length the doctrines of the Trinity, of 
 Prayer, and the Sacraments. The connection at first 
 sight is not easy to perceive, but when carefully con- 
 sidered it becomes plain. They are a set of vindica- 
 tions of the doctrinal parts of the Prayer Book. Thus, 
 in their zeal for the Bible, the Puritans were anxious 
 to exclude the Athanasian Creed from public worship. 
 Hooker insists on its importance, and is thus led into 
 giving an account of the reasons for its adoption in the 
 first instance, and for its subsequent retention. 
 
 They objected to several of the Church prayers, in 
 particular to the prayer against sudden death, the ex- 
 pression ' which for our unworthiness Ave dare not ask,' 
 the petition to be defended ' from all adversity,' and 
 that God will ' have mercy upon all men.' In answer to 
 this Hooker goes into the whole subject of prayer, and, 
 as a branch of it, into the controversy about the two 
 wills in Christ, which he finds it necessary to discuss in 
 order to ascertain the precise value of Christ's prayers 
 as precedents for human prayers. 
 
 In connection with the theory of the sacraments, and 
 in justification of the services appointed by the Church 
 of England, he goes at length into the whole subject 
 of the two natures and personality of Christ, his incar-
 
 160 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 nation, and other cognate topics. The leading topics 
 of theology are thus passed in review in connection 
 with the Prayer Book, which makes the arrangement 
 of the matter very awkward. 
 
 As regards the substance of Hooker's doctrines we 
 will confine ourselves to a single observation. They 
 represent completely the characteristic features of 
 Anglicanism, conclusions of the most orthodox and 
 ecclesiastical kind based upon a rationalising founda- 
 tion. The position of his Puritan antagonists was the 
 converse of this. They, following the example of 1 
 Calvin, regarded the authority of the Christian Revela- 
 tion, as contained in the Bible, as a self-evident truth, 
 and though this led them to be even more doctrinal 
 and dogmatic than Hooker and his school, it also led 
 them to disregard and disapprove of creeds, the testi- 
 mony of antiquity, and the like. 
 
 In each case religion was a compound of reason 
 and faith ; but Hooker founded faith upon reason, 
 and his disciples and successors by an inevitable 
 consequence came to limit faith by reason. The 
 Puritans, on the other hand, starting with faith, 
 reasoned it out much in the spirit of the old scholastic 
 divines, though by the use of different methods and 
 upon the assumption of the truth of different data. 
 The effects of these opposite methods, not only upon 
 theology but upon the general course of thought in 
 the two countries, would form a curious subject of 
 investigation. The repudiation of formularies in the 
 
 1 Institute I. 7, 1, 24.
 
 V HOOKER'S 'ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY' 1G1 
 
 one case and the habit of regarding them principally, 
 if not entirely, as historical evidence of the truth 
 of the doctrines which they assert in the other, pro- 
 duced by degrees very similar results in the two cases, 
 though by different roads. 
 
 The sixth book relates to the Presbyterian ' plat- 
 form' (Hooker constantly uses this word in what 
 we should now call the American sense) of Church 
 government and to the doctrine and practice of 
 confession and absolution. 
 
 The seventh book, about bishops, is much more 
 interesting. Its general effect may be shortly 
 described by saying that Hooker carries the dignity 
 and importance of bishops to the very highest 
 point. He says nothing inconsistent with the belief 
 that their power was of divine institution, and 
 much which rather favours that view ; but upon 
 the whole, he rests the case, as against those who 
 attack it, on historical and political grounds. The in- 
 stitution is very old and venerable, perhaps it is 
 of divine origin ; at all events ' prelacy must needs be 
 acknowledged exceedingly beneficial in the Church.' 
 Such being the case, bishops are entitled to the 
 highest possible honour; church property is God's 
 property ; ' ecclesiastical persons are receivers of 
 God's rents, and the honour of prelates is to be 
 thereof his chief receivers, not without liberty from 
 him granted, of converting the same into their own 
 use even in large manner,' says the marginal note of 
 section twenty-three. It would be sacrilege to divert 
 
 VOL. I M
 
 162 IIOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 these endowments from them and their successors, 
 even if they are unworthy. 
 
 There is a curious passage at the end of the book 
 which throws some light on the condition of church 
 property in Hooker's time. After speaking of the 
 diminution of ecclesiastical revenues, he says : — 
 
 ' Doth the residue seem yet excessive 1 The ways 
 whereby temporal men provide for themselves and 
 their families are foreclosed to us. All that we have 
 to sustain our miserable life with is but a remnant 
 of God's own treasure, so far already diminished and 
 clipped that if there were any sense of common 
 humanity left in this hard-hearted world, the im- 
 poverished state of the clergy of God would at the 
 length even of very commiseration be spared. The 
 mean gentleman that hath but a hundred -pound 
 land to live on would not be hasty to change 
 his worldly estate and condition with many of 
 these so over -abounding prelates, a common artisan 
 or tradesman of the city with ordinary pastors of the 
 Church.' 
 
 On the whole, Hooker's theological attitude is 
 eminently characteristic. He rests everything ulti- 
 mately on reason and conscience, informed by history 
 and antiquity; but the verdict which, in his view, 
 is given by history and antiquity is orthodox in the 
 extreme. No one can take more exalted views of 
 the Bible, of the great theological doctrines such as 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the importance of 
 Church government and the dignity of Church officers ;
 
 v HOOKER'S ' ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ' 163 
 
 though, when carefully examined, the foundations of 
 his theory appear to be capable of supporting quite a 
 different superstructure. 
 
 The last aspect in which Hooker is to be regarded 
 is that of a politician. His eighth book is an explana- 
 tion and vindication of the doctrine of the Koyal 
 Supremacy. "What he thought upon this subject is 
 not quite so familiar to the world as it ought to be. 
 He begins by going into the origin of legislative 
 power, as to which he lays down principles of the 
 utmost boldness and vigour. He asserts in express 
 words that the consent of the people at large is the 
 foundation of all lawful authority : — 
 
 'Unto me it seemeth almost out of doubt and 
 controversy that every independent multitude before 
 any certain form of regiment established, hath, under 
 God, supreme authority, full dominion over itself, 
 even as a man not tied with the hand of subjection 
 as yet unto any other hath over himself the like 
 power. God creating mankind did endue it naturally 
 with power to guide itself, in what kind of society 
 soever he should choose to live.' 
 
 A form of government being established, those 
 who are governors are so by divine right, but they 
 must recollect that 'all kings have not an equal 
 latitude.' Whatever kings by conquest may do 
 ' touching kings which were first instituted by agree- 
 ment and composition made with them over whom 
 they reign, and how far their power may extend, the 
 articles of compact between them are to show ; ' nor
 
 164 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 need this compact be express, or made 'at the first 
 beginning,' for such articles 'are for the most part 
 clean worn out of knowledge or else known to very 
 few.' The articles may be 'by silent allowance 
 famously notified by' custom.' 
 
 These ' articles,' in the case of English kings, are to 
 be found in our ancient laws. The axioms of our 
 regal government are these : ' Lex facit regem ' ; the 
 king's grant of any favour made contrary to law is void, 
 ' Kex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest.' After this 
 he goes on to show where, by our English institu- 
 tions, the power of legislation in all matters temporal 
 and spiritual resides, namely, in Parliament. 
 
 The Church and State, he says, are one and the 
 same body regarded from different points of view; 
 and its legislature is as competent to make laws on 
 matters spiritual as on matters temporal : — 
 
 'The Parliament of England, together with the 
 convocation annexed thereunto, is that whereupon 
 the very essence of all government within this kingdom 
 doth depend ; it consisteth of the King, and of all 
 that within the land are subject unto him. The 
 Parliament is a court, not so merely temporal as if 
 it might meddle with nothing but only leather and 
 wool.' 
 
 Bishops and other spiritual persons ought no 
 doubt to be advised with, but nothing but the nation 
 at large can make their resolutions into laws ; for 
 this is one of the passages in which Hooker seizes the 
 true distinction between law and counsel : —
 
 v HOOKER'S 'ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY' 165 
 
 ' In matters of God, to set down a form of prayer, 
 a solemn confession of the articles of the Christian 
 faith, and ceremonies meet for the exercise of religion, 
 it were unnatural not to think the pastors and 
 bishops of our souls a great deal more fit than men 
 of secular trades and callings ; howbeit, when all 
 which the wisdom of all sorts can do is done for the 
 devising of laws in the Church, it is the general 
 consent of all that giveth them the form and vigour 
 of the laAvs, without which they could be no more 
 to us than the counsel of physicians to the sick. 
 Well might they serve as wholesome admonitions 
 and instructions, but laws could they never be, 
 without the consent of the whole Church to be guided 
 by them ; whereunto both nature and practice of the 
 Church of God, set down in Scripture, is found every 
 way so fully consonant that God himself would not 
 impose his own laws upon his people by the hand of 
 Moses without their free and open consent.' 
 
 He proceeds to point out that the supremacy of 
 the King himself in the ' case of making laws resteth 
 principally in a negative voice ; ' and after showing 
 how the existence of a superior legislative power or 
 dignity is quite consistent with respect to the office and 
 functions of the clergy, he concludes, with admirable 
 courage, that the King is not our lawgiver, the clergy 
 are not our lawgivers ; the nation itself and it alone 
 has the right of deciding what are God's laws, and of 
 attaching to them a legal sanction : — 
 
 ' Laws being made amongst us are not by any of
 
 166 IIORAE SABBATICAE essay V 
 
 us so taken or interpreted as if they did receive their 
 force from power which the prince doth communicate 
 unto the Parliament, or unto any court under him, 
 but from power which, the whole body of the realm 
 being naturally possessed with, hath, by free and 
 deliberate assent, derived unto him that ruleth over 
 them, so far forth as hath been declared.' 
 
 This is a higher strain of thought and feeling than 
 most people would be prepared for under Queen Eliza- 
 beth. These are to us most memorable passages. 
 They show what the Reformation really was, and in 
 what sense and to what a very great extent it is true 
 that the English nation, even at that time, was 
 radically free. Nothing since Hooker's time has 
 been written more soberly and wisely on the origin 
 of government and the general theory of legislation 
 than the passages which we have quoted. We have 
 indeed lost something of their significance, and may 
 need before long to relearn part of the truth which 
 they contain. We must not, however, lengthen out, 
 by discussing such a subject, an article which is 
 already too long, and we will, therefore, here close 
 our slight sketch of the first great book in English 
 ecclesiastical literature by saying that, after an 
 interval of 260 years, it still remains very nearly the 
 greatest of them all.
 
 VI 
 
 ARCHBISHOP LAUD 1 
 
 Laud is one of the many persons whose character has 
 never been fairly studied, because his name has been 
 made into a kind of symbol by two parties fiercely 
 opposed to each other. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, in his review of Hallam's Con- 
 stitutional History — written, it is true, when he was 
 twenty -seven years of age — breaks out into the 
 following characteristic expressions : ' For Land we 
 entertain a more unmitigated contempt than for 
 any other character in our history. The fondness 
 with which a portion of our Church regards his 
 memory can be compared only to that perversity of 
 affection which sometimes leads a mother to select 
 the monster or the idiot of the family as the object of 
 her especial affection.' The Parliament should have 
 sent him to Oxford to continue ' that incomparable 
 Diary which we never see without forgetting the 
 vices of his heart in the imbecility of his intellect.' . . . 
 ' Contemptuous mercy was the only vengeance which it 
 
 1 IVorks of ArcKbishop Laud.
 
 168 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous 
 old bigot.' There is a considerable dash of the Cam- 
 bridge Union about this; but it seems to have expressed 
 not unfairly the deliberate opinion of Lord Macaulay. 
 
 On the other hand, the ' portion of our Church ' 
 referred to has been of a diametrically opposite 
 opinion. In his preface to Laud's Diary (which is 
 adorned with pictures of stiff little angels saying 
 their prayers and other quasi -ascetic devices) Dr. 
 Newman draws a picture of Laud which, if quieter 
 and in better taste than Lord Macaulay's — it was 
 written in 1839, when Dr. Newman was nearly forty 
 years old — is quite as strong in the opposite direction. 
 
 Laud is described as a Christian of the primitive 
 type, ' cast in a mould of proportions that are much 
 above our own, and of stature akin to the elder days of 
 the Church.' There is some speculation as to whether 
 he was technically a martyr, and the writer inclines 
 to think he was. In short, the ' ridiculous old bigot ' 
 towers above the level of common men, and rises 
 into an atmosphere which they cannot affect even to 
 breathe. Such works as this preface hardly affect 
 the character of dispassionate critical inquiry, and 
 they considerably exaggerate the sentiment of the 
 older class of Tories and High Churchmen. 
 
 These, however, were sufficiently strong, as may 
 be inferred from the well-known lines in the ' Vanity 
 of Human Wishes ' : — 
 
 See when the vulgar 'scapes despised or awed, 
 Rebellion's vengeful talons seize on Laud ;
 
 vi ARCHBISHOP LAUD 169 
 
 Marked out by dangerous parts lie meets the shock, 
 And fatal learning leads him to the block. 
 Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep, 
 But hear his fate, ye blockheads, hear, and sleep. 
 
 If we want to get some notion of the man as he 
 really was, we must turn from the views of later 
 partisans, and look at the evidence supplied by his 
 own works and by those who knew him. 
 
 It is always convenient, even in the case of a man so 
 well known, to have under the eye the leading dates 
 of his life. They were as follows : Laud was born at 
 Reading, 5th October 1573. He was elected Fellow 
 of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1593. After hold- 
 ing different livings, he was elected President of his 
 College in 1611, and was made Chaplain to James I. 
 In 1615 he became Archdeacon of Huntingdon; in 
 1621 Bishop of St. David's. In 1622 he had his 
 famous controversy with the Jesuit Fisher; and in 
 1624 he was put into the High Commission Court. 
 In 1626 he was made Bishop of Bath and Wells, in 
 1628 Bishop of London. In 1630 he became Chan- 
 cellor of the University of Oxford, and in August 
 1633 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. From 
 this time till the meeting of the Long Parliament he 
 was nearly in the position of a Prime Minister, and 
 was the chief agent in all the arbitrary acts of the 
 time, such as the High Commission prosecutions, the 
 introduction of the Liturgy into Scotland, the licens- 
 ing of books, and the like. One of the first acts of the 
 Lona; Parliament was to send him to the Tower in 
 March 1641. His goods" were plundered by various
 
 170 HORAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 violent proceedings. He was brought to trial in March 
 1 644, for high treason. The proceedings lasted, under 
 one form or another, till January 1645, when he was 
 beheaded, in the seventy-second year of his age. 
 
 The great events of Laud's life are too notorious 
 to require, or even to justify, more than this passing 
 reference ; but it is worth while to try to get some 
 sort of notion of the man from his writings. They 
 consist of seven sermons ; a report of the Conference 
 with Fisher the Jesiiit, held for the instruction of the 
 Duke of Buckingham's mother ; the Diary, of which 
 Lord Macaulay spoke so contemptuously, and a small 
 volume of private devotions ; a variety of official 
 papers connected with his duties as Chancellor of 
 Oxford ; reports of several of his speeches, especially 
 of speeches at the Council Board and at the Court 
 of High Commission ; a history of his troubles and 
 his trial ; and a great mass of correspondence with 
 various persons, of whom Strafford is the most re- 
 markable. The most characteristic of them are his 
 conference with Fisher, his speeches, his Diary and 
 book of devotions, and part of his correspondence. 
 The history of his troubles is an intricate and prolix 
 account of forgotten details ; and a large part of his 
 correspondence refers to current matters of business 
 which have ceased to have any sort of importance. 
 
 The view of his character which these materials 
 suggest to us is as far from that of Lord Macaulay as 
 it is from that of Dr. Newman. To speak of Laud as 
 a 'ridiculous old bigot,' and to balance the vices of
 
 VI 
 
 AllCIIBISHOr LAUD 171 
 
 his heart against the imbecility of his intellect, is as 
 nnjust as it is altogether unreal and fanciful to idealise 
 him into a saint and martyr. 
 
 It is hardly probable that Lord Macaulay had 
 read any part of his works, with the exception 
 of the grotesque bits of his Diary, when he 
 launched his juvenile thunderbolts. It is im- 
 possible to read either his conference with Fisher 
 or his speeches at the Council Board and the Court 
 of High Commission without seeing that Laud was a 
 man of great ability and extensive learning. In 
 particular, he had remarkable gifts of style. His 
 sermons are rather good in their way, and are by no 
 means pedantic for the age in which they were written. 
 Concede that a preacher ought to consider his text as 
 a motto for observations more or less appropriate to 
 the special subject of the day, and it will be hard to 
 deny to Laud the praise of making a good many 
 judicious and sensible remarks on the topics which he 
 handled. His writings are clear, lively, and simple. 
 His style has none of the involution and amplitude 
 which Avas common amongst his contemporaries. It 
 is far simpler, for instance, than the style of Clarendon, 
 and has comparatively little of the pedantry of 
 Williams, or his biographer Hacket. It has much 
 resemblance, not merely in the choice and arrange- 
 ment of words, but also in substance, to that of 
 Chillingworth, whose discussion with Knott has much 
 in common with Laud's conference with Fisher. 
 
 One point, which the common notions of Laud
 
 172 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 certainly would not suggest,is the existence of a distinct 
 vein of humour in every part of his writings, especially 
 in his correspondence with Strafford. They are con- 
 tinually jokingwith each other, especially on the subject 
 of Oxford and Cambridge, on which ancient controversy 
 they never miss a chance of having a little fun. 
 
 Here and there this humorous vein takes the 
 savage form, and shows what Clarendon meant 
 by Laud's roughness of manner. Preaching, for 
 instance, about some Dr. Gumming of the seventeenth 
 century, avIio believed in the restoration of the Jews, 
 he observes : ' I cannot tell here whether it is Balaam 
 that prophesieth, or the beast he rode on.' In a 
 sermon on unity he gives this pithy piece of advice : 
 'Keep unity then, and be sour— it is honourable 
 justice — upon any that shall endeavour to break it.' 
 In a speech on his trial, in answer to one by Lord 
 Say, he thus remarks on his antagonist's complexion : 
 'What a happiness hath this lord, that his pale 
 meagreness cannot blush at such a speech as this!' 
 In his speech 'at the censure of Bastwick, Burton, 
 and Pryn,' he observes : ' This is the misery, 'tis 
 superstition nowadays for any man to come with 
 more reverence into a church than a tinker and his 
 bitch come into an ale-house.' ' The comparison,' he 
 adds, ' is too homely, but my just indignation at the 
 profaneness of the times makes me speak it.' 
 
 If we turn from the style to the substance, and try 
 to ascertain what Laud's real opinions were on the 
 subjects on which his mind was most exercised, it
 
 vi ARCHBISHOP LAUD 173 
 
 will be very difficult for any fair critic to speak with 
 contempt of him. The two great subjects on which 
 he thought were religion and politics, which indeed 
 in his age were only two sides of the same subject. 
 
 His position in regard to each has, we think, been 
 much misunderstood. How he came to receive the 
 worship of the High Churchmen of our own day, 
 except by the accident of his execution, it is hard to 
 understand. The great characteristic of the Oxford 
 movement was the height to which those who be- 
 longed to it carried the ascetic, devotional, unworldly 
 side of religion. They surrounded themselves with 
 an atmosphere of mystery and symbolism. They had 
 a leaning to what the rest of the world described as 
 superstition, and, in general, appeared to find a 
 positive pleasure in believing as much as they could. 
 
 To judge from his writings, there was singularly 
 little, though there was just a touch, of this temper in 
 Laud. In one or two of his prayers there is a trace of 
 mysticism, and there are a few points in his conference 
 with Fisher which more or less lead up to it, but the 
 general tone of his writings is cruite the other way. 
 
 The conference with Fisher, as we have said, 
 strongly resembles Chillingworth's 'Religion of Pro- 
 testants, though it is not so systematic. The book, 
 indeed, is put into such a form that it is not easy, 
 especially near the beginning, to make out who is 
 speaking, and on what occasion. Fisher had two 
 conferences Avith Dr. White, and afterwards a third 
 conference (24th May 1622) with Laud. Fisher pub-
 
 174 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 lished in 1623 what his antagonists considered an 
 unfair account of the conferences. "White and Land 
 replied by giving their own account in 1624. In 
 1626 Fisher published an answer under the initials 
 'A. C In 1639 Laud published his final account in 
 the form in which it now stands in his works, replying 
 upon ' A. C Much of it, therefore, falls into the form 
 of ' You say that I said that you said so and so, and 
 that I answered so and so ; whereas you say that you 
 said something else, and that my answer is wrong. 
 Now I say that I never said that you said what you 
 say that I said that you said, and my answer to what 
 I said that you said was right.' Moreover, 'A. C.,' 
 'F.,' 'D. White,' and 'B.' (i.e. Bishop Laud) come in, 
 especially near the beginning, in a way which reminds 
 the reader of the letter which old Mr. Weller and his 
 literary friend jointly wrote to inform Sam of his 
 f stepmother's death. 
 
 As the book goes on, however, Laud expounds his 
 own views more and more fully, and with less and 
 less reference to Fisher, and it can hardly be denied 
 that they are very vigorously conceived and stated. 
 There is, of course, a great deal about the Fathers, 
 and what they did or did not believe, and much 
 collateral skirmishing upon various topics ; but the 
 point on which the whole controversy really turns is 
 the question, What is the ultimate test of belief? 
 Fisher argued, as Cardinal Manning argues in the 
 present day, that the Church was the only trustworthy 
 witness for the Bible, and that a belief in Church
 
 VI 
 
 ARCHBISHOP LAUD 175 
 
 authority was thus the only foundation upon which 
 Christian faith could rest. Laud's answer to this is 
 substantially the same as Chillingworth's, and, strange 
 as it may appear, his answer will well bear repeating 
 even now. He says with pithy vigour : — 
 
 'I did never love too curious a search into that 
 which might put a man into a wheel and circle him 
 so long between proving Scripture by tradition and 
 tradition by Scripture, till the devil find a means to 
 dispute him into infidelity and make him believe 
 neither. I hope this is not your meaning. Yet I 
 doubt this question, How do you know Scripture to 
 be Scripture? will cause more harm than you will 
 ever be able to help by tradition, but I must follow 
 that way which you lead me.' 
 
 He then proceeds to discuss four different ways by 
 which Scripture may be shown to bear the character 
 claimed for it, the last of which is the use of natural 
 reason; and this method Laud declares to be the 
 right one, though he adds — and in this he differs, 
 more perhaps in expression than in substance, from 
 Chillingworth — that the conviction produced by 
 natural reason in the first instance may be deepened 
 by prayer, and by acquaintance with the character of 
 the Bible, till it becomes stronger than the mere force 
 of the evidence would have made it. Eeason, how- 
 ever, is the ultimate foundation of his whole system, 
 and his style and habits of mind bear all the 
 characteristics of that kind of rationalism. 
 
 There is in all his writings a remarkable absence of
 
 17(3 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 the mystical emotional way of looking at religion, and 
 he argues with all the sturcliness and point of a man 
 who is thoroughly determined to know his own 
 meaning, and make other people know theirs. The 
 following sentences are good instances of this : — 
 
 'For it may further he asked why we should 
 believe the Church's tradition, and if it he answered 
 we may believe because the Church is infallibly 
 governed by the Holy Ghost, it may yet be demanded 
 of you how that may appear? And if this be de- 
 manded, either, you must say you have it by special 
 revelation, which is the private spirit you object to 
 other men, or else you must attempt to prove it by 
 Scripture, as all of you do.' 
 
 Which of course would be a petitio principii, So, 
 
 again 
 
 • Their final answer is, they know it to be so, 
 because the present Roman Church witnesseth it 
 according to tradition, so arguing primo ad ultimum 
 from first to last ; the present Church of Eome and her 
 followers believe her own doctrine and tradition to be 
 true and Catholic because she professes it to be such.' 
 
 These are fair specimens of the terseness and 
 vigour with which the whole book is written, and 
 they certainly do not give the impression of a man 
 of an imbecile mind. Besides this, Clarendon's 
 description of Laud, and Laud's undoubted love for 
 learning and learned men, and his benefactions to 
 learned bodies, show that, whatever else he was, he 
 was by no means a ' ridiculous old bigot.'
 
 VI 
 
 AKCHBISIIOP LAUD 177 
 
 The principal evidence to show that he was is sup- 
 plied by his Diary. It certainly does contain a great 
 many odd notes about dreams. Dr. Newman speaks 
 of these passages, in his preface, as showing 'a re- 
 ligious attention to dreams and possible indications 
 of Providence.' They do not appear to me in that 
 light, nor does Lord Macaulay seem to be quite fair 
 about them. In most cases the dreams are simply 
 mentioned without any religious application at all. 
 '7th July. I dreamed that I had lost two teeth.' 
 '21st Aug. In my sleep it seemed to me that the 
 Duke of Buckingham came into bed to me, where he 
 behaved himself with great kindness towards me,' 
 etc. ' 4th Sept. Afterwards I dreamed of Sackville 
 Crow, that he was dead of the plague,' etc. 
 
 This is rather grotesque and queer than superstitious. 
 There is nothing religious about the entries. Laud does 
 not seem to have drawn any omen from the loss of his 
 teeth or the fate of Sackville Crow. He would 
 appear rather to have had a sort of fancy for putting 
 down dreams in a Diary which contains all sorts of 
 odds and ends — for instance, his getting lamed in one 
 leg ' by the biting of bugs,' his being startled by two 
 robin redbreasts flying into the room where he was 
 writing a sermon, the elm leaves being still upon the 
 trees on the 1st of December, 'which few men have 
 seen,' and scores of other trifles. 
 
 The Diary is a very short and slight affair altogether, 
 and contains little that can fairly be considered remark- 
 able. Perhaps the most striking sentence in it occurs 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 
 178 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 in an entry on Strafford's execution. ' His mishaps in 
 this last action were that he groaned under the public 
 envy of the nobles, served a mild and a gracious 
 Prince who knew not how to be, nor to be made, great,' 
 etc. This is a singular, and surely not a very saintty, 
 criticism on Charles's character. It tallies well with 
 Clarendon's constant complaints that Charles was 
 uxorious, and so weak-minded that he always allowed 
 himself to be guided by his inferiors. 
 
 To those who take their notions of him from his 
 works it will probably appear that the true bent of 
 Laud's mind was far more towards politics than 
 towards theology. How far he really cared about 
 religion, except as the leading political question of 
 the day, is a matter on which it would be pre- 
 sumptuous to form an opinion. That he was as keen 
 a politician as it was possible for a man to be does 
 not admit of a doubt. His whole heart is in his 
 correspondence with Strafford, and it is obvious enough 
 that they felt for each other that kind of strong 
 personal sympathy and liking, which leads men to 
 careless familiarity. It is sufficiently well known 
 what their plans were, how they meant to carry them 
 out, and what was the result. 
 
 Often as the story has been told, there is one point 
 in it, specially connected with Laud, and singularly 
 illustrative of his character and position, which is 
 perhaps less generally known than it might be. This 
 is the nature and practical drift of his views of Church 
 government. We do not think that he was in the
 
 VI 
 
 ARCHBISHOP LAUD 179 
 
 least degree disposed to be a Roman Catholic. We 
 believe, on the contrary, that he had a genuine 
 intellectual dislike to the Romish system, and that he 
 had a good deal of sympathy with the incipient 
 liberalism which was so strongly developed in Chilling- 
 worth, who wrote under his special patronage and 
 direction, and in Jeremy Taylor, who was his 
 chaplain. 
 
 There are many passages in his Conference with 
 Fisher, in his sermons, and in his speeches, which 
 show that he held Hooker's theory of the identity of 
 the Church and State, and that he was quite sufficiently 
 inclined to despise the Puritans as illiberal and narrow- 
 minded, and to entertain, mutatis mutandis, similar 
 views of the Roman Catholics. 
 
 This being so, it is no doubt odd how his name 
 came to be a proverb for petty, narrow-minded bigotry. 
 The answer is to be found in the theory of Church 
 government which he wished to turn into fact. In 
 common with many statesmen and writers of the day 
 — Charles I, Clarendon, Chillingworth, and Jeremy 
 Taylor, for instance — he believed with all his heart in 
 the divine right of episcopacy ; a doctrine, by the way, 
 which has an aspect extremely unfavourable, and even 
 diametrically opposed, to the later forms of Popery. 
 
 This doctrine substantially was, that the Christian 
 Church was an aristocracy of which the bishops were 
 the rulers, each bishop having, by God's appointment, 
 certain powers in his own bounds, and the bishops 
 of each nation having also certain powers paramount
 
 180 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 to all human authority, and closely connected with, 
 and forming the natural support to, the powers of 
 the King, the origin of which was also divine. 
 
 Like all aristocratic theories, this had no doubt 
 its liberal and high-minded side. As we have shown 
 on other occasions, it had a strong natural affinity for 
 intellectual liberalism, and for learning of every kind. 
 Moreover, the notion of a national Church, governed 
 by an aristocracy of bishops, closely united with the 
 temporal rulers of the nation, is not only larger- 
 minded than the notion of a conventicle, but is 
 really far more dignified than the notion of an immense 
 spiritual despotism with a Dalai Lama, in the shape 
 of a Pope, at the head of it. 
 
 It should never be forgotten that the modern Ultra- 
 montane view of the Church is not only irrational in 
 itself, but is a modern innovation, for which the world 
 is obliged to a variety of ingenious authors, and 
 especially to the Jesuits. The earlier view, and espe- 
 cially that of the Gallicans, attributed the greatest 
 importance to the rights of national Churches, and 
 Laud and his party held much the same sort of 
 position, as far as Church government was concerned, 
 as would have been held by the Gallican Church had 
 Louis XIV. gone one step farther than he actually 
 went. Their theology was greatly more liberal. 
 
 It is important to recognise the dignified and 
 attractive aspect of the intellectual side of Laud's 
 theory, because the other side of it is better known. 
 It cannot, however, be said that the evils usually
 
 VI ARCHBISHOP LAUD 181 
 
 ascribed to it are exaggerated. If ever there was a 
 system in this world which deserved to be called a 
 ' tyranny of professors,' it was the one which Laud 
 and Strafford laboured to set up, and we are perhaps 
 tempted rather to underrate than to overrate the 
 danger of it. 
 
 In the present day we are inclined to smile when 
 a wrongheaded colonial bishop chooses to play 
 at being a judge, and to try to set up a system 
 of jurisprudence which he can mould at his own 
 pleasure, under the name of the common law of the 
 Church; but this in Laud's time was no laughing 
 matter. There was then a real substantial contest, 
 and a most acrimonious and doubtful one, between 
 the law of the Church and the law of the land. So 
 complete was the victory of the latter that the way 
 in which the battle was fought and won has been 
 almost forgotten. 
 
 A few words on the subject may perhaps be 
 interesting to some of our readers. If the con- 
 troversy between the lawyers and the divines had 
 been clearly worked out, it would have resulted in 
 two counter-propositions. The lawyers' proposition 
 was that the ecclesiastical law of England was nothing 
 else than that part of the law of England which 
 related to ecclesiastical affairs, and that it owed its 
 binding force to the will of the English Legislature. 
 This view is worked out elaborately, and asserted 
 with extreme and almost passionate emphasis, by 
 Coke and Hale.
 
 182 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 The proposition of the divines was that the 
 ecclesiastical law of England was the common law 
 of the Christian Church as interpreted by clerical 
 judges. To do full justice to their view of the sub- 
 ject, and especially to Laud's view of it, would no 
 doubt be a matter of some difficulty ; but this, in 
 general terms, was its character, and the practical 
 ' consequence was that, in the court of High Commis- 
 sion and in the Ecclesiastical Courts all over the 
 country, the clergy could make pretty nearly what- 
 ever laws they thought proper upon all ecclesiastical 
 and moral subjects. 
 
 In Clarendon's significant words Laud was 
 determined ' that the discipline of the Church should 
 be seen and felt as well as talked of,' and the 
 way in which he carried out his resolution is to be 
 traced in all the proceedings of the High Com- 
 mission Court. The imprisonment of persons of high 
 rank for adultery, simply on the ground that adultery 
 was a spiritual offence — or, in other words, a sin — 
 was a strong illustration of the spirit in which he 
 proceeded ; but the general tendency of the system 
 is seen more clearly in its daily application. 
 
 This is to be traced in a curious publication of Arch- 
 deacon Hale on the recordsof the different Ecclesiastical 
 Courts from the end of the fifteenth till the middle 
 of the seventeenth century. The practical applica- 
 tion of the system is set in the clearest possible light 
 by this remarkable book. It shows that the clergy 
 of the day, and especially the archdeacons, were more
 
 vi ARCHBISHOP LAUD 183 
 
 like our stipendiary magistrates than anything else. 
 They held courts constantly, as often as twenty times 
 a year, and took cognisance in them of every sort of 
 moral offence — breach of trust, defamation, irregular 
 attendance at church; above all, incontinence in all 
 its forms. The procedure was by the course of the 
 civil law, and the parties (till the lay poAver interfered 
 to prevent it) were compelled, by what was called the 
 oath ex officio, to give evidence against themselves. 
 The consequences to which the parties were liable on 
 conviction were either penance or excommunication, 
 the temporal effects of which were most serious. 
 
 The High Commission Court dignified, centralised, 
 and methodised this power; and, if the Court had 
 been able to maintain itself, it would have given the 
 bishops a degree of power which, according to our 
 modern notions, would have been altogether intoler- 
 able, and which, even in the seventeenth century, 
 people were thoroughly determined to resist, even at 
 the expense, if necessary, of civil war. To us it is 
 not only easy to understand this feeling, but barely 
 possible to understand how the state of things 
 which called it forth should- ever have come into 
 existence. 
 
 It ought, however, to be observed, and indeed it is 
 one of the most curious points in the whole matter, 
 that in point of discipline the Presbyterians (as wit- 
 ness the Scotch Kirk Sessions) were more severe than 
 the bishops themselves, though probably they were 
 more on a level with those over whom their power
 
 184 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 was exercised, and had in every way a greater hold 
 on their sympathies. 
 
 It ought also to be observed that the dispute to 
 which the King, the Church, and the two Houses 
 were parties was emphatically a question, not of 
 law or liberty, but of power and sovereignty. In 
 England, as in every other part of Europe, the 
 question, Who was sovereign 1 had, in the seventeenth 
 century, to be settled by the same means by which 
 the States of the American Union settled the question 
 whether they formed a nation or a confederacy. 
 
 Logic might be chopped, and authorities quoted, 
 to any length. The real question was, "Whom did 
 I the people really wish and intend to obey ? They 
 ) were quite clear that they did not mean to obey 
 the bishops or the clergy, except in a very modified 
 manner indeed. They were divided between the 
 King and the two Houses, though with a considerable 
 majority, as events showed, against the King, and 
 this was caused principally by his adherence to the 
 bishops. 
 
 Laud appears to us to have been a rather favour- 
 able specimen of the .class to which he belonged, 
 but his history leaves no room for doubt as to the 
 reasons of the failure of his schemes. A learned, 
 well-meaning, and, in his way, liberal-minded College 
 Don is perhaps the last person in the world whom 
 the English nation is likely to receive as a ruler 
 and governor in all matters human and divine. We 
 think that those who reviled him as a disguised
 
 vi ARCHBISHOP LAUD 185 
 
 Papist, or derided him as a bigot and fool, misunder- 
 stood him as much as those who turned him into a 
 glorified saint. We also think that it was very 
 wrong to cut off his head ; but, with considerable 
 intellectual merits, he was utterly intolerable as a 
 Prime Minister, and deserved almost anything short 
 of what actually happened to him. 
 
 In conclusion we may give the following short 
 extracts, both as remarkable in themselves and in 
 proof of our assertion that there was a side on which 
 Laud's views were directly opposed to bigotry, and 
 were such as to expose him rather to the charge of 
 liberalism. They occur in his speech at the censure 
 of Pryn, Bastwick, and Burton. He had been charged 
 with making innovations of a Popish kind in the 
 Liturgy. The following are two of the charges, with 
 his answers : — 
 
 ' The third innovation is, that the prayer for season- 
 able weather was purged out of the last fast -book, 
 which was, say they, the cause of shipwrecks and 
 tempestuous weather.' 
 
 ' Ans. When this last book was set out, the weather 
 was very seasonable. . . . 'Tis most inconsequent to 
 say that the leaving that prayer out of the book of 
 devotions caused the shipwrecks and the tempests 
 which followed; and as bold they are with God 
 Almighty in saying it was the cause, for sure I am 
 God never told them it was the cause, and, if God 
 never revealed it, they cannot come to know it.' 
 
 Laud was also charged with having left out of the
 
 186 HORAE SABBATICAE essay VI 
 
 Litany a prayer to ' cut off those workers of iniquity 
 whose religion is rebellion.' He justified himself as 
 follows : — 
 
 ' If you make their religion to be rebellion, then 
 you make their religion and rebellion to be all one, 
 and that is against the ground both of State and 
 law. For when divers Romish priests and Jesuits 
 have deservedly suffered death for treason, is it not 
 the constant and just profession of the State that 
 they never put any man to death for religion, but 
 for rebellion and treason only 1 Doth not the State 
 truly affirm that there never was any law made 
 against the life of a Papist, quatenus Papist only 1 
 and is not all this stark false if their very religion be 
 rebellion 1 For if their religion be rebellion, it is not 
 only false but impossible that the same man should 
 suffer for his rebellion and not for his religion.'
 
 VII 
 
 CHILLINGWOETH 1 
 
 If laudari a laudato be a safe rule for estimating a 
 writer's merits, the name of Chillingworth ought to 
 stand nearly as high in English ecclesiastical literature 
 as those of Hooker and Butler. His Religion of Pro- 
 tectants was dedicated, by permission, to Charles 1. 
 It was written under the eye of Laud, and was by 
 Laud's request examined by Dr. Prideaux, afterwards 
 Bishop of Worcester ; Dr. Baylie, then Vice-Chancellor 
 of Oxford ; and Dr. Samuel Fell, Lady Margaret Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity ; and it was published with their 
 unanimous approval, expressed on its title-page in 
 the strongest language. ' Nihil reperio doctrinee vel 
 discipline Ecclesise Anglicans adversum, sed quam- 
 plurima quae Fidem Orthodoxam egregie illustrant, 
 et adversantium glossemata acute, perspicue, et 
 modeste dissipant' — says Dr. Prideaux; and the 
 others are to the same effect. After the Restoration, 
 similar testimony was borne to it by the licenser of 
 the then Archbishop of Canterbury. Locke repeatedly 
 
 1 The Works of William Chillingworth, 3 vols., Oxford, 1838. 
 
 y
 
 188 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 recommended it as fitted to ' teach both perspicuity 
 and the way of right reasoning better than any book 
 I know.' Tillotson called the author 'incomparable' 
 and ' the glory of his age and nation.' 
 
 This great reputation rests substantially on the only 
 considerable work he ever published, the Religion of 
 Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation. Few things throw 
 greater light on the changes of times and opinions than 
 to read this book over again, and to think what its 
 author, were he now living, would say of the state of 
 things around him, and what our champions of ortho- 
 doxy would say of him. For many reasons, we cannot 
 go into this inquiry ; but we propose to give some 
 account of Chillingworth's principal book, and of its 
 place in the controversy to which it belonged, leaving 
 our readers to draw such inferences as they think fit 
 on the great subject of past and present. 
 
 Chilling-worth was born in 1602, and was educated 
 at Trinity College, Oxford, of which he became a 
 Fellow in 1628. He became a Koman Catholic some 
 time before 1630, being converted by Fisher the 
 Jesuit (whose real name was Percy) by the argument 
 that there must be some one Church infallible in 
 matters of faith, and that this must be the Church of 
 Rome. He studied for a time in 1631 at Douay, and 
 was reconverted to Protestantism shortly afterwards. 
 He published his great work in the year 1637. He 
 was ordained in 1638, and died of exposure to cold 
 and hardship in the winter campaign of 1643, in 
 which he was present at the sieges of Gloucester and
 
 VII CHILLINGWORTH 189 
 
 Arundel, where he was taken prisoner by Waller. 
 He died at Chichester, and was buried in the cathedral. 
 
 There is a charming portrait of him in Lord Claren- 
 don's Life. It occurs in what is perhaps the most 
 pleasing passage in all his writings — his account, 
 namely, of what we should now call the 'set' in 
 which his own early manhood was passed, and which 
 consisted (amongst many others) of Lord Falkland, 
 Clarendon himself, Hales, Chillingworth, and other 
 persons united in most cases by the common bond of 
 extreme devotion to the Government, and still 
 stronger devotion to the Church. In each case, how- 
 ever, their devotion was largely qualified by the sort 
 of liberalism to which we have often referred as one 
 of the best- marked and least -understood of the 
 characteristics of the early history of the Church of 
 England. Chillingworth displayed in perfection the 
 intellectual side of this tendency, and his book still 
 enables us to understand perfectly well the general 
 theory on which it rested. 
 
 The Religion of Protestants is a step in a rather 
 entangled controversy. Its place in the series is what 
 special pleaders call a rejoinder. The earlier steps of 
 the controversy were as follows: In 1630 Knott 
 (his real name was Wilson), a Jesuit, wrote a book 
 called Charity Mistaken, to prove that Roman Catholics 
 were not uncharitable in excluding Protestants from 
 the hope of salvation. In 1633 Dr. Potter, then 
 Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and afterwards 
 one of the bishops who advised Charles I. to give way
 
 190 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 in the matter of Strafford, wrote a book in answer to 
 this, called Want of Charity Justly Charged. In 1634, 
 Knott replied by a book called Charity Maintained, 
 and to this he added a preface called a Direction to N.N. 
 (i.e. Chillingworth), having heard that Chillingworth 
 intended to answer him. The Religion of Protestants 
 a Safe Way to Salvation is the rejoinder to this reply. 
 
 Amongst the many modern inventions for which 
 we have to be thankful, the art of abbreviating 
 controversy is not the least important. We are 
 content in the present day to take the leading points 
 of an obnoxious book or pamphlet and argue against 
 them, having a well-grounded confidence that, when 
 the foundations are overthrown, the superstructure 
 will fall of itself. Two hundred years ago this was 
 not thought enough. A man was not satisfied until 
 he had knocked down the whole of his antagonist's 
 building, stone by stone. Chillingworth reprints the 
 whole of Knott's book in his own, and at the end of 
 every chapter adds an answer to it paragraph by 
 paragraph, embodying very often in the answer a 
 good deal of the paragraph answered. Indeed, he 
 goes farther, for he answers separately every assertion 
 in every paragraph, and every insinuation implied in 
 each assertion. 
 
 This practice, no doubt, has some advantages. 
 It prevents misrepresentation, and even the imputa- 
 tion of it. It enables the reader, if sufficiently 
 patient, to form a real judgment as to the merits 
 of the case, and it makes victory, when gained,
 
 vii CHILLINGWORTH 191 
 
 crashing. If, indeed, controversy were the great 
 object of the lives even of controversialists, it would 
 be the form into which controversy ought to fall ; but, 
 as this is happily not the case, and as the points of 
 essential and permanent interest at issue between 
 controversialists are generally few in number, and 
 capable of being stated by bond fide disputants shortly 
 and broadly, perhaps the modern practice is really 
 better for all parties, especially as it deprives contro- 
 versy of much of its personal sting, and greatly con- 
 duces to candour. 
 
 Men can agree to differ upon general principles, 
 but the question whether A or B has got the best 
 of a particular argument can hardly fail to be 
 irritating, and is often altogether unimportant. 
 It must also be owned that the altercation is in 
 itself exceedingly wearisome. You had said A, to 
 which Dr. Potter answered B. In your reply, you 
 falsely allege that he falsely said B', to which you 
 reply A'. Now he did not say B', though B' would 
 have been quite true, and very important if he had 
 said it, and would not have been answered by A'. 
 What he said was B, which does answer A, and is not 
 affected by A'. All this may be true and relevant, 
 but the human mind is hardly so constituted as to 
 take it in, or to care for it much when it has taken it 
 in, especially two centuries after date. Even when 
 it is quite fresh, the constant backwards and forwards 
 produces on many readers a feeling like moral and 
 intellectual sea-sickness.
 
 192 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Chillingworth's book contains so much of this 
 skirmishing, and so many fierce fights on by-points, 
 that a man must be rather a careful student who 
 would care to read it right through in the present 
 day. He bickers with Knott on every point referred 
 to, even incidentally. 
 
 Amongst other topics, for instance, Knott had 
 glanced, perhaps rather disrespectfully, at James 
 I.'s proceedings in the matter of Archbishop Abbot. 
 This brought upon him an argument in the shape 
 of a shower of questions drawn up like interrogatories, 
 which certainly are (if it were worth considering them) 
 of the most damaging nature for Knott, but which at 
 the present day appear like interruptions to a very 
 impressive argument. Hundreds of instances of the 
 same kind might be given. It is probably to this that 
 Mr. Hallam referred when he described Chillingworth's 
 style as ' more diffuse ' than Knott's. Profusion 
 appears to us the right word. There is too much 
 matter, but the style is severity and precision itself. 
 
 Chillingworth's style, indeed, is not only one of 
 the greatest attractions of his book, but is also per- 
 haps the strongest indication which it supplies of the 
 extraordinary qualities of his mind. Its naked sever- 
 ity and nervous simplicity are occasionally dashed by 
 a vein of eloquence which breaks out unexpectedly 
 and with prodigious effect, especially as it depends 
 neither upon a musical ear nor upon pleasure in 
 ornament, but upon the excitement of strong mascu- 
 line feeling roused by an adequate cause — the feeling,
 
 VII 
 
 CHILLING WORTH 193 
 
 o 
 
 generally speaking, of indignation against oppression, 
 sophistry, and falsehood. An earnest and indeed 
 passionate love of truth was the great characteristic 
 of Chillingworth's mind. He became a Roman 
 Catholic because he thought that in that Church he 
 should find, not peace but truth ; and he left it be- 
 cause he found himself cheated with mere pretences 
 to truth, which crumbled away from him when he 
 tried to grasp them. 
 
 He was a man of a very different turn from some 
 modern converts to Rome. His object was not to be 
 governed, but to be taught, and when he found that 
 government and not teaching, directions to the mind 
 and not food for it, were what was to be had at Rome, 
 he returned to the Church of England. The following 
 is a good illustration of the fervour with which he ex- 
 pressed himself. It contains, moreover, words which 
 have passed into a proverb : — 
 
 ' The Bible I say, the Bible only is the religion 
 of Protestants. ... I for my part, after a long and 
 (as I verily believe and hope) impartial search of 
 " the true way to eternal happiness," do profess plainly 
 that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my foot 
 but upon this rock only. I see plainly and with 
 mine own eyes, that there are popes against popes, 
 councils against councils, some fathers against others, 
 the same fathers against themselves, a consent of 
 fathers of one age against a consent of fathers of 
 another age, the church of one age against the church 
 of another age. ' Traditive interpretations of scripture 
 
 VOL. i V — o
 
 194 
 
 IIOKAE SABBATICAE 
 
 KSS.VV 
 
 
 are pretended, but there are few or none to be found ; 
 no tradition, but only of scripture, can derive itself 
 from the fountain, but may be plainly proved either 
 to have been brought in, in such an age after Christ, 
 or that in such an age it was not in. In a word, 
 there is no sufficient certainty but of scripture only, 
 for any considering man to build upon. This, there- 
 fore, and this only, I have reason to believe ; this I 
 will profess, according to this I will live, and for this, 
 if there be occasion, I will not only willingly, but 
 even gladly, lose my life, though I should be sorry 
 that Christians should take it from me.' 
 
 The whole of the passage from which this extract 
 is made is eminently characteristic of Chillingworth's 
 occasional fits of elocjuence. As instances of his 
 remarkable power of argument, two passages may 
 be referred to. One in the answer to Knott's second 
 chapter (vol. i. pp. 202-212, Oxford edition), in which 
 he retorts" Knott's charge that, according to Protest- 
 ants, nothing more than probability is to be attained 
 in religious belief. He shows what a number of 
 merely probable conclusions as to matters of fact, 
 resting upon hardly any evidence at all, a man must 
 believe before he can be sure that he has received 
 valid absolution — as that the priest who gives it was 
 baptized with due matter, words, and intention ; that 
 the bishop who ordained him ordained him with due 
 matter, form, and intention ; that the ordaining 
 bishop himself was first a priest and then a bishop ; 
 and so on like the house that Jack built. This leads
 
 vii CHILLING WOETH 195 
 
 up to the celebrated climax quoted, amongst others, 
 by Lord Macaulay : ' That of ten thousand prob- 
 ables no one should be false ; that of ten thousand 
 requisites, whereof any one may fail, not one should 
 be wanting, this is to me extremely improbable, and 
 even cousin-german to impossible.' 
 
 A similar instance of his peculiar vein is to be found 
 in vol. ii. pp. 68-70. Knott had charged his antagonist 
 with contradicting himself. The charge was a very 
 obvious quibble, and was merely by the way. Chilling- 
 worth retorts by drawing out in form all the contradic- 
 tions involved in the doctrine of trahsubstahtiation, 
 and asking Knott either to reconcile them or to admit 
 that men might believe contradictions. The retort 
 is out of all proportion to the occasion for it, but it 
 is a model of nervous vigour of expression. The 
 argument concludes with the important and profound 
 remark (re-made long afterward§"by Abraham Tucker) 
 that men both may, and constantly do, believe contra- 
 dictions, when the opposition between the contra- 
 dictories is not immediately obvious. 
 
 I have noticed Chillingworth's style at some 
 length, because the doctrine that the style is the man, 
 has seldom been better illustrated, and also because 
 the style itself is nearly the first specimen, as it is 
 also one of the best of all specimens, of pure, vigorous, 
 modern English, delivered from the trammels of the 
 classics. Like Clarendon and Jeremy Taylor, Chil- 
 lingworth wants little but a change in punctuation to 
 be a writer of our own day, and a writer as powerful,
 
 196 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 as expressive, and as idiomatic as any in the whole 
 history of our language. It is remarkable that he 
 uses hardly any obsolete words. In a_pretty careful 
 study of his book we have found only the following : 
 ' Disease,' as a verb active for ' inconvenience ' ; 
 1 Equipage? for 'equipoise'; 'Crambe,' used as in 
 ' crambe repetita.' 
 
 The points in issue between Knott and Chilling- 
 worth, when drawn out into a short form and freed 
 from collateral disputes, are neither long nor intricate 
 when they are really understood ; but it is easy to 
 misunderstand them and to get a false notion of the 
 whole subject, from the very familiarity of the terms 
 employed. The whole of Chillingworth's book, for 
 instance, is supposed to be summed up in the two 
 propositions that there is a right of private judgment, 
 and that the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion 
 of Protestants. In order to see precisely what he 
 meant by these doctrines, it is necessary to go a little 
 further into the bearings of his controversy with 
 Knott. The case on the one side and the other stood 
 somewhat as follows : 
 
 Both sides agreed that certain doctrines, belief in 
 which was necessary to salvation, had been revealed 
 by God to man. 
 
 Both sides also agreed in the absolute truth of the 
 whole Bible, and in the doctrine that the Bible con- 
 tained a revelation either of all or of some of these 
 doctrines. 
 
 Knott affirmed, and Chillingworth denied, that the
 
 vii CHILLINGWORTH 197 
 
 Church of Eome was the depositary of unwritten 
 traditions collateral to and of equal authority with 
 the Bfble, and that, thereby and otherwise, the Church 
 of Rome was the authorised interpreter both of the 
 Bible and of tradition, and that it was necessary to 
 salvation to believe the whole matter thus put forward. 
 
 Chillingworth affirmed, and Knott denied, that the 
 doctrines necessary to be believed were plainly ex- 
 pressed in the Bible, and were contained (with others) 
 in the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 Knott concluded that it was necessary to salvation 
 to believe whatever was put forward as an article of 
 faith by the Church of Rome. Chillingworth con- 
 cluded that whoever believed all matters of faith 
 clearly expressed in the Bible, or, more particularly, 
 whoever believed all the articles of the Apostles' 
 Creed, believed all that was necessary to salvation. 
 
 These, as a lawyer would say, were the chief issues 
 between the two disputants. There were, however, 
 several subordinate questions closely connected with 
 these which it is necessary to state shortly in order 
 to give a fair notion of the controversy. 
 
 Chillingworth is continually pressed by Knott to 
 give a catalogue of the fundamentals which, as he 
 said, were clearly expressed in the Bible. He admits 
 at last that he cannot give such a list, but he says 
 (which is true) that Knott himself recognises the 
 distinction ; and he gives a variety of reasons for the 
 assertion that all fundamentals were contained, along 
 with other things, in the Creed and in each of the
 
 198 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 four Gospels. Hence he argues that whoever believes 
 either the Creed, or the whole of any one Gospel, may 
 be sure that he believes whatever is necessary to 
 salvation, and something over. He also explains his 
 inability to give a precise list of fundamentals, by 
 alleging the principle that ' fundamental ' is a relative 
 term ; that what is so to one man is not so to another ; 
 that to an infant or lunatic, or a man deaf and dumb, 
 nothing is fundamental ; and that the list would vary 
 indefinitely from man to man, according to individual 
 circumstances. 
 
 Chillingworth was also pressed by Knott with the 
 difficulty that if men were referred to the Gospels in 
 particular, or the Bible in general, they would err, at 
 all events, in matters not plainly declared. To this 
 Chillingworth replied that a bond fide student of a 
 matter plainly stated could not err, for that, if he did, 
 the statement would not be plain ; that if bona fides 
 were wanting, his error was sinful, and that, if plain- 
 ness in the statement was wanting, his error was 
 innocent. It is by this avenue that Chillingworth 
 introduces reason as the ultimate measure of faith, 
 which is the cardinal feature of his system. Knott's 
 conception of faith was altogether different, and the 
 discussion whether it was right (on which we cannot 
 enter here) is one of the most curious parts of the 
 controversy. 
 
 Perhaps the most singular feature in the whole 
 controversy, at least to a modern reader, is that both 
 disputants, but more especially Knott, deal through-
 
 vii CHILLING WORTH 199 
 
 out with the whole question as a matter, not of truth, 
 but of expediency or personal danger. Knott's last 
 word and final appeal is to the duty of charity to one- 
 self. He says : — 
 
 ' In things necessary to salvation no man ought in 
 any case, or in any respect whatsoever, to prefer the 
 spiritual good either of any particular person or of 
 the whole world before his own soul. According to 
 those words of our blessed Saviour, " What cloth it 
 avail a man," etc' 
 
 He insists on the arbitrary and technical character 
 of salvation : — 
 
 'No ignorance nor impossibility can supply the 
 want of those means which are absolutely necessary 
 to salvation. If an infant die without baptism he 
 cannot be saved.' 
 Thus— 
 
 1 If by living out of the Eoman Church we put 
 ourselves in hazard to want something necessarily 
 required to salvation, we commit a most grievous sin 
 against the virtue of charity as it respects ourselves, 
 and so cannot hope for salvation without repentance.' 
 His whole book, indeed, is an expansion of an 
 argument which no dialectical skill can divest of its 
 revolting character : — 
 
 'Consider how all Roman Catholics, not one 
 excepted ... do with unanimous consent believe 
 and profess that Protestancy unrepented destroys 
 salvation and then tell me . . . whether it be not 
 more safe to live and die in that Church which even
 
 200 IIORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 yourselves are forced to acknowledge not to be cut 
 off from the hope of salvation.' 
 
 He works this out systematically in his final chapter. 
 Chillingworth is far bolder and more generous. In 
 reply to Knott's argument, just quoted, he says : — 
 
 1 In saying this you seem to me to condemn one 
 of the greatest acts of charity of one of the greatest 
 saints that ever was — I mean St. Paul, who, for his 
 brethren, desired to be an anathema from Christ. 
 And as for the text alleged by you in confirmation of 
 your saying, " What doth it avail a man if he gain 
 the whole world and sustain the damage of his own 
 soul 1 " it is nothing to the purpose ; for without all 
 question it is not profitable for a man to do so ; but 
 the question is whether it be not lawful for a man to 
 forgo and part with his own particular profit to procure 
 the universal spiritual and eternal benefit of others.' 
 
 As to unbaptized infants, he observes : — ■ 
 
 ' If you "may gloss the text so far as that men may 
 be saved by the desire without baptism itself, because 
 they cannot have it, why should you not gloss it a 
 little further, that there may be some hope of the 
 salvation of unbaptized infants ? ' 
 
 This is a very noble passage, and may remind the 
 reader of the utterances of certain well-known con- 
 temporary authors on the possibility that a man may 
 think a great deal too much about what one of them 
 calls ' his own dirty soul ' ; but Chillingworth did not 
 always maintain this tone. He was careful not to be 
 too charitable, for he obviously had a wholesome
 
 vii CHILLINGWORTH 201 
 
 terror of the practical effect of Knott's argument on 
 those to whom it was addressed. He says repeatedly 
 that ignorance or bona fides only can save Eoman 
 Catholics, and taunts Knott with admitting as much 
 of Protestants. The only pleasant thing in those 
 mutual threats is to observe how each side devised loop- 
 holes to escape from its own doctrines. Both Knott 
 and Chillingworth were better than their theology. 
 
 These heads give the main outline of the contro- 
 versy, but the principle which pervades the whole 
 admits of more consecutive and less controversial 
 statement. It is perfectly true that the assertion of 
 the right of private judgment was the great object 
 of Chillingworth's book ; but it is less often observed 
 how emphatic the word 'judgment' was in his 
 system. He used it, not in the loose indefinite sense 
 which is generally attached to it in the phrase in 
 question, but in a more accurate one, which it is 
 not easy to explain in a single phrase. 
 
 In order to explain it we must return to the general 
 principles of the controversy, and point out the way 
 in which Knott's claim to infallibility for the Eoman 
 Catholic Church arose. It was founded on the principle 
 that there was an original revelation — a certain num- 
 ber of specific propositions announced by God to men, 
 which it was necessary for men to believe ; but that, 
 as some of these propositions were unwritten, and as 
 some of the written propositions were ambiguous, the 
 only possible way by which they could be conveyed 
 to men was through an actual living interpreter.
 
 202 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 The main stress of Chillingworth's argument, though 
 he does not express it quite in that form, was to show 
 that this, in fact, amounted to a claim for the Church 
 of Rome of supreme judicial and legislative power 
 over all Christians — the legislative power being, in 
 fact, involved in the judicial power as claimed ; for it 
 is obvious that a judge who is entrusted with the 
 power of declaring this or that to be a portion of 
 unwritten tradition, and of affixing whatever meaning 
 he pleases to obscure writings, is in reality a legis- 
 lator, and not merely or principally a judge. 
 
 A judge moreover, ex vi termini, or nearly so, implies 
 a sheriff. If his decisions are to have the force of law, 
 they must be carried into effect by penalties upon those 
 who disobey them ; and thus, as Chillingworth pointed 
 out, the claim to be a guardian and keeper of tradition 
 is in reality a claim to be sovereign of the world, for 
 it is a claim to make laws for the government of men 
 in their highest capacity, and to provide means for 
 putting those laws, when so made, into execution. 
 Such a claim, of course, is in itself perfectly intelli- 
 gible on the part of any organised body like the 
 Romish clergy ; but it is equally obvious that it ought 
 not to be admitted without the clearest evidence. 
 
 The great point of Chillingworth's book is, that he 
 brings out both the nature of the claim and the 
 weakness of the evidence on which it rested, with 
 remarkable point and vigour. After showing at 
 length the nature of the claim made by Knott and 
 the consequences to which it would lead, he con-
 
 vii CHILLINGWORTH 203 
 
 tinually returns to the question of evidence. ' If you 
 really are entitled to this position, show your title. 
 How easy, how simple, and how vitally necessary it 
 must have been to have given you the position which 
 you claim in unambiguous words, if that had been 
 intended 1 ' 
 
 It is in answer to this view of Knott's that Chil- 
 lingworth set up what has since become so hackneyed 
 under the name of the right of private judgment. 
 He did not mean by this at all that religious belief 
 was a matter of indifference. On the contrary, he 
 repudiates the doctrine that men may be saved in any 
 religion as ' most impious and detestable ' ; and it is 
 clear enough to every reader of his works that he 
 had as positive a creed as Knott himself. That God 
 had given a law to man he strenuously maintained ; 
 but, he contended, The law so given purports to be 
 complete, and as you admit it to be absolutely true, 
 you have no right to contradict it. Its admitted 
 obscurity in parts shows that its author regarded 
 diversity of opinion as to those parts as innocent, 
 and indeed necessary. Your argument is, Because it 
 pleased God to give man a vague and incomplete 
 revelation, therefore a body which claims the power 
 of reducing it to a specific form, and of completing 
 its outline, must be divine and infallible. Logic will 
 require the substitution of ' cannot ' for ' must.' 
 
 In a word, Chillingworth inferred from the absence 
 of any distinct appointment of a permanent judge 
 that every man was meant to apply the law to his
 
 204 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 own particular case for himself, and at his own risk. 
 This, he says, is necessary at all events for many 
 reasons, two of which will probably never be answered. 
 The first is, that the object to be attained is admitted 
 to be belief, but belief is involuntary and dependent 
 upon reason, and the judge and the sheriff can pro- 
 duce only conformity ; or, to use his own expressive 
 words : — 
 
 ' To force either any man to believe what he be- 
 lieves not, or any honest man to dissemble what he 
 does believe (if God commands him to profess it) or 
 to profess what he does not believe, all the powers in 
 the world are too weak with all the powers in hell to 
 assist them.' 
 
 The second is, that at all events every man must 
 judge for himself as to the infallibility of his judge ; 
 and as the stream cannot rise above the source, so he 
 can never get beyond his own opinion, mediate or 
 immediate. 'So that, for aught I can see, judges 
 we are and must be of all sides, every one for him- 
 self, and God for us all.' It is difficult to exceed the 
 epigrammatic pithiness with which this is maintained 
 and expounded in different places, as thus : — 
 
 ' The difference between a Papist and a Protestant 
 is this — not that the one judges and the other does 
 not judge, but that the one judges his guide to be 
 infallible, the other his way to be manifest.' 
 
 Or again : — 
 
 'You that would not have men follow their 
 reason, what would you have them follow? Their
 
 vii CHILLINGWOKTH 205 
 
 passions, or pluck out their eyes and go blindfold 1 
 No, you say, but let them follow authority. In 
 God's name let them. . . . But then for the authorit}' 
 you would have them follow, you will let them see 
 reason why they should follow it, and is not this to 
 go a little about 1 To leave reason for a short turn, 
 and then to come to it again, and to do that which 
 you condemn in others 1 ' 
 
 One remarkable point in Chillingworth's book is 
 that he anticipates in order to condemn it, and as 
 a sort of redudio ad absurdum, the very doctrine of 
 development which has attracted so much attention 
 in our own time. Knott had spoken of the necessity 
 of a judge to deal with 'new heresies that might 
 arise.' To this Chillingworth answers : — 
 
 ' To say that new heresies may arise is to say that 
 new articles of faith may arise, and so some great ones 
 among you stick not to profess in plain terms, who 
 yet at the same time are not ashamed to profess that 
 your whole doctrine is Catholic and apostolic' 
 
 Elsewhere he speaks of the ' doctrines which . . . 
 have insinuated themselves into the streams little by 
 little ; some in one age, some in another ; some more 
 anciently, some more lately ; and some yet are em- 
 bryos, yet hatching, and in the shell, as the Pope's 
 infallibility, the blessed Virgin's Immaculate Concep- 
 tion,' etc. 
 
 Such is the general vein of argument which runs 
 through the whole book, and is enforced and repeated 
 in an infinite variety of different ways.
 
 20G UORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Another runs parallel with it, which is perhaps more 
 interesting in our days. It is in the nature of an an- 
 swer to Knott's constant demand, ' Where do you get 
 your Bible except from the Church *? What is the basis 
 of your whole system V It is in his answer to this 
 cpiestion that Chillingworth displays the greatest 
 amount of boldness. He says that the divine authority 
 of the Bible rests upon general tradition — that is, upon 
 historical evidence; and that it is a conclusion of 
 reason, and that the whole Christian religion rests 
 ultimately upon this foundation. 
 
 There is a remarkable passage near the end of the 
 book which sets this in a very clear light : — 
 
 ' Whatsoever man that is not of a perverse mind 
 shall weigh with serious and mature deliberation 
 those great moments of reason which may incline 
 him to believe the divine authority of Scripture, and 
 compare them with the light objections that in pru- 
 dence can be made against it, he shall not choose but 
 find sufficient, nay, abundant inducements to yield 
 unto it firm faith and sincere obedience. Let that 
 learned man Hugo Grotius speak for all the rest in 
 his book of the Truth of the Christian Religion, which 
 book whosoever attentively peruses shall find that a 
 man may have great reason to be a Christian without 
 dependence on your Church for any part of it.' 1 
 
 1 Modern liberals differ from both Chillingworth and Knott 
 in not regarding the formation of religious opinion as a 
 matter of judgment at all in the sense in which the word was 
 used by Chillingworth.
 
 vii CHILLINGWORTH 207 
 
 There are many other curious passages (see especially 
 vol. i. pp. 273-275), to the effect that reason alone can 
 judge in controversies relating to Scripture, which 
 have a direct and important bearing on the great dis- 
 cussions of our own days. 
 
 It may naturally be asked how such liberalism as 
 this — for Chillingworth would, in the present day, be 
 described as a Rationalist, and his whole book is 
 directed to prove that a probable opinion is the utmost 
 that can be attained in theological matters — came to 
 be patronised by men like Laud. The answer appears 
 to be, that Laud and Charles were far more discip- 
 linarians than inquisitors. It was less their object to 
 interfere with men's creeds than to regulate their 
 practice. Chillingworth is asked by Knott, how in 
 any case he could blame schism from the Church of 
 England 1 He replies, in substance, that schism in 
 itself is not a bad thing, but that schism without a 
 reasonable cause is, and that he is willing to show 
 the unreasonableness of the causes alleged by Dis- 
 senters for forsaking the ritual established by law. 
 
 His position, indeed, was very like that of the 
 Federals as against the Confederates. They admitted 
 that rebellion might be justifiable, but denied that 
 this particular rebellion was justifiable. Most of the 
 Royalist and High Church writers of that generation 
 treat the Puritans, not as heretics, but rather as 
 people of weak scrupulosity, which they ought in 
 common sense to overcome. Laud was no incpiisitor. 
 His great offence was his determination to assert, in 
 
 /
 
 208 HORAE SABBATICAE essay vii 
 
 season and out of season, the right of the public 
 authorities to regulate rituals and observances, and 
 to enforce Church discipline. This, in the particular 
 state of feeling which then prevailed, was consistent 
 with extreme liberalism (not that Laud himself was 
 extremely liberal) in matters of belief.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING' 1 
 
 Those who claim for the Church of England one 
 of the highest places amongst Christian bodies for 
 literary eminence, would naturally put forward Jeremy 
 Taylor as one of the leading witnesses in favour of 
 their proposition ; and certainly it may be doubted 
 whether any English ecclesiastical writer would be 
 entitled to take precedence of him in a literary point 
 of view, though he has been surpassed again and again 
 by writers on special subjects whose eloquence, versa- 
 tility, learning, and dexterity were greatly inferior 
 to his. 
 
 It may seem a paradox, but it is nevertheless true, 
 that there was a good deal of the journalist in Taylor, 
 as in many of our other great ecclesiastical writers. 
 The change which journalism has produced in the 
 whole organisation of literature in modern times is 
 
 1 A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, with its Just 
 Limits and Temper, showing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing 
 to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecuting Differing 
 Opinions. By Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 VOL. I P 
 
 /
 
 210 HORAE SABBATIC AE ESSAY 
 
 very insufficiently understood. Look over the works 
 of most of the great writers whose names are better 
 known than their works, and you will find that a very 
 large proportion of the many volumes which they fill 
 consists of what, in the present day, would be articles 
 in reviews, magazines, or newspapers. If, in the days 
 of Jeremy Taylor and Baxter, or even in thos^rrf Swift, 
 Burke, and Johnson, periodicals had been anything 
 like what they are now, the names of these, and of 
 many other great men, would have been far less well 
 known, and their works would have consisted of many 
 fewer volumes. 
 
 The system of journalism was very imperfect in 
 Burke's clays, but, such as it was, it absorbed much of 
 his literary activity, especially in the earlier part of his 
 career. Taylor had no such resource, but it would 
 be easy tcTshow, from the number and the character, 
 no less than from the style of his minor works, how 
 eminent he would have been as a journalist had 
 journalism existed in his days. His style speaks 
 for itself. It is incomparably eloquent and spirited. 
 It has also the great merit of a singularly rich vein 
 of wit, kept in check by regard to the nature of the 
 subjects discussed, but constantly present ; and it is 
 harmonious and musical beyond that of any other 
 English writer. There is in its periods a singular 
 subdued pathos which it is difficult to analyse, but 
 which is indicated with exquisite subtlety and skill 
 by means of the choice and arrangement of very 
 simple words in the midst of long passages.
 
 VIII ' THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ' 211 
 
 T;i} T lor has been justly reproached for redundance 
 and prolixity, but in his case, as in Clarendon's, the 
 reproach is often due rather to peculiar punctuation 
 than to laxity of thought: — One of the most eloquent 
 passages, for instance, in the Liberty of Prophesying 
 contains a sentence of thirty-one long lines. 
 
 By substituting full stops for the semicolons, and by 
 avoiding a few Latin constructions which no modern 
 writer would think of using, the passage would 
 become a model of condensed and nervous eloquence. 
 Indeed, the power of condensation was one of Taylor's 
 great -gifts. After expatiating over a subject at 
 almost wearisome length, he will sum up the whole 
 argument in a few lines with extraordinary vigour 
 both of thought and expression. 
 
 Take, for instance, the following summary of the 
 objections to the arguments in favour of the supremacy 
 of the Pope, founded on the text, ' Thou art Peter.' 
 The objections are the common ones as to the uncer- 
 tainty of the meaning of the words, and as to the un- 
 certainty of the fact that St. Peter ever was Pope at 
 all, or ever was at Rome : ' A goodly building which 
 relies upon an event that was accidental, whose purpose 
 was but insinuated, the meaning of it but conjectured 
 at, and this conjecture so uncertain that it was an 
 imperfect aim at the purpose of an event which, 
 whether it was true or no, was so uncertain that it is 
 ten to one there was no such matter.' The condensa- 
 tion here is so great that it produces obscurity. 
 On the whole, Taylor's style comes very near to
 
 212 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 modern English. He has almost shaken himself clear 
 of the Latin tradition, but he has still a certain smack 
 of it. Latin words which the language refused to 
 assimilate are to be found here and there in his writ- 
 ings. 'This is a complexion' — i.e. complication — of 
 several distinct propositions. ' Scripture in its plain 
 expresses.' ' We have an express out of the same sermon 
 of St. Peter.' ' All the particulars are now united by 
 way of constipation ' — a word which is now exclusively 
 medical. ' Adiaphorous ' for indifferent is common, and 
 so is the word ' consign ' in the sense of marking by a 
 sign — ' Consign that covenant,' ' he did consign his love,' 
 etc. The word has now become either mercantile, as 
 when Ave ' consign ' a parcel of goods — or historico- 
 sentimental ; some writers would talk of consigning a 
 man's remains to the tomb. 
 
 The Liberty of Prophesying is one of the most 
 characteristic of its author's works, and though in 
 later life he receded from some of the positions there 
 taken up, it seems probable that it will always be his 
 principal title to fame. It is an extraordinary book, 
 and proves to demonstration the fact that, amongst 
 writers of the very first class, theological liberalism, as 
 we should call it in the present day, had made extra- 
 ordinary progress in the seventeenth century, though, 
 by a singular combination of circumstances, it was not 
 only not connected with the contemporary movement 
 towards political liberty, but was actually opposed to it. 
 
 Clarendon, Falkland, Chillingworth, and Hales, 
 in the earlier part of Charles I.'s reign, and
 
 vai 'THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ' 213 
 
 Jeremy Taylor at a later period, held a position 
 not altogether unlike that of the modern school of 
 liberal theologians ; and though they do not appear 
 to have had any decisive or even very powerful 
 influence over the thoughts of their age, or to have 
 been able to mitigate the fierce bigotry of its con- 
 tending parties to any very considerable extent, 
 their writings will always be entitled to respect and 
 admiration, not only because of their inherent merit, 
 but because, when they were written, they were un- 
 paralleled in any other Christian church, and because 
 they first set the subject of religious controversy 
 upon its true foundation. So severe a critic as 
 Hallam, writing in the nineteenth century, could still 
 feel himself compelled to say that Chillingworth's 
 Religion of Protestants, and Bossuet's Exposition de la 
 foi catholique, represented the utmost stretch of the 
 human mind in opposite directions upon the great 
 subject which they treated. 
 
 The genealogy of these celebrated works is easily 
 traced. Hooker must be regarded as the founder of 
 the school. The Ecclesiastical Polity is a vindication 
 of the competency of reason to decide questions of 
 Church government on grounds of expediency, and 
 in the discharge of this task Hooker rises from time 
 to time to a pitch of positive enthusiasm upon the 
 powers — we might almost say the attributes — of 
 reason. He speaks of it with an enthusiasm which 
 in the present day would make him a suspected, not to 
 say a dangerous, person.
 
 214 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Chillingworth was Hooker's greatest disciple. His 
 greaVBook is the most vigorous protest that has ever 
 yet been written against that state of mind which 
 pathetic and ingenious writers of our own day have 
 made very prominent, and which flies to Popery as the 
 only refuge from scepticism. The Religion of Protest- 
 ants applies to the faith of individuals the very same 
 principles which the Ecclesiastical Polity asserts in rela- 
 tion to Church government. Reason, says Hooker, is 
 the guide of the legislator in ecclesiastical as well as 
 in civil affairs. Reason, adds Chillingworth, is the 
 organ by which individuals are certified of the truth 
 of their religious creed. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor builds on these foundations, but he 
 goes a step farther ; for he adds to the principles of 
 Hooker and Chillingworth the observation that the 
 reason of different men tends to different results, even 
 when exercised with the best intentions and with all 
 possible industry ; and thence he deduces the doctrine 
 of general toleration— a doctrine which had a very long 
 road to travel, after his day, before its truth was gener- 
 ally and fully recognised. It would, of course, be un- 
 true to assert that any of these three eminent men 
 taught the doctrines which we have ascribed to them 
 nakedly, and without limitation. It is in the nature 
 of such doctrines to be realised slowly, and only by 
 the successive efforts of many minds. Of Hooker 
 and Chillingworth we have already spoken. Taylor's 
 work we will now proceed to examine more in detail. 
 
 The Liberty of Prophesying is by no means a philo-
 
 VIII 'THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING' 215 
 
 sophical book, as we understand philosophy in these 
 days. It does not begin at the beginning, and build 
 up a regular edifice of connected propositions. On 
 the contrary, it takes theology in general for granted, 
 and sets out to establish, by recognised means, a 
 variety of particular results. Taylor's principles un- 
 doubtedly lead to the conclusion that every conceiv- 
 able theological opinion, if held in good faith, is in 
 itself innocent ; but though, in consistency, he ought 
 to have thought thus, in fact he did not. Such an 
 opinion, indeed, is by no means generally held, and, as 
 Mr. Lecky would say, ' realised ' even in our own days. 
 Taylor does not go into the nature of faith and 
 the grounds on which it rests, but assumes that 
 there are some things which it is a positive duty to 
 believe ; and his first proposition is, that '• the duty of 
 faith is completed in believing the articles of the 
 Apostles' Creed.' He then inquires at length into 
 heresy, which he seems to have considered — for his 
 language throughout this chapter is vague and diffi- 
 cult to follow — as consisting in denying an article of 
 the Apostles' Creed from corrupt motives. Conse- 
 quently, according to Taylor, if a man rejected such an 
 article from pride, he would be a heretic, but if he re- 
 jected it because in good faith he thought it false, he 
 would not ; and this, although the proud man and the 
 humble man might both allege the very same intellect- 
 ual grounds for their opinion. Taylor does not in so 
 many words confine heresy to a direct denial of articles 
 in the Apostles' Creed; but his reasoning implies it.
 
 216 IIORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 The rest of the book consists in arguments to show 
 in detail that Scripture is obscure in matters not funda- 
 mental — i.e. not in the Apostles' Creed — and cannot 
 be made an authority for anything else ; that tradition 
 is untrustworthy on a thousand grounds ; that the 
 Fathers contradict each other, and that the same is true 
 of Councils and of Popes ; besides which, it is alto- 
 gether impossible to find any foundation upon which 
 Popes and Councils can base their claims. Reason is 
 the best judge of controversies. Its errors, if bond fide, 
 are harmless, and we ought all to tolerate each other 
 and permit a general ' liberty of prophesying.' 
 
 In order to illustrate the scope of his argument, he 
 examines what in his day were the two extreme cases 
 — the cases, namely, of the Anabaptists and the Roman 
 Catholics. He goes with much minuteness into the 
 question whether the doctrines of adult baptism and 
 transubstantiation may be tolerated, and concludes 
 that they may, inasmuch as both are capable of being 
 held in perfect good faith, and neither can be shown to 
 be in any respect injurious to the public. On the other 
 hand, the opinions of the Anabaptists, and also those 
 of the Roman Catholics, on the question of the civil 
 government and the powers of the Pope, are not to 
 be tolerated for an instant. 
 
 Nothing can be more peremptory than the way in 
 which Taylor asserts the supremacy of State interest 
 over all theological considerations whatever. 'Re- 
 ligion is to meliorate the condition of a people, not to 
 do it disadvantage; and, therefore, those doctrines that
 
 vni 'THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ' 217 
 
 inconvenience the public are no parts of true religion.' 
 The Council of Nice may have appeared to condemn 
 the use of arms, and Clemens Alexandrinus says that 
 the secret tradition of the Apostles was to the same 
 effect ; but either these authorities are to be slighted, 
 or to be made receptive of any interpretation, rather 
 than the Commonwealth be disarmed of its necessary 
 supports.' 
 
 Nay, the Sermon on the Mount is treated in the 
 same way. 'Suppose there were divers places of 
 Scripture which did seemingly restrain the political 
 use of the sword ; yet since the avoiding a personal 
 inconvenience hath by all men been accounted suffi- 
 cient reason to interpret Scripture to any sense rather 
 than the literal, which infers an unreasonable incon- 
 venience (and therefore the " putting out an eye " and 
 the " cutting off a hand " is expounded by mortifying 
 a vice and killing a criminal habit), much rather 
 must the allegations against the power of the sword 
 endure any sense rather than that it should be thought 
 that Christianity should destroy that which is the 
 only instrument of justice.' 
 
 Such is an outline of the argument of this memor- 
 able book. It is a curious instance of the lengths to 
 which men will go, in what they themselves would 
 regard as a heterodox direction, under the shelter of 
 excuses which every one but themselves must see to 
 be untenable. Jeremy Taylor would probably have 
 been indignant at the imputation of holding that it 
 is no sin to be a Mahometan, a Buddhist, a Deist, or
 
 218 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 an Atheist, so long as those opinions are held in good 
 faith. He would have said, and with truth, that he 
 held it to be a positive duty to believe the Apostles' 
 Creed. Nothing, however, can be more certain than 
 that his principles would justify disbelief in every 
 article of the Apostles' Creed, upon grounds precisely 
 similar to those by which he justifies doubts as to the 
 articles decided on at Nice. 
 
 In a word, if the Liberty of Prophesying be taken as 
 an attack upon the notion that there is any infallible 
 guide at all to theological truth, and as an argument 
 in favour of the moral innocence of all opinions what- 
 ever held in good faith, it is extremely powerful, and 
 incomparably eloquent and persuasive. If it be viewed 
 as a solution in any other sense of the great problem of 
 religious toleration, it is altogether unsatisfactory. 
 
 This, however, is not the way in which so great a 
 work should be criticised. In order to do it the most 
 scanty justice, we must put ourselves, if possible, at 
 the author's point of view, and try to see his subject 
 as he saw it. 
 
 We must, then, remember, in the first place, that 
 the whole aspect of theology, the way in which people 
 viewed it, and its position amongst the various de- 
 partments of human thought, were fundamentally 
 different in Taylor's day from what they now are. 
 It appears to have been viewed in a far more definite 
 and positive light than that in which we, with our 
 habits of thought, regard it. Its state might be 
 compared, with a good deal of truth, to that of
 
 viii ' THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ' 219 
 
 international law in our own time, or of English con- 
 stitutional law in the last century. 
 
 ' Is ' and ' ought to be ' were identical terms in its 
 vocabulary, and Taylor's observation that 'those 
 doctrines that inconvenience the public are no parts of 
 true religion ' must be taken as the key to a great part 
 of his speculations and those of his contemporaries. 
 Their object was strictly practical. It was not to in- 
 vestigate truth simply, but to supply a theory which 
 should square as well as might be with established 
 opinions, and should at the same time justify institu- 
 tions to which the writer was attached, or measures 
 of which he was the advocate. 
 
 Controversial theology, in short, is advocacy in 
 that theoretical and general stage which is the indis- 
 pensable preparation for the direct advocacy of specific 
 measures and institutions. Its value, therefore, must 
 in general be tested rather by its skill than its truth — 
 by its cogency ad homines, and not by its instructive- 
 ness to all men at all times. 
 
 This remark enables us to understand Taylor's posi- 
 tion with respect to the Apostles' Creed, which appears 
 at first sight so weak that it is difficult to understand 
 why so able a man took it up. It is indeed exceed- 
 ingly weak as against those who deny the necessity of 
 any dogmatic belief at all, but it is by no means weak 
 as against those who contend for the necessity of a 
 dogmatic belief, and extend its limits to what their 
 adversaries consider an unreasonable extent. 
 
 The position, indeed, was not by any means
 
 220 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 peculiar to Jeremy Taylor. It was the dis- 
 tinctive theory of a considerable school. Chilling- 
 worth insisted on it at length, and with his usual 
 acuteness ; and it is also maintained by Laud in his 
 controversy with Fisher the Jesuit. The truth is, 
 that the doctrine came in usefully at a particular 
 stage of the Eoman Catholic controversy, and must 
 be considered in connection with that controversy. 
 
 It was in the nature of an answer made by the Pro- 
 testant controversialist, to an objection raised by his 
 antagonist, against an argument used by the Protest- 
 ant to show that the Church of Eome had not the 
 right to be a judge of controversy. To use the 
 language of special pleading, it was a replication in 
 a set of pleadings which may be thus stated : 
 
 A living judge of controversy is superfluous, inas- 
 much as all the necessary articles of Christian faith 
 are clearly revealed in the Bible. One of the pleas 
 in answer to this was, It is not certain what articles 
 are necessary, and this has to be ascertained. The 
 reply was, All necessary articles of faith are contained 
 in the Apostles' Creed. The evidence in support of 
 this reply was, that the Apostles' Creed was the 
 oldest formal statement of the Christian faith ; that 
 it was probably older than the New Testament itself ; 
 and that, at all events, for the first three centuries, it 
 was universally considered a sufficient profession of 
 Christian belief. 
 
 We cannot enter at length into the subject, but 
 any one who will view the writings of Taylor
 
 vm 'THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING' 221 
 
 and his contemporaries in their true light, as 
 argumenta ad homines, and who will read his chapter 
 on the subject, will, we think, readily perceive that, 
 whatever Taylor's argument may have been worth 
 as against modern Liberals, it was no easy matter for 
 those to whom it was addressed to answer it. 
 
 Taylor's view of heresy, as residing, not in the 
 mistakes of the understanding, but in the misconduct 
 of the will, won for him, amongst other things, the 
 enthusiastic sympathy and admiration of Coleridge, 
 who lavishes upon this part of the work a great 
 amount of praise, conveyed in that mystical language 
 of which he was so great a master. Considered in 
 itself, it appears to us the weakest part of the book. 
 It retains the words 'heretic' and 'heresy,' but 
 defines them in such a manner that it makes them 
 altogether superfluous. If heresy consists not in the 
 opinions held, but in the motives for which men hold 
 them, the motives and not the opinions constitute 
 the sin ; and thus heresy is only an alias for pride, 
 sensuality, ambition, etc., actuating a man who turns 
 his thoughts to religious subjects. There is, more- 
 over, a sort of hesitation and confusion in the way in 
 which the thought is worked out. The chapter con- 
 veys the impression that the author was reluctant, 
 either from fear or from some other motive, to work 
 out his meaning clearly and fully. If he had done 
 so, and if, in order to do so, he had put something 
 of a curb on the luxuriance of his language, it can 
 hardly be doubted that he would have been brought
 
 222 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 to consider questions which lay straight before him, 
 but which he probably wished to avoid. 
 
 If, however, the chapter on heresy is viewed prac- 
 tically, a very different criticism will be required. 
 From that point of view, it may be put by the side 
 of the liberal theories of the British Constitution, 
 Erskine's Speeches upon the Law of Libel, or any 
 other adaptation of an existing phraseology to a new 
 and enlarged view of things. 
 
 Heresy, in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 was a word of terror. The writ de hceretico comburendo 
 was still part of the law of the land, and men had been 
 burnt for being Arians and Anabaptists within living 
 memory. Such spirits cannot be exorcised roughly. 
 They are a kind that cometh not forth but by accom- 
 modation and management ; and though, from a purely 
 speculative point of view, a great deal might be said 
 against Jeremy Taylor's view of the nature of heresy, 
 its practical value as an emollient and lenitive can 
 hardly be exaggerated. 
 
 Nothing can be more unphilosophical than a con- 
 tempt for air-cushions and swimming-bladders. In all 
 political, moral, and theological matters they are prac- 
 tically indispensable. People must be led by degrees 
 to unfamiliar conclusions. The innocence of error was 
 in Taylor's day a startling and unfamiliar doctrine. 
 To restrict the limits of heresy by definition was the 
 way to bring people gently and by easy degrees to in- 
 difference to it, just as the gradual restriction of the 
 law of libel to narrow limits by forensic discussion,
 
 VIII 'THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING' 223 
 
 gradually introduced practically unlimited freedom of 
 political and religious discussion. 
 
 We do not mean to attribute to Taylor a conscious 
 design to bring about this result. It is highly prob- 
 able that he would himself have been alarmed at the 
 full application of his own doctrines. We know, 
 indeed, that after the Restoration he retracted, or at 
 least modified, them, though we agree with Mr. Lecky 
 in thinking that the Liberty of Prophesying must be 
 taken to be the expression of his real sentiments. 
 
 The three destructive chapters are undoubtedly 
 the most forcible part of the work. The impossi- 
 bility of finding any infallible guide to truth, and 
 the superiority of reason to all other guides, are in- 
 sisted upon with extraordinary vigour, and with a 
 profusion of learning Avhich makes one feel thankful 
 that the apology which Taylor makes in his preface 
 for not multiplying quotations, because he had no 
 library at hand, was necessary. If he had had a 
 library to go to, the fuel would have interfered with 
 the fire. In these chapters, a degree of liberty and 
 independence of mind is shown, which, even in our 
 day, is extremely rare amongst the clergy. 
 
 Indeed, many of the doctrines which a clerical writer 
 of the present day would not dare to utter, unless he 
 wrapped them up in a sort of honied mystical phrase- 
 ology, are expressed by Taylor in the clearest and 
 plainest words that he could find. Take, for in- 
 stance, his doctrine that reason is the only rule of 
 faith : —
 
 224 IIORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 ' By reason I do not mean a distinct topic, but a 
 transcendent that runs through all topics ; for reason, 
 like logic, is the instrument of all things else ; and 
 when revelation, and philosophy, and public experi- 
 ence, and all other grounds of probability or demon- 
 stration have supplied us with matter, then reason 
 does but make use of them.' 
 
 Compare this plain-speaking with the passage in the 
 Essays and Reviews about the 'verifying faculty,' 
 which to many respectable people appeared an un- 
 heard-of monster, and we shall get a notion of the 
 difference in vigour between the theologians of the 
 seventeenth and those of the nineteenth century. 
 Look, again, at the following passage about miracles, 
 which Taylor considers as of use only to attract 
 attention : — 
 
 ' Although the argument drawn from miracles is 
 good to attest a holy doctrine, which by its own 
 worth will support itself, after way is a little made 
 for it by miracles, yet of itself, and by its own repu- 
 tation, it will not support any fabric ; for instead of 
 proving a doctrine to be true, it makes that the 
 miracles themselves are suspected to be illusions if 
 they be pretended in behalf of a doctrine which 
 we have reason to account false. And, therefore, 
 the Jews did not believe Christ's doctrine for his 
 miracles, but disbelieved the truth of his miracles, 
 because they did not like his doctrine. And if the 
 holiness of his doctrine, and the Spirit of God by in- 
 spirations and infusions, and by that which St. Peter
 
 VIII ' THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ' 225 
 
 calls "a surer word of prophecy," had not attested 
 the divinity both of his person and his office, we 
 should have wanted many degrees of confidence 
 which now we have upon the truth of Christian 
 religion.' 
 
 It is impossible to put more forcibly and pointedly 
 the very doctrines which in our day cause the ears of 
 men to tingle, even when they are veiled in a haze of 
 devotional language. The only really painful feeling 
 experienced in reading our standard divines, arises 
 from contrasts of this kind between the manliness 
 of the past, and the affectation, timidity, and ob- 
 scurity of the present. If any theological writer 
 should arise with a gift of perfect plainness of speech, 
 perfect distinctness and honesty of thought, and a 
 due coldness of manner, he would be as welcome, 
 perhaps not as flowers in May, but as a sharp frost 
 after a November fog. 
 
 vol. i Q
 
 IX 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST * 
 
 Hardly any subject is so curious in itself, or has 
 fallen so much into neglect, as what Roman Catholics 
 call moral theology, which in our own time and 
 country- is better known by the highly unpopular 
 title of casuistry. The reason why this subject has 
 fallen into so much neglect in Protestant communities 
 in general, and in England at least as much as else- 
 where, is obvious enough. 
 
 Casuistry is the indispensable complement to the 
 practice of confession, and when the tribunal by which 
 the law is administered is closed it is but natural that 
 the law itself should fall into oblivion. There can, 
 however, we think, be very little doubt that, of the 
 many forgotten departments of learning which contain 
 curious matter of different kinds, few would give so 
 rich a return, to the labour of any one adventurous 
 enough to explore it, as the subject of casuistry. 
 
 1 Duetor Dubitantium ; or, the Rule of Conscience. By Jeremy 
 Taylor. Vols. xi. xii. xiii. and xiv. of Heber's edition of Bishop 
 Taylor's works.
 
 essay ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 227 
 
 We do not believe, for instance, that it will ever 
 be possible to understand and appreciate the true 
 character of some of the most characteristic doctrines 
 of the Reformation without a better knowledge of the 
 general bearings of casuistry than almost any one in 
 the present day possesses. 
 
 It is highly probable, for instance, that if the 
 various controversies about justification by faith, 
 faith and works, and other such topics, were ever 
 to be translated out of the scholastic dialect into 
 modern forms of speech, it would be found that the 
 existence of casuistry, the conception of a legal 
 measure to which all human actions could be reduced, 
 and of a spiritual tribunal established for the purpose 
 of sitting in judgment upon every part of the conduct 
 of all classes of human beings, had a great deal to do 
 with the interest which the subject excited. 
 
 A theory which enabled men to dispense altogether 
 with such a tribunal, and which was founded upon, and 
 to a great extent identified with, the sentiment which 
 in our own days would regard it as fundamentally 
 immoral, would have immense attractions for a very 
 large part of mankind. Whether the doctrine of 
 justification by faith had anything — and if so, how 
 much — to do with this sentiment, is a question on 
 which we do not profess to offer anything more than 
 a suggestion, which it may possibly be worth the 
 while of those who have special knowledge of the 
 question to consider. 
 
 Whatever may have been the general bearings and
 
 228 HORAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 connections of the subject, it is an indisputable truth 
 that systematic treatises on morality, regarded from 
 the theological point of view, were — in Protestant 
 countries, and especially in our own — rare, in the age 
 which immediately followed the Eeformation. 
 
 Taylor himself says (xi. 346), ' For any public provi- 
 sions of books of casuistical theology we were almost 
 wholly unprovided, and like the children of Israel in the 
 days of Saul and Jonathan, we were forced to go down 
 to the forges of the Philistines to sharpen every man 
 his share and his coulter, his axe and his mattock.' 
 
 He proceeds, after some severe criticism of the 
 Komish casuists, to describe the character of his own 
 book, which he regards (xi. 656) as 'an institution 
 of moral theology,' a treatise, not intended to be 
 used as a digest or ' exhaustive body of particular 
 cases of conscience ' (xi. 363), but as a statement of 
 the theory of the whole subject. As to particular 
 cases, he says, ' I find that they are infinite, and my 
 life is not so. ... I therefore resolved upon another 
 way which, although no man before me hath had in 
 writing cases of conscience, yet I cannot say it is new, 
 for I took my pattern out of Tribonianus the lawyer, 
 who, out of the laws of the old Romans, collected 
 some choice rules, which give answer to very many 
 cases that happen.' 
 
 His book may thus be regarded as an attempt, by a 
 man of genius and of marvellous learning and industry, 
 to extract from boundless heaps of material, not by 
 any means unlike the contents of a library full of law
 
 ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 229 
 
 reports, though arranged in a very different manner, 
 the theory of the Avhole subject of casuistry. 
 
 He has not, however, confined himself by any means 
 to the casuists. On the contrary, his book is filled with 
 references to nearly every department of literature, for, 
 to say nothing of the pleasure which he naturally took 
 in the employment, not to say the display, of his 
 wonderful learning upon all subjects, he obviously 
 shared in the feeling which acted so strongly upon 
 Grotius (to take a very prominent example), that it was 
 desirable in all such inquiries, to confirm the results of 
 abstract speculation by a continual appeal to the 
 habitual sentiments of mankind, as displayed by the 
 language of writers who might be supposed, from their 
 popularity, to be specially well fitted to express them. 
 
 The general result is extremely curious. The Dudor 
 Dubitantium is spread over four volumes of Bishop 
 Heber's edition of Taylor's works, and fills 1707 very 
 full octavo pages. It is by no means easy reading, nor 
 can we honestly say that it repays the labour of being 
 read straight through, still a good deal is to be learnt 
 from that process, both as to the character of Taylor's 
 own mind, and as to the nature of a system which for 
 centuries exercised so vast an influence over human 
 conduct, and which, to this very day, retains its power 
 in many parts of the world, and over large and im- 
 portant classes, in a form which, if it differs to some 
 extent from that under which Taylor knew it, still 
 closely resembles it. 
 
 As to the light thrown by the Dudor Dubitantium
 
 230 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 upon the mind of its author, it illustrates his intellect 
 to perfection, though it affords "comparatively little 
 scope for the employment of the eloquence which 
 was his most popular, and perhaps his most character- 
 istic gift. He was a man of what, in these days, 
 looks like incredible learning. He had very great 
 ingenuity, and, as far as he went, remarkable inde- 
 pendence of mind ; but his independence was by no 
 means thoroughgoing, and his ingenuity never went 
 to the foundations of things. He was a great philo- 
 sopher according to the notions of philosophy which 
 were becoming old-fashioned even in his day, but he 
 had not the remotest notion of what we in these days 
 understand by philosophy. He does not even appear 
 to have understood the existence of such questions as 
 Hobbes, for instance, passed his life in debating. 
 
 But the best way of illustrating this will be to give 
 some account of the contents of his book. Its length, 
 and the peculiarity of its contents, make this a matter 
 of some difficulty ; but we propose on the present occa- 
 sion to attempt to give some account of the elements 
 into which Taylor's speculations may be resolved, 
 and of the method on which they are conducted, 
 reserving for a future occasion the task of attempting 
 to translate into its modern equivalents his general 
 theory of morality. 
 
 The book may be reduced to three principal 
 elements. It is founded upon what, for want of 
 a better name, must be called the scholastic or Aris- 
 totelian philosophy, as understood by writers of that
 
 ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 231 
 
 age, and on this there is built a superstructure com- 
 posed, in nearly equal proportions, of theological and 
 legal authorities, the legal authorities being almost 
 exclusively drawn from the civil law. 
 
 It is remarkable that of English law Taylor knew 
 hardly anything. He refers to it very seldom, and 
 when he does, not very correctly. But he cpiotes civil 
 lawyers on all occasions, and with an odd tacit assump- 
 tion, that the rules which they lay down, have about 
 them some peculiarly fixed quality differing from the 
 theories of more modern writers. He thus brings 
 out at last a very odd result. His system is positive 
 and precise enough, and is as coherent as any other ; 
 but it is impossible to say what it is worth. It 
 neither enables us to affirm that a given act has a 
 tendency to produce happiness, nor that it is agree- 
 able to the civil law, nor that it is approved of by 
 the canonists. It shows, in a word, nothing except 
 the places of actions in a complicated and arbitrary 
 system, compounded by Taylor himself out of these 
 and some other authorities. To give an idea of the 
 result, we will take separately some illustrations of 
 the place occupied in his system by each of the three 
 elements in question. 
 
 The first element to be examined is the scholastic 
 philosophy by which every part of the book is per- 
 vaded, and from which, indeed, its whole method is 
 derived. Every part of the book supplies illustra- 
 tions of this, but perhaps as remarkable a one as any, 
 is to be found in the distribution of the subject given
 
 232 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 (oddly enough) at the beginning of the fourth and 
 last book. 'He that intends to consider anything 
 fully and entirely, must consider it in all the four 
 kinds of causes ; ' and he then points out that he 
 has considered c the formal cause, or essentiality, of 
 good and evil ; ' which is, ' the doing it with or 
 against conscience.' The 'material cause' . . . 
 ' which is the laws of God and man, by a conformity 
 to which the action is good, and if it disagrees mate- 
 rially, evil ; ' and lastly he comes to the efficient 
 'and final causes' of all human actions. The will 
 is the efficient cause. What we should call motive 
 appears to be what Taylor calls the final cause; though, 
 as we shall have occasion to observe hereafter, he 
 explains himself on this head very obscurely. 
 
 This unnatural arrangement has the effect (for one 
 thing) of throwing extreme obscurity over the whole 
 book. It is studded throughout with distinctions 
 about matter and form, and with phraseology which, 
 in these days, hardly any one can understand. Take 
 the following as specimens : — 
 
 ' The external act is the occasion of the intending 
 or extending the internal, but directly and of itself 
 increases not the goodness or the badness of it. For 
 the external is not properly and formally good or 
 bad, but only objectively and materially ; just as a 
 wall cannot increase the whiteness unless the quality 
 itself be intended by its own principle (xiv. 349). . . . 
 For although in nature and logic time consignifies — 
 that is, it does the work of accidents, and appendages,
 
 ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 233 
 
 and circumstances, yet in theology it signifies and 
 effects too ; time may signify a substantial duty, and 
 effect a material pardon (xiii. 189). . . . There is a 
 double consent to a proposition ; the one is direct, 
 the other a reflex; the first is directly terminated 
 upon the honesty or dishonesty of the object, the 
 other upon the manner of it, and modality.' 
 
 Which, as appears from the context, is a way of 
 saying that we sometimes have to act for the best 
 without being sure of our facts. The point at issue 
 is whether a priest was right in giving absolution 
 upon evidence of repentance, supposed by some 
 theologians to be sufficient, though his own view was 
 that it was ambiguous, the penitent being at the 
 point of death and unable to clear the matter up 
 further. 
 
 It is generally possible to make out from the 
 context what Taylor's meaning in such passages as 
 these really was, and the question is rather one of 
 expression than of substance ; but his philosophy was 
 as scholastic as his phraseology and this circumstance 
 throws the greatest obscurity and confusion over 
 large parts of his work. He appears to have been 
 altogether unaware of the importance of having single 
 and distinct meanings for fundamental terms, and the 
 consequence is, that he uses them in a great variety 
 of senses, meaning by the same word the most 
 different things at different times. 
 
 He has no clear notion of the human mind and its 
 various faculties, and of their relation to each other.
 
 234 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Great part, perhaps the greater part, of his language 
 about the will and the conscience assumes that they are 
 separate independent beings between whom definite 
 relations exist. Take the following accounts of the 
 will : ' The will is the mistress of all our actions, of all 
 but such as are necessary and natural, and therefore 
 to her it is to be imputed whatsoever be done ' (xiv. 
 278); 'all other faculties are natural and necessary 
 and obedient, this only is the empress, and is free, 
 and mistress of the action ' (ib. 285). So we are 
 told elsewhere that ' the will may choose a less good 
 and reject the greater ' (xii. 75), and that it may cause 
 the understanding 'to apply a general proposition 
 to a particular case ' (xii. 81) without proper grounds. 
 
 The language of which these expressions are a 
 specimen, implies that will has a special independent 
 existence of its own, that it is, so to speak, a sub- 
 ordinate man who governs the conduct of the whole 
 of which he forms a part. 
 
 It is still worse with respect to conscience. The 
 first words of the book (xi. 369) define conscience thus : 
 ' Conscience is the mind of a man governed by a rule 
 and measured by the proportions of good and evil, in 
 order to practice — namely, to conduct all our relations 
 and all our intercourse between God, our neighbours, 
 and ourselves; that is in all moral actions.' The 
 meaning of a mind governed by a rule and measured 
 by proportions is not in itself by any means clear, 
 but the explanation makes it ten times darker. 
 
 The greater part of the first book is a curious
 
 IX JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 235 
 
 mixture of rhetoric and scholastic logic, from which we 
 learn that ' conscience is in God's stead to give us laws ' 
 (370) ; that it is God's ' vicegerent and subordinate ' 
 (xii. 18) ; that it is sometimes taken for ' the practical 
 intellectual faculty,' sometimes for ' the habitual per- 
 suasion and belief of the principles written there,' and 
 sometimes for 'any single operation and action of 
 conscience' (372). That it is 'a conjunction of the 
 universal practical law with the particular moral 
 action' (382) — a definition (it is quoted by Taylor 
 from Thomas Aquinas) which appears to treat con- 
 science as the result of a logical process. This is 
 explained to mean, in the next page, that conscience 
 is a ' complication of acts ' — the act, namely, of saying 
 murder is wrong, and the act of affirming that to 
 kill Uriah is murder. We afterwards (387) learn 
 that 'the duties and offices of conscience are to dictate, 
 and to testify or bear witness, to accuse or excuse, to 
 loose or bind.' These phrases are rendered still more 
 perplexing by the elaborate discussion which follows 
 them, on the right or sure conscience, the erroneous 
 conscience, the probable or thinking conscience, the 
 doubtful conscience, and the scrupulous conscience. 
 
 We can discuss without much difficulty, or at least 
 without much fear of being misunderstood, the cases of 
 men who rightly believe given actions to be right, who 
 wrongly believe given actions to be right, who doubt 
 but decide to act upon one of the possible suppositions, 
 who doubt without deciding, and who are too prone to 
 doubt ; but the whole subject is greatly perplexed by
 
 236 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 the introduction of a supposed entity called conscience, 
 which is regarded as right, as confidently erroneous, 
 as doubtful, or as scrupulous. This imperfect philo- 
 sophical basis, and the awkward phraseology which is 
 so closely connected with it, greatly diminish the 
 value of Taylor's book to all modern readers, and 
 make a large proportion of his discussions appear 
 irrelevant or unintelligible. 
 
 Apart from this Taylor's book furnishes a good 
 illustration of the endless perplexities which arise in 
 practice from that form of the doctrine of innate 
 ideas which was generally accepted in his time, and 
 against which in the next generation Locke directed 
 his vigorous attacks. The following "passages are 
 very distinct enunciations of this theory : — 
 
 ' For those things which are first inspirated, which 
 are universal principles, which are consented to by 
 all men without a teacher, those which Aristotle 
 calls /cotvas evvoias, those are always the last re- 
 moved, etc. (xi. 417). . . . Our reason or understand- 
 ing apprehends things three several ways ; the first 
 is called vorjais, or the "first notices" of things 
 abstract and the primo intclligibilia such as are. The 
 whole is greater than the half of the whole — good is 
 to be chosen, God is to be loved. Nothing can be 
 and not be at the same time, for these are objects of 
 the simple understanding, congenite notices, encreated 
 with the understanding ' (xi. 440). 
 
 This crude and clumsy theory pervades the whole 
 of the book. It assumes throughout that we have
 
 ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 237 
 
 within us a sort of unwritten dictionary which en- 
 ables us, by turning, for instance, to such a word as 
 'just' or 'justice,' to ascertain at once whether a 
 given thing is just or not. It would be hard to 
 suggest a better test, by which to ascertain whether 
 or not a given writer is really philosophical, than that 
 of considering whether he appreciates the importance 
 of assigning precise meanings to common words, like 
 'just,' 'law,' 'right,' and 'wrong.' If not, whatever 
 else he is, he is no philosopher. 
 
 The second of the elements of which Taylor's 
 book is composed is the Canon Law, and the works 
 of the casuists. He uses them in a very remarkable 
 way. He clearly sees, on the one hand, that they 
 were not laws properly so called in England; but, 
 on the other hand, he entertains for them a sort of 
 respect by no means unlike that which an English 
 lawyer would feel for the American Law Reports. 
 
 The way in which he quotes them introduces his 
 reader almost into a new world, and carries him back 
 to a time when a state of things existed of which we 
 see at present only the vestiges. They one and all 
 imply the existence of an ecclesiastical measure of 
 right and wrong, enforced upon individuals by the un- 
 restrained use of the spiritual sanction, and modify- 
 ing in the most curious way every one of the relations 
 of life. Moral theology, as understood by the authors 
 whom Taylor so freely quotes, can have been nothing 
 less than a universal ethical system claiming to regu- 
 late all human conduct, and in so far as it prevailed
 
 / 
 
 238 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 constituting its authorised interpreters the moral 
 sovereigns of the human race. Taylor appears to 
 have accepted this system to a certain extent as a 
 branch of that common law of the Christian Church 
 to which, like his master Laud, he attached so much 
 importance. 
 
 As instances of the immense importance of such 
 a system, we may observe that such questions 
 as the degree of moral authority belonging to the 
 civil magistrate, the moral weight to be attached to 
 human laws, and the right in particular cases to 
 evade them, are all treated under this system as 
 theological questions. Everything which relates to 
 marriage in particular is treated in this way. Taylor, 
 for instance, supposed that it was possible to say 
 what was, and what not, a valid marriage by the 
 law of nature apart from all positive human laws 
 whatever, and to determine with exact precision all 
 the moral duties arising out of such a conclusion. 
 
 Nothing can have a more singular effect upon a 
 modern reader than the strange cross between law 
 and morals thus produced. The sanctions of the 
 rules are moral and religious, but the rules them- 
 selves have often all the harshness and disregard of 
 special results, which could be found in the most 
 technical system of law. 
 
 A single instance will illustrate this : ' Francisco 
 Biretti, a Venetian gentleman, full of amours . . . 
 'courts Julia, a senator's daughter, but with secret 
 intent to abuse her, and so to leave her.' Julia's
 
 ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 239 
 
 father forces her to consent to a contract with 
 Biretti, who, still retaining his original intention, 
 makes the contract, and takes advantage of it 
 to seduce Julia. The law declares this to be a 
 marriage, but Biretti marries another woman in the 
 meantime, and Taylor says that the second marriage 
 was good in conscience, although the law held the 
 first transaction to be a marriage. 'Now the law 
 presumes that after contract their congress did de- 
 clare a marriage, for it supposes and presumes a 
 consent, and yet without says if there was no con- 
 sent there was no marriage.' Biretti knew that there 
 was no consent, as his intention was seduction, and 
 not marriage. He knew, therefore, that the pre- 
 sumption upon which the law proceeded to declare 
 him to be Julia's husband was false in fact, therefore 
 he is ' relieved in conscience ' though ' condemned by 
 the presumption.' The law did well to declare in 
 favour of Julia, ' but Francisco, who knew that which 
 the law could not know' (namely, the state of his 
 own mind), ' was bound to make amends to Julia as 
 well as he could, but to pursue the marriage with 
 Antonia, and to dwell with her' (xiii. 283, 284). It 
 would be difficult to give a better instance of the 
 strange confusions into which casuists fell when they 
 tried to solve absolutely every conceivable moral 
 problem by putting together moral obligations, techni- 
 cal rules of evidence, and arbitrary matters as to the 
 essence of marriage, which rest upon no other than a 
 purely fanciful basis.
 
 240 HOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 The last element worth noticing in the composi- 
 tion of Taylor's book is the purely legal one. He 
 apparently knew little of English law, and cared less 
 for it. He hardly ever refers to it except to quote 
 the rule of the common law as to the effect of 
 coercion by a husband in crimes committed by 
 married women; and to sanction the vulgar error 
 that 'a butcher is made incapable of being at the 
 inquest of life and death ' (xiii. 349). His deficiencies 
 in this respect, however, are compensated by a posi- 
 tive passion for civil law. He regards it on every 
 occasion in the light of a science, having an inde- 
 pendent existence of its own hardly capable of being- 
 varied, and constituting a sort of philosophy of 
 human actions from which no appeal can be admitted. 
 It would be easy to fill any number of pages with 
 illustrations of this ; indeed, a great part of the book 
 might be transcribed in illustration of it. 
 
 We must content ourselves with one or two. In 
 discussing the question of the relation of the spiritual 
 and temporal powers, Taylor says ' and here comes in 
 that rule of the law "the accessory follows the 
 nature of the principal " which hath been so infinitely 
 mistaken and abused by the pretences of Romanists 
 and Presbytery, for the establishing an empire ecclesi- 
 astical in things belonging to themselves, not to God.' 
 The soul was regarded as the principal, the body as 
 the accessory, whence, of course, it followed that the 
 temporal power was subservient to the spiritual. In 
 order to meet this Taylor goes into a lengthy dis-
 
 ix JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 241 
 
 quisition about the meaning of the rule, which he 
 ascertains by introducing what amount really to 
 nothing more than a variety of illustrations of the 
 fact, that there are different senses in which the 
 words principal and accessory may be used, and that 
 some of these do, while others do not, apply to the 
 case of the soul and the body. Many of these senses 
 are mere arbitrary technicalities of the Eoman lawyers. 
 Taylor, for instance, says, 'A jewel set in gold is 
 much better than the gold, but yet the gold is the 
 principal, because it ' (i.e. the jewel) ' was put there 
 to illustrate and adorn the gold, according to that of 
 Ulpian,' etc. (xiii. 573, 574). Another good illustra- 
 tion of the same thing occurs in the manner in which 
 Taylor treats the whole question of the mutual rights 
 and duties of parents and children (xiv. 182-199). 
 
 These are the three chief elements out of which 
 the elaborate system of morals which fills the Dudor 
 Dubitantium is made up. 
 
 VOL. I R
 
 X 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 1 
 
 (Second Notice) 
 
 Having given some account of the different elements 
 of which Taylor's great work on casuistry is com- 
 posed, Ave propose, on the present occasion, to 
 attempt to draw an outline of its contents, and to 
 show its relation to subsequent and contemporary 
 moral speculations. 
 
 The Ductor Dubitaniium is divided into four books, 
 which trcitT "respectively of Conscience, its different 
 kinds, and the general rules for conducting it ; of the 
 Law of Nature in general, and particularly as it is 
 commanded and digested by Christ, and of the 
 manner in which it is to be interpreted ; of Human 
 Laws, civil and ecclesiastical, and of the degree of 
 obligation which they impose upon the conscience ; 
 and, lastly, of the Nature of Good and Evil, and 
 
 1 Ductor Dubitaniium ; or, the Rule of Conscience. By 
 Jeremy Taylor. Vols. xi. xii. xiii. and xiv. of Heber's 
 edition of Bishop Taylor's works.
 
 essay x JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 243 
 
 of Human Actions, and their efficient and final 
 causes. 
 
 For reasons referred to in our former article, we 
 will begin with the Fourth Book. Its subject is, 
 'The Nature and Causes of Good and Evil, their 
 limits and circumstances, their aggravations and 
 diminutions,' or, which Taylor regards as being the 
 same thing, 'the efficient and the final causes of 
 all human actions.' The efficient cause of human 
 actions is the will — ' the mistress of all our actions.' 
 The will is free, and this liberty, 'agreeable to the 
 whole method and purpose, the economy and design 
 of human nature and being' (xiv. 281), is an im- 
 perfection. 
 
 In the whole book there is no more characteristic 
 passage than the one in which this is explained. It 
 is too long to cpiote, and in parts very eloquent ; but 
 the point of it is that our liberty is imperfect, and 
 that liberty itself is an imperfection arising from 
 the mixture of good and evil in ourselves and in 
 the constitution of the world. The reason of this 
 is shortly expressed as follows : — 
 
 ' If Ave understood all the degrees of amability in 
 the service of God, and if we could love God as he 
 deserves ... we should have no liberty left, nothing 
 concerning which we could deliberate. . . . The 
 saints and angels in Heaven, and God himself, love 
 good and cannot choose evil, because to do so were 
 imperfection and infelicity, and the devils and 
 accursed souls hate all good without liberty and
 
 244 HORAE SABBATIC AE essay 
 
 indifferency, but between these is the state of man 
 in the days of his pilgrimage.' 
 
 He also says, ' In moral and spiritual things liberty 
 and indetermination are weakness, and suppose a 
 great infirmity of our reason and a great want of 
 love.' In this theory Taylor, in effect, concedes 
 all that a believer in the modern doctrine of philo- 
 sophical necessity would contend for — namely, that 
 what is commonly described as the consciousness of 
 liberty, is nothing but the condition of a man who 
 does not know his own mind. 'Liberty of will,' 
 says Taylor, 'is like the motion of a magnetic 
 needle towards the North, full of trembling and 
 uncertainty, till it be fixed in the beloved point ; it 
 wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can 
 choose no more ' (xiv. 286). Freedom, according to 
 this, is only the sense of uncertainty of which we are 
 conscious Avhilst we are employed in weighing motives. 
 
 There are, however, abundant indications in other 
 parts of the chapter that Taylor did not perceive 
 the full force of the line of thought towards which 
 his rhetoric pointed ; but it is needless to insist 
 upon this. He goes on to point out (what no doubt 
 is true) that voluntary actions only are moral, 
 and he then proceeds to the question whether any 
 voluntary acts can be indifferent (291, 292), and 
 decides it in the negative; an idle word is a sin 
 because it is idle, and conversely men are bound 
 (Question ii. 297-305) to live in a manner 'fitted to 
 the general design of a Christian's life,' and to adapt
 
 X JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 245 
 
 all their conduct to that end, so that every action 
 of their lives may be in some degree actively good. 
 
 Next, he considers how the will may act, in respect 
 of the immediate or remote character of its connection 
 with its acts ; and this involves him in most singular 
 questions about ratification (305-309), 'a distinction 
 known in the civil law between "mandatum" and 
 "jussio"' (310), (instigation by an equal and the 
 command of a superior) and the question how far 
 silence gives consent (315-318), and whether in any 
 case it is lawful to permit sin ; as, for instance, when 
 'Pancirone, an Italian gentleman,' gave a German 
 ambassador liquor enough to get drunk 'after his 
 country fashion' (319). 
 
 He also discusses the question of the moral guilt of 
 accessories and principals in the second degree, the 
 question how far it is lawful to ' make or provide the 
 instruments which usually minister to sin.' Acts, he 
 says, 'which minister only to vanity and trifling- 
 pleasures are of ill fame.' A Christian is bound to 
 do something profitable to the commonwealth and 
 acceptable to God ; but Taylor will not go so far as to 
 say that a man who lives by juggling is to be ' directly 
 condemned for this, and said to be in a state of damna- 
 tion.' Still, ' if he comes near a spiritual guide,' he is 
 ' to be called off from that which at the best is good 
 for nothing' (325). 
 
 Card-making and dice-making he regards as lawful 
 (324), because in certain cases (327-333) and subject to 
 rules (333-344) it is lawful to play at cards and dice.
 
 246 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 In the course of his disquisition upon this point 
 a curious passage occurs which illustrates the state 
 of knowledge of the time, and in particular the 
 total absence in Taylor's mind of any just notions 
 of chance or probability : — 
 
 ' In these cases, I have heard from them that have 
 skill in such things, there are such strange chances, 
 such promoting of a hand by fancy and little arts 
 of geomancy, such constant winning on one side, 
 such unreasonable losses on the other, and these 
 strange contingencies produce such horrible effects 
 that it is not improbable that God hath permitted 
 the conduct of such games of chance to the Devil, 
 who will order them to where he can do the most 
 mischief ' (337). 
 
 From the question of principal and agent, Taylor 
 passes to the question of intention, and of the degree 
 of moral guilt which may be involved in it. There 
 are six steps in the 'production of a sin' (344) — 
 1, The inclination of the will ; 2, The will arresting 
 itself upon the tempting object; 3, The will being 
 pleased with the thought of it ; 4, Desiring to do it, 
 but 'not clearly and distinctly, but upon certain 
 conditions, if it were lawful,' etc. ; 5, Desire to do 
 it unconditionally; and, 6, Execution. 
 
 Having described these stages of guilt Avith much 
 sagacity and ingenuity, he proceeds, by the help of odd 
 scholastic phraseology about formal and material guilt 
 (348-356), to consider how many sins are involved in 
 the various mental stages through which guilt passes.
 
 X JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 247 
 
 He gets here into the most singular refinements. 
 'If the course of the outward act' is interrupted 
 and resumed, there is more than one sin or virtuous 
 act. A man who brings up an orphan 'does often 
 sleep and often not think of it, and hath many 
 occasions to renew his resolution.' If he delights 
 in it, and chooses Mies qitotics, he does so many 
 distinct acts of charity. But each intention must 
 produce some effect. 'Titius intends to give Caius 
 a new gown at the calends,' but forgets. His first 
 intention is thrown away ; and if, upon a new 
 intention, he does give him a gown at the calends, 
 he is credited with only one act of charity, not 
 two : — 
 
 ' If a man against his will nod at his prayers, and 
 awakening himself by his nodding, proceed in his 
 devotion, he does not pray more than once, because 
 the first intention is sufficient to point his prayer. 
 But if he falls asleep overnight, and sleeps till 
 morning, his morning prayer is upon a new account, 
 and the will must renew her act, or there is nothing 
 done.' 
 
 This is a good illustration of the absurd conse- 
 quences which flow from the view which Taylor 
 always takes of the will, as being a sort of sub- 
 ordinate man. It is followed by an inquiry into 
 the cases in which an involuntary effect, proceeding 
 from a voluntary cause, is imputed to the agent 
 (356-367). By this Taylor means the case of a man 
 who gets drunk, in order that when drunk he may
 
 248 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 sin without restraint, in which case he says the 
 sin consequent on the drunkenness, as well as the 
 drunkenness itself, is imputed. But it is otherwise 
 if the consequence was not foreseen or designed, 
 in which case the consequences of drunkenness have 
 their moral effect as aggravations of the drunkenness, 
 not as substantive offences (380-386) ; and so as to 
 other cases of negligence. 
 
 This second part of the rule forms part of an 
 inquiry into the effects of ignorance upon guilt. In 
 relation to this matter, Taylor handles incidentally, as 
 is his manner, very large questions. He begins by 
 asking of what men may lawfully be ignorant (364). 
 No man, he says, can be ' innocently ignorant of that 
 which all the nations of the world have ever believed 
 and publicly professed, as that there is a God — that 
 God is good, and just, and true ; that he is to be 
 worshipped ; that we must do no more wrong than 
 we are willing to suffer,' etc. No Christian can 
 be innocently ignorant of that which the Catholic 
 Church teaches, but upon points on which Christians 
 differ ' a man may innocently be ignorant ' (365). 
 
 This gives a wonderfully wide license in such 
 matters. He distinguishes ignorance as being in- 
 vincible, probable (368), and vincible (372), and 
 dwells at length upon the effect of infancy, in re- 
 lation to which he makes a characteristic remark. 
 We cannot tell exactly when children become 
 responsible for their sins. Probably they are not 
 punished so severely as men. 'When God does
 
 x JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 249 
 
 not impute their follies to damnation, it may be 
 he will impute them so far as to cause a sickness 
 or an immature and hasty death' (377). 
 
 One Anastasius Sinaita appears to have been better 
 informed. He says, according to Taylor, 'Some- 
 times God imputes sins to boys from twelve years 
 old and upwards.' He does not mention girls. 
 
 From the case of ignorance Taylor passes to that 
 of fear and violence, and their effects upon contracts 
 and other actions, as to which he says very little, at 
 considerable length (389-398). The most character- 
 istic of his doctrines is that a promise to a thief or 
 bandit should be kept, ' because, he being an outlaw 
 and rebel against all civil laws, and in a state of war, 
 whatever you promise to him you are to understand 
 according to that law under which then you are, 
 which is the law of nature and force together.' 
 
 The rest of the fourth part of the book consists of 
 an inquiry (398-414) into the final cause of human 
 actions, the summvm honum or ideal by which all 
 human conduct ought to be regulated, which, he 
 says, is the glory of God. It is not, however, un- 
 lawful to add to this master motive ' temporal regards 
 for ends of profit, pleasure, or honour,' though they 
 must be kept in the second place. However, the love 
 of God itself is not absolutely disinterested. ' There 
 was no love of God ever so abstracted by any com- 
 mand or expressed intention of God as to lay aside 
 all intuition of that reward' (411). This is a good 
 instance of the spiritual and intellectual see -saw
 
 250 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 between various points of view which is one of 
 Taylor's great characteristics. 
 
 Upon this part of the work we may observe in 
 general that it is obscured and falsified throughout 
 by a complete absence of true philosophy or real 
 knowledge of the constitution of man, and that it is 
 in fact nothing more or less than an elaborate attempt 
 to apply legal conceptions to a subject-matter to which 
 they have a very distant relation. Under Taylor's cir- 
 cumstances this was inevitable. The problem con- 
 tinually before him is, under what conditions will God 
 punish men for sins of thought or act? and his constant 
 tacit assumption is, that God will follow, at all events 
 to a great extent, the principles of the civil law. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the almost 
 idolatrous admiration with which the leading writers 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries re- 
 garded law, or than the manner in which they over- 
 looked the defects inherent in all law, especially the 
 great leading defect, that it involves the necessity 
 of deciding for practical purposes what are in 
 reality indeterminate and indeterminable problems. 
 This is closely connected with the notion of innate 
 ideas which Taylor held so strongly, and which was 
 universal in his time. If you believe that a maxim 
 like ' Contracts must be kept ' is a first truth by which 
 particular cases may be decided, you run of course into 
 argumentations like the one quoted above about the 
 robber. It is not till you have learnt that the general 
 rule is only a summary mode of expression, general-
 
 x JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 251 
 
 ised from a number of particular cases, that you 
 can see that it throws no light upon cases which were 
 not taken into account when it was formed, and that 
 their solution must depend upon different principles. 
 
 Such is Taylor's view of the questions which lie at 
 the root of ethics. We now pass to the body of his 
 system. The First Book (xi. 369; xii. 190) is en- 
 titled ' Of Conscience, the Kinds of it and the General 
 Eules of conducting them.' It treats successively of 
 the rule of conscience in general (x. 369-427), of the 
 right or sure conscience (xi. 427-511), the confident 
 or erroneous conscience (xii. 1-31), the probable or 
 thinking conscience (xii. 31-118), the doubtful con- 
 science (xii. 118-172), and the scrupulous conscience 
 (xii. 172-190). It is a most tedious inquiry, eloquent 
 in the wrong places, abounding in distinctions which 
 are of no real use, and above all, founded on no clear 
 perception of the difficulties or nature of the questions 
 to be discussed. 
 
 We have already referred to the definition of 
 conscience, to the way in which it is personified, and 
 to the different senses in which the word is used ; 
 but the observation may be extended to other 
 faculties. Man, in Taylor's philosophy, is a being 
 full of little men, named Will, Conscience, Reason, 
 etc., each of whom has his own peculiar province and 
 powers. It is obvious that any quantity of ingenuity 
 can be displayed in settling the precedence between 
 imaginary persons by the rules of the civil law, and 
 in illustrating it by cases handled by casuists.
 
 252 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Simplifying the matter as far as possible, and trans- 
 lating Taylor into modern language, the substance of 
 what he says appears to be as follows : As to conscience 
 in general it is a fact that men judge of the moral 
 character of their own and other people's actions, and 
 have in their own minds rules by which they form 
 those judgments. These rules are, in some sense or 
 other, the voice of God to the soul, even when they 
 are wrong. If the judgments founded on them 
 correspond with ' the law of God or God's will signi- 
 fied to us by nature or revelation' (381), and known 
 by various names, such as 'the law of nature, the 
 consent of nations, right reason, the Decalogue, the 
 Sermon of Christ, the canons of the apostles, the 
 laws, ecclesiastical and civil, of princes and governors,' 
 they are right. If not, they are wrong. In any 
 event they regulate our conduct and influence our 
 feelings, and so impose the powerful sanction of self- 
 approval or self-condemnation upon every action of 
 our lives. 
 
 These judgments form a 'right and true conscience' 
 when they are right, and are known to be so ; and 
 they may be known to be right by reason, the opera- 
 tion of which is by three steps (439 seq.) In the first 
 place, we have ' " first notices " of things abstract, of 
 principles, and the primo intelligibilia.' Next we 
 have '"discourse," that is, such consequents and 
 emanations which the understanding draws from the 
 first principles.' Lastly, we have faith, which is the 
 assent of the understanding to evidence.
 
 X 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOIl AS A MORALIST 253 
 
 In a word, conscience is our opinion of our own 
 conduct, which is to be regulated by reason from 
 which faith is derived. This is pure rationalism, 
 but Taylor (more suo) narrows it by saying that, as 
 geometrical propositions are not proved by moral 
 philosophy, so revelation is not proved by a natural 
 argument, but by 'principles proper to the inquisi- 
 tion.' What those principles are, or where or how 
 they are to be got, he does not say. 
 
 This rationalism with stones in its shoes (442-449), 
 weak for purposes of affirmation, strong for purposes 
 of denial, is pre-eminently characteristic of Taylor, 
 but he contrives, by a series of devices, and more or less 
 adroit beggings of the question, to assign their usual 
 provinces to faith and reason on grounds about as 
 plausible as usual. Reason, however, gets a consider- 
 ably larger share than is allowed to it by many 
 writers. 
 
 A great deal of curious disputation follows as to 
 the effect of knowing that a given thing is right. Two 
 of the most characteristic arguments may be shortly 
 referred to : (First), May you promote a true opinion by 
 bad reasons 1 Is it lawf ul ' for a good end for preachers 
 to affright men with panic terrors, and to create fears 
 that have no ground ; as to tell them if they be liars 
 their faces will be deformed ' ? etc. (489). Answer : 
 ' A preacher or governor may affright those that are 
 under him, and deter them from sin, by threatening 
 them with anything that may probably happen.' For 
 instance, he may tell sacrilegious people that it is
 
 254 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 probable they will die childless, or ' be afflicted with 
 the gout,' or 'have an ambulatory life,' etc. ; but he 
 must not threaten a judgment which implies a 
 miracle, as, for instance, that if a sinner in England 
 profanes the sacrament, 'a tiger shall meet him in 
 the churchyard and tear him.' Moreover, he must 
 not be 'too decretory and determinate,' and must 
 only threaten and not prophesy, ' lest the whole dis- 
 pensation become contemptible.' 
 
 (Secondly), How are you to act if you know the 
 truth in one capacity and not in another 1 A judge 
 knows a man to be innocent who, nevertheless, is 
 proved to be guilty according to the rules of law. 
 How is the judge to act % Taylor, in opposition as he 
 says to the schoolmen, holds that he must acquit. 
 He confines (499, etc.) this however to cases of life 
 and death. In matters of property (510) a judge may 
 give an unjust sentence, if the proof required by the 
 law is produced ; though again his knowledge that it 
 is unjust may justify him in favouring the right side 
 'in all the ways that are permitted him.' It is worth 
 observing that throughout the whole of this discus- 
 sion, the judge whom Taylor has before him is an 
 abstract judge, bound by abstract rules of evidence, 
 more or less like those of the civil law. He does not 
 perceive that the question cannot even be properly 
 stated till you know specifically the nature of the 
 procedure of which you are speaking, and the part 
 assigned by it to the person vaguely called a judge. 
 
 The erroneous conscience is treated of next after
 
 x JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 255 
 
 the right conscience. No chapter in the book shows 
 so well as this the mischief of regarding conscience as 
 a separate thing. The erroneous conscience binds, we 
 are told, because it ' always has the same commission, 
 as being the same faculty' (13). Throughout the 
 chapter Taylor recognises three parties to the morality 
 of an action — God, the conscience, and the man, 
 who is bound to obey both God and his conscience. 
 This, of course, produces inextricable confusion. 
 The following passages will illustrate this : — 
 ' Conscience is God's creature, bound to its lord and 
 maker by all the rights of duty and perfect sub- 
 ordination, and therefore cannot prejudice the right 
 and power of its lord, and no wise man obeys the 
 orders of a magistrate against the express law of his 
 king, or the orders of a captain against the command 
 of a general ; and, therefore, neither, of conscience, 
 which is God's messenger, against the purpose of the 
 message with which God has intrusted it (xii. 7, 8). 
 . . . The sum is this : God is supreme, and conscience 
 is his vicegerent and subordinate. Now it is certain 
 that the law of an inferior cannot bind against the 
 command of a superior when it is known. But when 
 the superior communicates the notices of his will by 
 that inferior and not otherwise, the subject is to obey 
 that inferior, and in so doing he obeys both. But 
 the vicegerent is to answer for the misinformation, 
 and the conscience for its errors, according to the 
 degree of its being culpable.' 
 
 All such questions become simple enough, if we
 
 256 HOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 remember that a man and his conscience are one, and 
 not two, and that the case of an erroneous conscience 
 is only another name for a bond fide error of judg- 
 ment, as an excuse for crime or moral wrong. How 
 much God and man will condemn a man for being 
 mistaken, still more how much either or both ought 
 to condemn him, and what ' ought ' means in such a 
 connection, are insoluble questions, which, however, 
 Taylor seems to have been feeling after with a view 
 to a solution. 
 
 The 'probable and thinking conscience' is next 
 discussed. It means the case of a man who has to 
 act upon probabilities. The most remarkable part of 
 Taylor's treatment of it is the illustration which it 
 gives of moral certainty. It is given in the shape of 
 a statement of the historical evidences of Christianity, 
 not altogether unlike the one which is inserted in the 
 second part of Butler's Analogy (xii. 39-67). It is 
 rhetorical and weak, giving the impression that 
 Taylor had never met with any serious argument on 
 the other side, and that he accordingly wrote off his 
 own statement currente calamo. It contains at least 
 one express contradiction within four pages. He 
 says : ' What the histories of that age reported as a 
 public affair, as one of the most eminent transac- 
 tions of the world . . . that which was not done in a 
 corner, but was thirty-three years and more in acting 
 ... is so certain that it was, that the defenders of it 
 need not account it a favour to have it presupposed ' 
 (39, 40).
 
 X JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 257 
 
 A little after, he says (43) : ' This blessed person 
 . . . was yet pleased for thirty years together to live 
 an humble ... a pious, and obscure life.' How 
 then can the events of his life have been a ' public 
 affair ' . . . ' thirty -three years and more in acting ' 1 
 It is worth notice that Taylor throughout this book 
 regards the miracles as proof of the divinity of Christ. 
 It does not appear to occur to him that the truth of the 
 miracles is the very issue to be proved. 1 Few things 
 would be more curious than to trace the gradual 
 change of tone and topic which may be observed in the 
 great evidential writers from Grotius through Taylor 
 and Baxter to Butler, Lardner, and Paley, and so to 
 the writers of our own day upon the same subject. 
 
 The rest of the discussion about the probable con- 
 science (xii. 67-90) is a cumbrous and intricate way of 
 saying that in the absence of certainty, probability 
 should be followed, and that, where there are opposite 
 probabilities, we must look to the specific consecpiences 
 of the action, which may be of such a nature that it 
 is wise to act upon a very slender probability. 
 
 The last part of this proposition is illustrated 
 by an odd case. A man's wife is 'surprised by 
 a Turk's man of war,' and said to have been 
 killed. 'When the sorrow for this accident had 
 boiled down,' the husband marries 'a maid of 
 Brescia.' After some years the second wife hears 
 that the first wife is alive at Malta, but before her 
 
 1 In his Liberty of Prophesying as already pointed out he 
 takes a diametrically opposite view. 
 
 VOL. I S
 
 258 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 husband hears of it, she hears again that the woman 
 at Malta has died. ' The question now arises whether 
 ... it be required that the persons already engaged 
 should contract anew. That a new contract is 
 necessary is universally believed, and is almost 
 certain, for the contrary opinion is affirmed by very 
 few, and relies upon but trifling motives.' The 
 woman, therefore, ought to get her husband to marry 
 her again. ' But now the difficulty arises, for her 
 husband is a vicious man, and hates her, . . . and 
 wishes her dead,' and so is sure not to consent. In this 
 case, says Taylor, ' it is lawful for her to follow that 
 little probability of opinion which says that the consent 
 of one is sufficient for the renovation of the contract.' 
 
 This appears to us a dishonest evasion of a super- 
 fluous technical difficulty. A person must be unwise 
 who felt any hesitation, under the circumstances, 
 about the moral innocence of continuing to cohabit, 
 but if she did, it would clearly be her duty to act 
 upon what was probably the right opinion. To 
 act upon a slight probability because you have no 
 better guide may be wise in certain cases, but to act 
 upon a slight probability in opposition to a greater 
 probability, because the slight probability is on the 
 side of one's inclinations, is only a dishonest way of 
 taking your inclinations as the guide of your conduct. 
 It is characteristic of Taylor's disingenuity to miss 
 this distinction. 
 
 The doubtful conscience (xii. 1-18) is next con- 
 sidered. It differs from the probable conscience, as
 
 X JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 259 
 
 far as we can understand, only in being rather more 
 doubtful. Taylor's inquiry into it is divided into 
 eight rules, such as ' a negative doubt binds only to 
 caution and observance.' 'A privative doubt cannot 
 of itself hinder a man from acting what he is moved 
 to by an extrinsic argument or inducement that is 
 in itself prudent or innocent.' What ' negative ' and 
 ' privative ' doubts are is not explained. 
 
 There are other rules of a very technical and need- 
 lessly cumbrous kind. The only one which possesses 
 much real interest is the last (140). ' When two pre- 
 cepts contrary to each other meet together about the 
 same question, that is to be preferred which binds 
 most.' This relates to such questions as whether a 
 man may be advised to commit a less offence in order 
 to keep him from committing a greater — to pick a 
 pocket instead of committing robbery with violence. 
 Under certain conditions Taylor thinks he may, and 
 upon this question takes occasion to examine at length 
 the question about doing evil that good may come. 
 
 It is a most remarkable and audacious passage, and 
 deserves notice, both as an illustration of the occasional 
 vigour of Taylor's rationalism, and as a specimen of 
 the manner in which the most vigorous and audacious 
 speculations might be reconciled with strict orthodoxy 
 as formerly understood :— 
 
 'There can be no dispute ' (says Taylor) ' that it is 
 highly unlawful to do evil for a good end. St. Paul's 
 words are decretory and passionate in the thing (xii. 
 158). . . . However, though this be clear and certain,
 
 260 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 yet I doubt not but all the world does evil that good 
 may come of it, and though all men are of St. Paul's 
 opinion, yet all men do not blame themselves when 
 they do against it. . . . First, if we look in Scrip- 
 ture, we shall find that divines eminently holy have 
 served God by strange violences of fact' (159). 
 
 He refers to David, Elijah, Jehu, and others. In 
 government 'all princes knowingly procure their rights 
 by wrong. . . . We make children vainglorious that 
 they may love noble things (160). . . . Prescription 
 doth transfer right, and confirms the putative and 
 presumed in defiance of the legal and proper (161). 
 . . . All princes think themselves excused if, by 
 inferring a war, they go to lessen their growing 
 neighbours (161). . . . Who will not tell a harmless 
 lie to save the life of his friend? (162) . . . When 
 the judges are corrupt, we think it fit to give them 
 bribes to make them do justice' (162). 
 
 The most remarkable illustration of all, however, 
 is given in these striking words : — 
 
 'The rules of war and the measures of public 
 interest are not to be estimated by private measures, 
 and therefore, because this is unlawful in private 
 intercourses, it must not be concluded to be evil in 
 the public. For human affairs are so intricate and 
 entangled, our rules so imperfect, so many necessities 
 supervene, and our power is so limited, and our 
 knowledge so little, and our provisions so short- 
 sighted, that those things which are, in private, evils, 
 may be public goods ' (163).
 
 X JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 261 
 
 The line of thought thus vigorously taken leads 
 obviously enough, straight towards the great question 
 of morals, What, after all, is the real meaning of 
 good and evil 1 It was not in Taylor's nature to face 
 and work out to the bottom such a problem as this. 
 He contents himself with a cloud of distinctions about 
 'evils in morality,' (164) and 'evils in nature' (165), 
 'evils properly and naturally,' evils 'by accident,' 'by 
 our own fault,' 'by the faults of others,' the 'material 
 part,' the 'formality of action' (168), and the like, 
 and ends thus : ' The sum is this, whatsoever is for- 
 bidden by the law under which we stand, and, being 
 weighed by its own measures, is found evil, that is in 
 a matter certainly forbidden, not from any outer and 
 accidental reason, but for its natural or essential con- 
 trariety to reason and the law of God, that may not 
 be done or procured for any end whatsoever; but 
 what is evil in some circumstances may be good in 
 others, and what is condemned for a bad effect, by a 
 good one may be followed.' All this is a mere fog 
 of words until we assign a definite meaning to the 
 word 'evil,' and hardly any passage in the whole 
 book will better exemplify either the nature or the 
 incurable weakness of Taylor's method. 
 
 The last variety of conscience which Taylor con- 
 siders is the scrupulous conscience. The whole is 
 summed uphill "n; — veiy ■ ■ pret ty" simile, which is a 
 good illustration of Taylor's wit, and with Avhich we 
 will conclude this article : — 
 
 'A scrupulous conscience ... is like a woman
 
 262 IIOKAE SABBATIC AE essay x 
 
 handling of a frog or a chicken, which all their friends 
 tell them can do them no hurt, and they are convinced 
 in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know 
 it, and yet when they take the little creature into 
 their hands they shriek, and sometimes hold fast, and 
 find their fears confuted, and sometimes they let go, 
 and find their reason useless' (177).
 
 XI 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 1 
 
 (Third Notice) 
 
 The Second and Third Books of the Durtor Dubitan- 
 tium relate respectively to Laws Divine and Laws 
 Human. The first of Divine Laws is the law of 
 nature (xii. 190-280). Upon this point Taylor's 
 views are substantially those of a much later genera- 
 tion. Properly speaking, he says, there is no such 
 thing as a law of nature : — 
 
 'And this opinion Carneades did express but 
 rudely, and was for it noted by Lactantius. He said 
 there was no law of nature. But the Christians, who 
 for many ages have followed the school of Aristotle, 
 have been tender in suffering such expressions, and 
 have been great promoters of Aristotle's doctrine con- 
 cerning the to cf)vcri/c6v, ' the natural law.' But, 
 indeed, Aristotle himself in this was various and 
 indetermined' (193), as he proceeds to show. 
 
 1 Ductor Dubitantium ; or, the Rule of Conscience. By 
 Jeremy Taylor. Vols. xi. xii. xiii. and xiv. of Hebcr's edition 
 of Bishop Taylor's works.
 
 264 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 The substance of his doctrine, which is expressed at 
 great length and in a varietyof forms,is almost identical 
 with that of Mr. Austin, The law of nature is nothing 
 hut a collection of the maxims the observance of which 
 natural reason deems to be essential to human society. 
 These maxims are law, not on account of our natural 
 inclination to them, or because of the consent of 
 nations, or because they are prompted by reason, but 
 because God has commanded them to be observed, 
 and will enforce their observance by punishments 
 here and hereafter. 
 
 Many passages in this inquiry anticipate, though in 
 a cumbrous way, the doctrines of the Utilitarian 
 school of the later part of the eighteenth century and 
 of our own days, and they have in many places a con- 
 siderable resemblance to Hobbes, to whom, however, 
 Taylor never, so far as we know, directly refers. The 
 following passage is an anticipation of much modern 
 speculation : — 
 
 'From all which I conclude that the jus gen- 
 tium, the law of nations, is no indication of the law 
 of nature ; neither, indeed, is there any jus gentium 
 collectively at all ; but only the distinct laws of 
 several nations ; and therefore it is to be taken dis- 
 tributively ; for they are united only by coutract or 
 imitation, by fear, or neighbourhood, or necessity, 
 or any other accident which I have mentioned ' 
 (207, 208). 
 
 He points out also that men ' can never agree in 
 their enumeration of the natural laws ' (220). Taylor,
 
 xr JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 265 
 
 indeed, goes so far in this direction as to argue elabor- 
 ately (224) that 'God cannot do an unjust thing, 
 because whatsoever he wills or does is therefore just 
 because he wills and does it,' and he reproves (221) 
 Grotius for teaching that ' God cannot change the law 
 of nature.' It is a singular instance of the differences 
 which exist amongst theologians that Warburton 
 regards this doctrine as atheistic. 
 
 The maxims of natural reason thus enacted into a 
 law by God are, according to Taylor (228), the found- 
 ation and the measure of the obligation of all laws 
 whatever ; and, indeed, it is self-evident that a divine 
 law, sanctioned by eternal happiness or misery, must, 
 in the nature of things, be superior in its obligations 
 to all other laws whatever. It is, however, curious 
 to see upon what trifling grounds Taylor, who appre- 
 hends so clearly the true character of the law of nature, 
 regards particular maxims as being articles of that law. 
 
 Austin's theory is that the principle of utility 
 is the index to the will of God, so that conduct 
 conformable to rules which tend to produce a maxi- 
 mum of happiness is agreeable to the law of God ; 
 but Taylor has no such test. He nowhere clears the 
 matter up fully, but numerous passages in his book 
 indicate the opinion that an intricate theory, founded 
 rather on the civil law than on anything else, was the 
 'law of nature.' For instance, he argues at length 
 upon the supposition that by the law of nature 
 clandestine marriages are valid, and cannot be 
 annulled, though they may be forbidden by the laws
 
 2G6 HOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 of particular nations (244, 245). It is, of course, an 
 intelligible and imaginable thing that it might please 
 God to make such a law ; but why, in the absence of 
 express revelation (which Taylor does not allege), it 
 should be supposed that such was actually the case 
 we cannot understand. It is equally difficult to com- 
 prehend why it should be said that ' by the law of 
 nature every man hath power to make a testament of 
 his own goods ' (246). 
 
 Having thus described the law of nature and 
 glanced at its provisions, Taylor proceeds to the 
 cpiestion of sanctions, or, as he calls them, 'bands.' 
 He does not see distinctly the necessity for defining 
 or describing the nature of obligation, but in this 
 passage (230) he approaches the question. Tear,' 
 he says, 'is the band of all laws'; 'the stings of 
 conscience and fear of the divine vengeance is this 
 evil which naturally restrains us ' (230) ; but he 
 edges away from this by saying that the wise and 
 good fear not so much punishment as sin. Their f ear 
 ' is natural, a fear produced from the congenite notices 
 of things,' 'a fear of being a base person and doing- 
 vile things.' The second band of virtue is love ; but 
 as fear, the first band, is not to be taken simply, so 
 neither is love. ' It is impossible a man should do 
 great things or suffer nobly without consideration of 
 a reward, and since much of virtue consists in suffer- 
 ing evil things, virtue of herself is not a beatitude, 
 but the way to one ' (237). These are excellent in- 
 stances of the way in which Taylor always trims, and
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 267 
 
 never embraces any view or adopts any principle in a 
 thoroughgoing manner. 
 
 These speculations are followed by inquiries of a 
 very technical and superfluous sort about the cases 
 in which God or man can dispense with the law of 
 nature, and the way in Avhich the dispensation can 
 be effected. God can dispense with the law of nature 
 (260-270), but no human power can do so, although 
 civil laws may so alter the circumstances as to vary 
 the application of natural laws (272, 273), and though 
 the rigour of the law of nature, as well as the rigour 
 of human laws, may ' be allayed by equity, piety, and 
 necessity ' (278). 
 
 From the law of nature in general Taylor passes 
 to the law of nature ' as it is commanded, digested, 
 and perfected by our supreme lawgiver, Jesus Christ.' 
 This is the least interesting part of the book. It 
 refers to the abrogation of the Jewish law, in connec- 
 tion with which it discusses at length the question of 
 prohibited degrees in marriage, and in particular the 
 case of the marriage of first cousins (321-358) ; the 
 question of image-worship (382412); the question 
 of the observance of Sunday (412-430). The last of 
 these subjects is the only one which in the present 
 day retains much interest. Taylor treats the institu- 
 tion of Sunday as merely ecclesiastical : — 
 
 ' The question concerning particular works or per- 
 mitted recreations is wholly useless and trifling, for 
 " quod lege prohibitoria vetitum non est permissum 
 intelligitur," but as for some persons to give them-
 
 268 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 selves great liberties of sport on that day is neither 
 pious nor prudent, so to deny some to others is neither 
 just nor charitable ' (429). 
 
 The most remarkable speculation in this part of 
 the book is under Kule vii. (439-465). 'There is 
 no state of men or things but is to be guided by the 
 proportion of some rule or precept in the Christian 
 law.' Taylor begins the exposition of this rule by 
 setting out at length the necessity which exists for 
 believing that the law of Christ 'must needs be 
 absolute and alone, and unalterable, and perfect, and 
 for ever.' As a general answer to the obvious diffi- 
 culties of this view, he has the following character- 
 istically beautiful, and not less characteristically 
 fallacious, passage. It occurs amongst the ' cautions 
 to be observed in civil permissions of an unlawful 
 act or state ' : — 
 
 ' As it is in the economy of the world, the decree 
 of God doth establish the vicissitudes of night and 
 day for ever ; but the sun, looking on a point, not 
 only signifies, but also makes the little portions of 
 time and divides them into hours ; but men coming 
 with their little arts and instruments make them to 
 be understood, and so become the sun's interpreters ; 
 so it is in the matter of justice, whose great return 
 and firm establishments are made by God, and some 
 rules given for the great measures of it; and we 
 from His laws know just from unjust, as we under- 
 stand day and night ; but the laws of princes and the 
 contracts of men, like the sun, make the little measures,
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 269 
 
 and divide the great proportions into minutes of 
 justice and fair intercourse ; and the divines and 
 lawyers go yet lower, and they become expounders 
 of those measures, and set up dials and instruments 
 of notice, by which we understand the proportion 
 and obligation of the law and the lines of justice.' 
 
 This is a magnificent image, but its speculative 
 worthlessness is shown by what follows : — 
 
 'Just and unjust, we love or hate respectively by 
 our warrant from God ; and from him also we are 
 taught the general lines of it, as, Do what you would 
 be done to, restore the pledge, hurt no man, rob not 
 your neighbour of his rights, make no fraudulent 
 contracts, no unjust bargains ; but then, what are his 
 rights and what not 1 what is fraudulent and what is 
 fair 1 in what he hath power, in what he hath none, 
 is to be determined by the laws of men. So that 
 if a commonwealth permits an usurious exchange or 
 contract, it is not unjust ' (443). 
 
 The second part of the extract appears to me (as 
 it appeared to Hobbes) to be perfectly true, but it 
 stultifies the first part. If men decide specifically 
 what is just and what is unjust, it is obvious that the 
 general proposition ' Be just ' is only a generalisation 
 deduced from known laws, not a first truth from 
 which other laws are deduced. The greatest of 
 tyrants, the most unmerciful slave -owner, would 
 not object to bind himself to respect his neighbour's 
 rights if he were permitted to define them in the first 
 instance as he pleased. If divines, lawyers, and
 
 270 HOKAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 legislators are to say what specific acts are murder, 
 adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness, it is 
 obvious that they, and not the author of the Ten 
 Commandments, are the real legislators. The Com- 
 mandments are like the titles of the chapters of a 
 book, and are highly useful as memoranda, but the 
 best table of contents will not enable any one to dis- 
 pense with the substance of the book itself. 
 
 The appreciation of this particular difficulty would 
 have required a more distinct conception of the 
 nature of generalisation than either Taylor or any 
 other writer of his time possessed ; but there is 
 another difficulty in the way of his general estimate 
 of the New Testament as a universal moral code, 
 which he appreciated better, though he did not do 
 much towards removing it. He says : — 
 
 'Against the doctrine of the rule many things 
 may be objected ; for there seem to be many 
 things and great cases for which the laws of the 
 holy Jesus have made no provision. I instance a 
 very great one, that is, the whole state of war, and 
 all the great cases and incidents of it ' (446). 
 
 Some, he says, solve the difficulty by saying that 
 all war is unlawful ; but this, he observes, only in- 
 troduces still greater difficulties. Others say that 
 ' Christianity leaves that matter of war to be con- 
 ducted by the law of nature and nations ; ' but this, 
 he says, only 'entangles the whole inquiry.' For 
 Christianity is a perfect digest of the law of nature, 
 and if the law of Christ omits the case of war, so too
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 271 
 
 must the law of nature. If we are to 'look for' the laws 
 of nature on this matter ' in the tables of our own 
 hearts,' we shall find that passion, interest, custom, and 
 education are ' the authors of contrary inscriptions.' 
 
 The law of nations comes off still worse (448). 
 There is no digest of it, no sanction to it ; it is 
 uncertain, and is 'admitted with variety and 
 by accident ' ; and, in a word, by this rule ' the 
 measures of war shall be the edicts of any single 
 general, and nothing else.' Having stated his diffi- 
 culties with his usual force, Taylor tries to remove 
 them with his usual weakness. In the first place, ' if 
 men be subjects of Christ's law they can never go to 
 war with each other.' If they do go to war, they 
 have got beyond the province of law. The injurious 
 person has ' gone beyond all law into a state of things 
 where laws are of no value.' The injured person can 
 do whatever is necessary for his defence ; and if it 
 be asked, ' what is the measure of the actions which 
 must be done in the conduct of the defence 1 ' the 
 answer is, he must observe the rules of justice like a 
 private person, which rule of justice requires men, 
 amongst other things, ' to keep themselves within the 
 limits of a just defence,' which limits of a just defence 
 prohibit people at war to hurt those who are not at 
 war, 'except in a case of absolute necessity.' This is 
 surely a very lame account of a matter of vital im- 
 portance. It leads up to an elaborate inquiry into 
 the value of Old Testament precedents (452-465), 
 of which it is scarcely unjust to say that Taylor's
 
 272 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 rule is that they are to be used where they are appli- 
 cable, otherwise not. 
 
 The concluding chapter of Book II (xii. 465 
 to end, xiii. 1-230) relates to the 'interpretation 
 and obligation of the laws of Jesus Christ.' It 
 is very long, and far from interesting. It is com- 
 posed of twenty rules, several of which are little 
 more than grammatical rules of interpretation. Thus 
 the first rule is — ' In negative precepts the affirma- 
 tives are commanded, and in the affirmative com- 
 mandments the negatives are included.' Others are 
 designed to fill up the extreme generality of the New 
 Testament maxims so as to enable commentators to 
 convert them into something approaching, at all 
 events, to a general code of morals. Such are the 
 following : — 
 
 'When anything is forbidden by the laws of 
 Jesus Christ, all those things are forbidden also which 
 follow from that forbidden action, and for whose sake 
 it was forbidden. . . . The laws of Jesus Christ are 
 the measures of the Spirit, and are always to be 
 extended to a spiritual signification. . . . All those 
 things also by which we come to a forbidden sin are 
 understood to be forbidden by the same law. . . . 
 Suppositive propositions (" When ye pray, stand not 
 in the corners of the street," "when ye fast," etc., 
 "when ye give alms," etc.) are always equivalent to 
 a commandment.' 
 
 There is also an investigation of the difference be- 
 tween laws and counsels evangelical, a vindication at
 
 xi JEEEMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 273 
 
 great length of the doctrine that the Christian law 
 is fully contained in the Holy Scriptures, and some 
 other matters of less importance. 
 
 We will confine ourselves to a very few observa- 
 tions on Taylor's treatment of these subjects. His 
 rules of construction tacitly assume, if not what we 
 should call in these days the verbal inspiration of the 
 New Testament, at all events the exact preservation 
 by the Evangelists of the very words and forms of ex- 
 pression used by Christ, for in many cases they attach 
 consequences of the utmost importance to the negative 
 or affirmative form into which a proposition is thrown. 
 Notwithstanding, however, the sacredness which he 
 attaches to the very words of the Gospels, Taylor is 
 enabled by the maxims quoted to enlarge them to an 
 extraordinary degree. A good instance of this is 
 afforded by part of his chapter on Evangelical 
 counsels. Although a counsel is not in itself a law, 
 ' Yet there is also the minimum morale in it — that is, 
 that degree of love and duty less than which is by 
 interpretation no love, no duty at all.' Thus : — 
 
 ' When we are commanded to love our neighbour 
 as ourself, the least measure of this law, the legal or 
 negative part of it, is that we should not do him 
 injury ; that we shall not do to him what we would 
 not have done to ourselves. He that does not in this 
 sense love his neighbour as himself has broken the 
 commandment ' (xiii. 60). 
 
 These illustrations are enough to show the manner 
 in which Taylor provides means for converting the 
 
 VOL. I T
 
 274 IIOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 materials supplied by the New Testament into a 
 complete moral code. 
 
 The 14th rule — that the whole Christian law is 
 contained in the Scripture — is mostly controversial, 
 and directed against the Eoman Catholics, but inci- 
 dentally it contains Taylor's theory of the uses of 
 tradition, which is curious and singularly definite. 
 Tradition, he says, ' is of great use for the conveying 
 of this great rule of conscience, the Holy Scriptures 
 of the Old and New Testament ' (xiii. 114). There 
 are also three doctrines, or rather ' rituals,' as Taylor 
 calls them, which, 'although they have also great 
 grounds in Scripture, yet, because the universal prac- 
 tice and doctrine of the Church of God in all ages, 
 and in all Churches primitive, is infinitely evident and 
 notorious, . . . may be placed under the protection 
 of universal tradition, for they really have it beyond 
 all exception.' These doctrines are — 1, The observ- 
 ance of Sunday, especially Easter Sunday. 2, Epis- 
 copal government. 3, Offices ecclesiastical {e.g. 
 public prayers and the administration of the Sacra- 
 ment and other ceremonies), to be performed by 
 ecclesiastical persons. 
 
 Upon the weakness of tradition, when stretched 
 beyond these narrow limits, Taylor has some striking 
 passages. Take, for instance, the following comment 
 on ' Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ' : — 
 
 ' No man now knows what the Catholic Church 
 does believe in any question of controversy, for the 
 Catholic Church is not to be spoken with ; and, being
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 275 
 
 divided by seas, and nations, and interests, and fears, 
 and tyrants, and poverty, and innumerable accidents, 
 does not declare her mind by any common instru- 
 ment, and agrees in nothing but in the Apostles' 
 Creed and the books of Scripture, and millions of 
 Christians hear nothing of our controversies, and if 
 they did, would not understand some of them.' 
 
 The last part of this rule (Ques. III. pp. 153-169) 
 has some interest in these days. It is an inquiry 
 into what we are so familiar with under the title of 
 the doctrine of development, which Taylor opposes 
 so strongly that he gives a very reluctant assent to 
 the propriety of drawing up the Nicene Creed ; ' and 
 indeed the thing was very well if it had not been 
 made an ill example . . . afterward the case was 
 altered, and that example was made use of to expli- 
 cate the same creed till, by explicating the old, they 
 have inserted new articles' (163). He adds, 'All the 
 world is not able to tell us how much is necessary 
 and how much is not if they once go beside the 
 Apostolic Creed' (167). 
 
 The Third Book relates to Human Laws, and is 
 divided into six chapters, which treat respectively of 
 human laws in general and their power over the 
 conscience ; of penal and tributary laws ; of supreme 
 civil powers and their laws; of the powers of the 
 Church in canons and censures; of domestic laws 
 enacted by parents ; and of the interpretation, diminu- 
 tion (i.e. relaxation), and abrogation of human laws. 
 
 Certain chapters of this Third Book are much the
 
 276 HOEAE SABBATIC AE essay 
 
 most interesting part of the whole work. The first 
 chapter states, and vindicates at great length, the 
 doctrine that human laws bind the conscience. This 
 doctrine (234), says Taylor, has been greatly dis- 
 puted, the opposite being believed ' by all the gentle- 
 men and common people of Spain, the scholars only 
 excepted.' Some also of the Calvinists, and Lutherans, 
 and all the Anabaptists, were of the same Avay of 
 thinking ; and so were ' Almain, John Gerson, Felinus, 
 Captan, and Navarre,' as far as concerned the civil 
 laws of princes. 
 
 Taylor states eight grounds for their opinion, and 
 elaborately answers them all. The sum of his 
 argument is, that human government is of divine 
 institution, and that the laws of God themselves 
 are reduced to a certainty by the laws of man — 
 e.g. (237) 'God forbade murder; but what is murder 
 in England is not murder in Spain, and vice versd.' 
 We doubt (upon grounds already pointed out) whether 
 Taylor appreciated the full importance of this remark. 
 But it carries consequences of the very highest im- 
 portance. It is difficult to overrate the practical 
 importance of this controversy. The different views 
 taken of the moral weight of law in England and in 
 Ireland are a good illustration of it. 
 
 After an elaborate answer (250-261) to the eight 
 arguments against his own view, Taylor gives an 
 account of the differences between the obligations im- 
 posed by divine and those imposed by human laws 
 (261-266). The principal points are that divine laws
 
 XI 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 277 
 
 bind immediately, human laws mediately. We are 
 bound not only to obey but to approve of divine laws, 
 ' but human laws meddle not with the understanding, 
 for that is a prince, and can be governed as he can be 
 persuaded, but subject to the empire of none but God.' 
 Divine laws are lasting. Human laws cease to bind 
 by change of circumstances and lapse of time. 
 
 In subsequent parts of the chapter (rule ii. p. 
 266, rule iii. p. 274) immense deductions are made 
 from the binding power of human laws. It is 
 said that they do not oblige the conscience to an 
 active obedience when there is imminent danger 
 of death or of an intolerable or very grievous evil, 
 but this is qualified characteristically by a proviso 
 that if obedience is enforced, even at the risk of 
 death, it must be yielded (272). It is also said 
 generally that ' laws which are not just and good do 
 not oblige the conscience ' (274) ; but this again is 
 qualified by five 'cautions' (281), two of which are to 
 the effect that the inconvenience of the law to the 
 republic must be so great as in the judgment of good 
 and prudent men ' to be a sufficient cause of annulling 
 the law,' and ' must reasonably outweigh the evil of 
 material disobedience. Moreover, the inconvenience 
 and injustice ' must be certain, notorious, and relied 
 upon.' These are very slipshod directions. The 
 great defect of the whole speculation is that Taylor 
 never asks himself distinctly what he means by an 
 obligation, and by such words as 'must' and 'ought.' 
 
 Of the remaining rules in this chapter one only
 
 278 HOKAE SARBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 (rule vii. p. 296) deserves particular notice. It is 
 'that a law should oblige the conscience, and does 
 not depend upon the acceptation of the law by the 
 people.' The people at large, Taylor owns, may in 
 certain cases have legislative power, though he is 
 careful to say that such governments ' came in wrong ' 
 (296), but if they have not, their consent is not wanted. 
 Upon this point he uses one of his fine images : 
 ' Although a horse sometime cannot be ruled without 
 strokings and meet and gentle usages, yet for all that 
 his rider is his master' (279). 
 
 The chapter which relates to laws penal and 
 tributary contains a great deal of trifling matter 
 about the cases in which men may and ought to 
 execute judgment on themselves. There are, how- 
 ever, three points in it which deserve express notice. 
 The first is Taylor's vindication of a liberal use 
 of the punishment of death, which he puts on 
 the broad ground of general expediency, though 
 he expressly admits that as to the criminal it fre- 
 quently ' sends him to hell ' (308). The following 
 passage (311) is memorable in its way: 'If there 
 were any other ' (punishment) ' less than death, the 
 galleys, and the mines, and the prisons would be 
 nothing but nurseries of villains which, by their 
 numbers, would grow as dangerous as a herd of 
 wolves and lions.' Imagine a bishop of our own 
 days advocating the wholesale extermination of the 
 criminal classes as the best practical solution of the 
 difficulties which they cause !
 
 XI JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 279 
 
 The second point is Taylor's discussion of the 
 question of truth and falsehood which is suggested 
 to him by considering whether a guilty person 
 may lie to escape the penalty of the law (351-388). 
 The discussion is elaborate and lengthy, but 
 neither profound nor original. It allows of lying 
 in the common cases, and shows a very unnecessary 
 tenderness for equivocation, which, says Taylor, 
 'may upon less necessity and upon more causes 
 be permitted than lying ' (382). However, he adds, 
 a man who equivocates 'had need be very witty 
 to be innocent.' The greatest wit, indeed, will not 
 always do, as we learn from an odd illustration — the 
 case of the devil in the ancient oracles : — 
 
 ' When he was put to it at his oracles, and durst 
 not tell a downright lie, and yet knew not what was 
 truth many times, he was put to the most pitiful 
 shifts, and trifling equivocations, and acts of knavery 
 which, when they were discovered ... it made him 
 much more contemptible and ridiculous than if he 
 had said nothing or confessed his ignorance ' (388). 
 
 Thirdly, with regard to the tributary laws, Taylor 
 holds that people are bound in conscience to pay taxes 
 (414), and that, whether they are demanded or not 
 (420), and though this ' is to be understood of customs 
 and tributes which are just,' yet most taxes are just, 
 and ' let no merchant trust his own judgment ' to the 
 contrary, ' but the sentence of a wise spiritual guide, 
 or of counsel learned in the law' (422). This assigns 
 a remarkable province to casuists and counsel.
 
 280 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 In the next chapter, Taylor proceeds to discuss 
 the nature of States, and their laws, which he con- 
 siders under eight rules (423-549). Though the 
 inquiry is long, its result may be expressed shortly. 
 First, as to the civil power in general, which is con- 
 sidered in the first four rules : Taylor agrees with 
 Hobbes that 'the supreme power in every republic 
 is universal, absolute, and unlimited' (423). This 
 absolute power, however, 'is but an absolute power 
 of government, not of possession ; it is a power of 
 doing right, but not a power of doing wrong' (427). 
 The Sovereign is ' superior to the civil laws, but not 
 wholly free from them'; but this rule 'hath been 
 thrust into great difficulty.' 'Disputations in this 
 case are not prudent or safe ; but precepts and 
 sermons and great examples, and the sayings of wise 
 men, and positive affirmations in those particulars 
 that be manifest ' (435). 
 
 After much trimming and quoting of contradictory 
 authorities, Taylor at last comes to the conclusion that 
 the Sovereign is bound in conscience to keep the law, 
 but that there is no remedy if he breaks it. The 
 law is his guide, not his master. This is more fulty 
 explained in the next rule, which advocates the 
 doctrine of passive obedience with extraordinary 
 warmth of language : — 
 
 'I do not know any proposition in the world 
 clearer and more certain in Christianity than this 
 rule. ... I have an ill task to write cases of con- 
 science if such things as these shall be hard to be
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 281 
 
 persuaded, for there are very few things in which 
 any man is to hope for half so much conviction as 
 in this article lies before him in every topic ' (454). 
 
 It is needless to refer to his proofs of this proposi- 
 tion. They consist partly of the well-known texts of 
 the Bible upon the subject, and partly of a passionate 
 declamation on the evils of anarchy. Civil war is a 
 universal evil, but as for a bad prince, ' let him be 
 lustful, he shall not ravish the Commonwealth ; and 
 if he be bloody, his sword cannot cut off very great 
 numbers ; and if he be covetous, he will not take 
 away all men's estates' (467). 
 
 No stronger proof can be given of the horrors of 
 civil war than the fact that the recollection of it 
 should lead such a man as Taylor to talk such de- 
 grading nonsense. 
 
 The last four rules of the chapter refer to the 
 authority of the civil power in things ecclesiastical. 
 It would be difficult for Hobbes himself to assert the 
 royal prerogative much more vigorously : — 
 
 ' It is necessary that the supreme pow er of kings 
 or states should be governors in religion, or else they 
 are but half kings at the best (475). The prince 
 cannot rule without it (religion) ; he is but the 
 shadow of a king, the servant of his priests; and, 
 if they rule religion, they may also rule him ' (479). 
 
 Religion, having a great influence over morals 
 (479), and great power over individuals (480), the 
 civil government must rule religion : — 
 
 'This course of forbidding new religions is cer-
 
 282 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 tainly very prudent, and infinitely just and pious 
 (484). . . . Against the law no man is to be per- 
 mitted to bring in new religions, excepting those 
 only who can change the law and secure the peace.' 
 
 The civil power, moreover, ought to legislate upon 
 'affairs of religion and the Church,' and that both 
 in the punishment of sin as a crime (493), when it 
 appears desirable, and also in all ecclesiastical matters 
 'which are directly under no commandment of 
 God' (493). In case of a conflict between the 
 temporal and spiritual powers the temporal power 
 is to be obeyed unless its commands are op- 
 posed to the divine law, in which case the spiritual 
 power is to be obeyed, not as a substantive 
 authority, but as the interpreter of a divine com- 
 mand : — 
 
 ' If the supreme civil power should command that 
 the bishops of his kingdom should not ordain any 
 persons that had been soldiers or of mean trades to 
 be priests, or consecrate any knight to be a bishop ; 
 though the bishops should desire it very passionately, 
 they have no power to command or do what the civil 
 power has forbidden. But if the supreme should say 
 there should be no bishops at all and no ordination of 
 ministers of religion according to the laws of Jesus 
 Christ,' then the bishops or others bound to ordain 
 must do so (523), and give directions as to the cir- 
 cumstances. If, however, the spiritual power forbids 
 what the civil power only permits — e.g. marriage 
 in certain degrees of consanguinity or affinity — then
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 283 
 
 the spiritual power binds the conscience unless the 
 civil power has forbidden its exertion (527, 528). The 
 civil power has jurisdiction over internal and spiritual, 
 as well as merely ecclesiastical, causes. It may declare 
 a doctrine to be heretical, as well as decide upon a 
 right to present to a living : — 
 
 ' If by excommunications the bishop can disturb 
 the civil interest, the civil power can hold his hands 
 that he shall not strike with it ; or if he does, can 
 take out the temporal sting that it shall not venom 
 and fester. If by strange doctrines the ecclesiastics 
 can alien the hearts of subjects from their duty, the 
 civil power can forbid those doctrines to be preached. 
 If the canons of the church be seditious, or peevish, 
 or apt for trouble, the civil power can command them 
 to be rescinded or refuse to verify them and make 
 them into laws' (534). 
 
 In short, the maxim to be followed is, ecclesia est 
 in republicd, non respublica in ecclesia : — 
 
 ' The church is not a distinct state or order of 
 men, but the commonwealth turned Christian (536). 
 ... It is necessary that the supreme power should 
 determine what doctrines are to be taught the people 
 and what are to be forbidden ' (540). 
 
 The utmost that can be said of the clergy is that 
 they are advisers divinely constituted whom the 
 Sovereign is bound in conscience to hear (543 seq.) 
 
 This vigorous exposition of the rights of the State 
 over the Church, which carries out Hooker's theory 
 to its extreme limit, is followed by a chapter on the
 
 284 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 power of the Church in canons and censures. He 
 reduces it within very narrow limits, and, indeed, 
 makes the power of the Church merely declara- 
 tory :— 
 
 'The use of the keys does differ from proper 
 jurisdiction in this great thing — that if the keys be 
 rightly used, they do bind and loose respectively ; 
 but if they err, they do nothing upon the subject, 
 they neither bind nor loose. Now in proper juris- 
 diction it is otherwise ; for, right or wrong, if a 
 man be condemned he shall die for it, and if he be 
 hanged he is hanged ' (559). 
 
 As to excommunication, it 'operates only upon 
 the will and understanding which can have no 
 coercion ; so that in effect it compels those 
 who are willing to be compelled, that is, it does 
 not compel at all, and therefore is but improperly 
 an act of jurisdiction. ... It must work wholly by 
 opinion, and can affright them only that are taught to 
 be afraid of it' (561). 
 
 So, of Church legislation, the bishop may command 
 what God has already commanded, and nothing else. 
 All that his command effects is to increase the guilt 
 of the offender, but if, and in so far as, his command 
 goes beyond God's command, it is of no effect at all 
 (570). 
 
 The chapters relating to the power of priests, and 
 to the ' diminution ' of laws by equity or otherwise, 
 contain some interesting points, but they are less 
 interesting than those which we have attempted to
 
 xi JEREMY TAYLOR AS A MORALIST 285 
 
 describe. We have devoted much space to this work 
 because it is seldom read, and also because it illus- 
 trates better almost than any other book in the 
 language, a remarkable point in the history of specu- 
 lation — the transition from moral theology to moral 
 philosophy, from the text-books of the confessional to 
 the works of winters on morals, regarded as a matter 
 of ordinary speculation. The Ductor DvMbcmtiwm may 
 be compared to a point of view from which we can 
 look in two directions; backwards to the casuists 
 whose names only are known to modern readers — 
 Suarez, Sanchez, and scores of others, who are quoted 
 by Pascal and his antagonists — and forwards to Paley 
 and Bentham. It has something in common with 
 both, and throws light upon both.
 
 XII 
 
 HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP 
 WILLIAMS l 
 
 Of the books from which Ave derive our knowledge 
 of the early part of the seventeenth century/'perhaps 
 hardly any is so characteristic as Hacket's "Life of 
 Archbishop Williams. It is the life of one remarkable 
 man by another, of a somewhat similar turn of mind. 
 Both the author and the subject of his biography 
 were members of that most interesting class, the 
 deeply learned divines of the second period of the 
 history of the Church of England — the period which 
 intervenes between its full legal establishment and its 
 suspension at the civil war. No book can give us a 
 
 1 Scrinia Rescrata. A Memorial offered to the great De- 
 servings of John Williams, D.D., who some time held the 
 places of Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Lord 
 Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Archbishop of York. Containing 
 a Series of the most Remarkable Occurrences and Transactions 
 of his Life in relation both to Church and State. Written by- 
 John Hacket, late Lord Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. 
 1693.
 
 essay xii HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 287 
 
 better notion of the general character and position of 
 that class, and of some features of the time to which 
 it belonged. Before entering upon the subject of 
 Williams, it may be worth while to give, in a very 
 few words, a summary of the life of his biographer. 
 
 Hacket was born in 1592, and was educated at 
 Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 He was ordained in 1618; was made chaplain to 
 Williams, then Lord Keeper, in 1621, and received 
 from him two livings and a stall at Lincoln Cathedral. 
 In 1631 he was made Archdeacon of Bedford. In 
 1642 he was made a canon of St. Paul's, and after 
 considerable troubles during the civil wars was made 
 Bishop of Lichfield in 1661. He died there in 1670, 
 having rebuilt the cathedral at an expense of £20,000 
 out of his own pocket. He was also the builder of 
 Bishop's Hostel at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 His Life of Archbishop Williams, his old patron, 
 was written under Cromwell's government, though 
 it Avas not published till thirty-six years afterwards, 
 in the year 1693, when it must have appeared nearly 
 as much out of date, and nearly as old-world a pro- 
 duction, as it does to ourselves. It is a folio volume 
 in two parts, containing altogether nearly 500 pages, 
 each of which reflects, as in a glass, the character both 
 of the author and of the subject of the biography. 
 
 The book probably affords the latest specimen of the 
 ancient, quaint, and learned style which was popular 
 in the early part of the seventeenth century. It is 
 learned as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton
 
 288 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 was a contemporary of Hacket's^is^lgarned. The 
 author lias nothing -nrefy'pfoTound to say, but for 
 everything that he says he quotes some authority. 
 The book, indeed, contains almost as much quotation 
 as original matter, yet the quotations come in so 
 naturally that the reader feels that they are not put 
 in for display or out of affectation, but that they are 
 the amusement of a man who had abundant leisure, 
 enormous reading, a gigantic memory, and no con- 
 siderable powers of original thought. 
 
 In a curious passage which fixes the date of the com- 
 position of the book, he says : ' That which my prayers 
 and studies have long endeavoured, the dispatch of 
 this labour, is come to pass by the good hand of God 
 this 17th of February, 1657, which is some hearts- 
 ease.' ' My scope is not so much to insist upon the 
 memorable things of one man's life as to furnish them 
 with reading out of my small store, that are well- 
 wishers to learning in theological, political, and moral 
 knowledge.' After which, in about a page, he pro- 
 ceeds to quote Plautus, Gregory Nazianzen, Cicero, 
 Horace, Nazianzen again, Petrus Blesensis (a school- 
 man of the twelfth century), Valerius Maximus, 
 Sidonius, Xenophon, and Manilius, of whom the 
 Biographical Dictionary informs us that he was 'a 
 Latin poet who lay buried in the German libraries, 
 and never was heard of in the modern world till 
 Poggius published him from some old MSS. found 
 there about two centuries ago' — i.e. early in the 
 seventeenth century.
 
 xii HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 289 
 
 These authorities add surprisingly little to the 
 matter in hand. Indeed, Manilius is evoked from his 
 long obscurity for the sake of an observation which I 
 do not very distinctly understand. ' When I remem- 
 ber him I cannot but praise him — " Se quisque ut vivit 
 e£ effert;" Manil. lib. 2.' If Manilius had nothing 
 more important to say, Poggius might as well have left 
 him alone. Strange and occasionally tedious as this 
 inordinate display of learning is, the book is very 
 pleasant reading, and gives a lively picture of the 
 rapid growth of the last clerical Chancellor to the 
 very summit of his fortunes, of the strange vicissi- 
 tudes of his career, of the Court of James I., of the 
 oppressions which preceded the civil war, and of the 
 view taken of the war by the High Church divines. 
 
 John Williams was born on the 25th of March 
 1582, at Aber Conway, and was educated at Euthin 
 School, and St. John's College, Cambridge. He 
 remained at the University from 1598 till about 
 1609, when he was ordained priest. His industry 
 during this period was almost miraculous. Indeed, 
 the account which Hacket gives of it is rendered 
 credible only by the extraordinary exhibition of 
 learning which he makes himself, and which proves 
 that, at some time or other, he too must have gone 
 through a similar course. 'From his youth. to his 
 old age he asked but three hours^sleep in the twenty- 
 four to keep him in good health. This we all knew 
 that lived in his family. It would not quickly be 
 believed, but that a cloud of witnesses will avouch it, 
 VOL. I u
 
 290 
 
 IIOEAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 I 
 
 that it was ordinary with him to begin his studies at 
 six of the clock, and continue them till three in the 
 morning, and he ready again by seven to walk in the 
 circle of his indefatigable labours.' 
 
 He learnt Greek and Hebrew ; and, having ' fetched 
 a great compass about theology in less than two years, 
 he began to climb up higher upon the mountain of God.' 
 He read the fathers and the schoolmen, and, in particu- 
 lar, studied ecclesiastical history with intense ardour. 
 ' They are not the Divines of Magdeburg nor Baronius 
 Annals (though twice read over by him) which fur- 
 nished him with the tithe of his skill.' He had read 
 all the originals. He knew all the Greek and Latin 
 Canons. ' He carried in his mind an universal idea 
 of all synods and convocations that were ever held 
 in our land, of all our cathedrals, their foundations, 
 conditions of alteration, statutes, revenues, etc. As 
 he had spared for no travel to purchase this skill, so, 
 to fill his vessel brim -full, he received all that Sir 
 Harry Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton, and Mr. Holden, 
 his dear friends, could pour into him.' 
 
 He was equally well acquainted with foreign 
 history. 'There was not a corner of our history, 
 sacred or secular, in any kingdom or state in Europe, 
 which he had not pried into, and wherein he could not 
 suddenly enlarge himself, whether they were their 
 wars or leagues of amity ; whether their laws, inherit- 
 ances of their crowns and dignities, their lineages, 
 marriages, or what not.' 
 
 He was a great man for university disputations
 
 xii IIACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 291 
 
 — the acts and opponencies which were then a real 
 method of instruction, and of which the shadow 
 lasted till our own time. Hacket gives some curious 
 accounts of these performances, which put the old 
 University strangely before our eyes. A certain 
 Duke of Wittenberg passing through Cambridge was 
 entertained with an act. Williams, then procter, was 
 moderator, and by way of making himself all things to 
 all men, ' to Dutchmen he became a Dutch philosopher, 
 for all his conceptions he confirmed by quotations out 
 of Julius Pacius, Goclenius, Keckerman, and others 
 Avho had been professors within the districts of the 
 German principalities.' This was 'unexpressibly accep- 
 table ' to the Duke of Wittenberg and his retinue. 
 
 Another act took place before the Elector Palatine, 
 in which Williams and another great light of the day 
 were set to argue the question whether clergymen 
 might be in the service of distinguished persons with 
 a view to Church preferment. The opponent ' some- 
 what frowningly ' argued, ' Piscatores sumus hominum, 
 non venatores munerum. ' The respondent replied with 
 a ' retorsion that had strength and sweetness like iron 
 that is gilded. The end of theology is to gain souls. 
 The end of the theologue subordinate to the first and 
 architectonical end is for an honest maintenance and 
 sustentation.' This, it is added, 'agrees with the mind 
 of Seneca de Benef. lib. iii.,' and no doubt with the 
 minds of many others. 
 
 Williams's accomplishments recommended him to 
 the Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, whose chaplain he
 
 292 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 was from 1610 to 1617, and through whose interest he 
 obtained a fair share of ecclesiastical preferment and 
 an introduction to King James I, who, shortly after 
 the Chancellor's death, made him Dean of Salisbury. 
 
 He was a great favourite of King James's. ' He 
 never met with any before, much less with any 
 after, that loved him like King James at the full rate 
 of his worth. His extraordinary learning enabled him 
 to act as a sort of living commonplace book to the 
 King, who delighted both in his reading and in his 
 Toryism. He never would be pleased with anything 
 new. ' His constant rule was, that old imperfections 
 were safer than new experiments.' He could talk 
 scholastic divinity every day, and all day long. 
 
 The King, however, was not everything. As Hacket 
 
 observes, 'There was a pre-eminent pipe, through 
 
 which all graces flowing from him were derived.' 
 
 He was always 'clasping some one Gratioso in the 
 
 embraces of his great love, who was unto him as 
 
 a parelius.' The pre-eminent pipe in Williams's time 
 
 was the Duke of Buckingham, on whom Williams 
 
 contrived to confer a heavy obligation by converting 
 
 Lady Catherine Manners from Popery, and smoothing 
 
 various difficulties in the way of that lady's marriage 
 
 with the Duke. For this service he was immediately 
 
 rewarded by being translated from the Deanery of 
 
 Salisbury to that of Westminster, and to the post of 
 
 confidential adviser to the Duke. He seems to have 
 
 advised him well, warning him of the danger of 
 
 monopolies and other unconstitutional ways of raising
 
 xii HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 293 
 
 money. ' Oh hearken not,' he says, ' to Eehoboam's 
 earwigs.' ' An Englishman's tribute comes not from 
 the King's exaction, but by the people's free oblation 
 out of the mouth of their representatives.' 
 
 James and Buckingham gave way, and not only 
 the monopolists but Lord Bacon fell before the anger 
 of Parliament. After a good deal of doubt, Williams 
 was made Lord Keeper, and at the same time was 
 promoted to the Bishopric of Lincoln. By marvellous 
 labour, and especially by the help of excellent advice, 
 he managed not only to discharge the duties of his 
 office creditably, but also to get through an immense 
 multiplicity of business of other kinds. 
 
 He used to sit in the Court of Chancery from 6.30 
 to 8.30 A.M. He then went into the House of Lords 
 till 12 or 1. He then dined and returned to the Court 
 of Chancery, where he sat till 8 p.m. After this he 
 went home, read papers, and prepared for the next day's 
 business till late at night. He held his office till the 
 beginning of the reign of King Charles ; and Hacket 
 gives many curious instances of his humour, his hot 
 temper, and his wonderful quickness and industry. 
 His occasional explosions were highly curious. 
 
 One of the oddest was as follows : He committed one 
 Beeston for a contempt, who, ' loathing this captivity,' 
 'cries for mercy to the King, roars out that the 
 Parliament might hear him, follows the Lord Buck- 
 ingham with his clamours, who advised the Keeper 
 to consider of it.' Williams gave the following char- 
 acteristic reply : ' Decrees once made must be put
 
 294 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 in execution, else I will confess this Court to be 
 the greatest imposture in the kingdom. The damned 
 in hell do never cease repining at the justice of God ; 
 nor the prisoners in the Fleet at the decrees of Chan- 
 cery. In the which hell of prisoners this one for 
 antiquity and obstinacy may pass for a Lucifer I 
 neither know him nor his cause, but as long as he 
 stands in contempt he is not like to have any more 
 liberty.' There is something eminently racy in this 
 comparison, and it contrasts favourably with the 
 strange harangues which Williams was accustomed 
 to make on state occasions, which read almost like a 
 caricature of pedantry. 
 
 It should also be observed that Williams's 
 bark was worse than his bite. Hacket claims 
 for him, apparently with justice, the praise of mild- 
 ness in the Star Chamber. ' Many . . . said he 
 was a friend to publicans and sinners, to all delin- 
 quents, and rather their patron than their judge.' 
 . . . ' He never condemned an offender to be hanged, 
 to be scourged, to have his ears cut.' One of the 
 Lords 'complained against him to the King, that 
 delinquents by his abatements were so slightly pun- 
 ished in their purse that the fees which came to His 
 Majesty's enrichment would not give the Lords a din- 
 ner once a week, as the custom had been, nay hardly 
 once a term ' — a curious glimpse into the old Court. 
 
 The great event of Williams's term of office as 
 Chancellor was the negotiation about the Spanish 
 marriage and about the extrication of Prince Charles
 
 xii HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 295 
 
 and Buckingham from the difficulty into which their 
 famous journey had thrown them. It is a terribly 
 long and intricate history, and in Hacket's hands it 
 becomes doubly wearisome. The result to Williams was 
 that he gave mortal offence to Buckingham, who took 
 occasion to revenge himself on the first opportunity. 
 
 Incidentally, the story brings out one or two 
 curious points. The Spanish Court had made a great 
 point of obtaining a repeal of the penal laws as a 
 condition of the marriage, and a rumour got abroad 
 that James meant to grant their wish. When the 
 match was broken off, James called a Parliament, in 
 opening which he treated this imputation as scandal- 
 ous and wicked. ' It hath been talked of my remiss- 
 ness in maintenance of religion and suspicion of a 
 toleration. But as God shall judge me I never 
 thought or meant it, nor ever in word exprest any- 
 thing that favoured of it.' 
 
 The nation, as is well known, was vehemently 
 anxious, on this and other grounds, for a war with 
 Spain. James steadily refused, and his reasons for 
 refusing are given with delightful simplicity by his 
 Minister. He would have to ask for supplies, and this 
 would make him dependent on his Parliament, who 
 ''twas likely would ask the change of the Church, 
 of the laws, of the Court Royal, the displacing of 
 his officers, the cashiering of his servants.' This 
 remark shows a vivid consciousness on the King's 
 part of the degree to which his whole system of 
 government was unpopular, and the correctness
 
 296 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 with which he appreciated the strength of the 
 Parliament. 
 
 Though he offended Buckingham and Charles by 
 his management of the Spanish affairs, Williams 
 retained his power with James till his death. He 
 obviously had a real affection for the kind old man 
 whom Hacket represents in a pleasanter and more 
 respectable light than that in which he is generally 
 viewed. He had the great merit of clearly under- 
 standing the limits tacitly imposed on him by the 
 Constitution, and though he certainly talked as big 
 as a man well could, he acted soberly and indulgently, 
 though beset by contending bigots. 
 
 Hacket's book is full of illustrations of the fierceness 
 of feeling between the Protestants and Catholics, of 
 the monstrous claims of the one and the eagerness to 
 persecute of the others. The Eoman Catholics actually 
 went so far at one time as to 'put a paper into my Lord 
 of Buckingham's hands, to assist them for the erection 
 of titulary Popish prelates in this Kingdom . ' The Pro- 
 testants, on the other hand, appear to have looked on 
 toleration as the great abomination of all abominations. 
 
 At the end of James's reign Williams had a 
 long conference with the French ambassador about 
 the policy of the English towards the Eoman Catholics. 
 He goes into the matter at great length, arguing in a 
 manner which makes it clear that the penal laws were 
 due entirely to political reasons and to the strengtl 
 of the popular feeling. It seems very improbable 
 that genuine fanaticism exercised much influence on 
 
 i
 
 xn hacket's LIFE OF AECHBISHOP WILLIAMS 297 
 
 the Government in the matter. He says, ' The Pro- 
 testants receive a benefit of some toleration in your 
 realm to stop the mischief of civil wars, and to settle 
 a firm peace among yourselves. . . . But such a 
 toleration in this Kingdom would not only destroy 
 peace, but with great probability dissolve it.' 
 
 Hacket gives a definite notion of the nature of 
 that learning for which James is still famous. He 
 says, ' Take him for a scholar, and he had gathered 
 knowledge to astonishment ; and was so expert to use 
 it, that had he been born in a private fortune he 
 might have deserved to be a bishop of the highest 
 promotion.' He gives proofs of this, one of which is 
 very curious. He used to pass most of his time at 
 Royston and Newmarket in study. ' I have stood by 
 his table often when I was about the age of twenty- 
 two years, and from thenceforward, and have heard 
 learned pieces read before him at his dinners, which 
 I thought strange ; but a chaplain of James Montague, 
 Bishop of Winton, told me that the bishop had read 
 over unto him the four tomes of Cardinal Bellarmine's 
 controversies at those respites when His Majesty took 
 fresh air, and weighed the objections and answers to 
 that subtle author ; and sent often to the libraries at 
 Cambridge for books to examine the quotations.' 
 
 James died on the 2 2d March 1624, and in the 
 following October, after the dissolution of the first 
 Parliament of Charles, Williams was dismissed from 
 his place as Chancellor. He "remained for many years 
 entirely out of Court favour, and passed his time
 
 298 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 almost exclusively in the discharge of his duties as 
 Bishop of Lincoln. 
 
 Hacket's account of his way of life in that capacity 
 is very interesting. He must have been a very 
 splendid prelate. He had two palaces, one at Bugden 
 in Huntingdonshire, and the other at Lincoln ; and he 
 laid out vast sums in improving and adorning them. 
 At Bugden ' he turned a ruinous thing into a stately 
 mansion. The out -houses . . . were the greatest 
 eye-sore. These he plucked down to the ground and 
 re-edified with convenient beauty. These were stables, 
 barns, granaries, houses for doves, brewing and dairies, 
 and the outward courts which were next to them he 
 cast into fair allies and grass plats. Within doors 
 the cloisters were the trimmest part of his repara- 
 tions ; the windows of the square beautified with 
 stories of coloured glass, the pavement laid smooth 
 and new, and the walls on every side hung with 
 pieces of exquisite workmen in limning, collected and 
 provided for long before. He planted woods. He 
 fenced the park and stored it with deer. He provided 
 for good husbandry and bought in the leases. ... He 
 loved stirring and walking, which he used two hours or 
 more every day in the open air if the weather served.' 
 ... 'It would amount to an error that he should 
 bury so much money in gardens, arbours, orchards, 
 pools for waterfowl, and for fish of all variety, with a 
 walk raised three foot from the ground of about a 
 mile in compass, shaded and covered on each side 
 with trees and pales.' ... All the nurseries about
 
 xii HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 299 
 
 London for fair flowers and choice fruits were ransacked 
 to furnish him. Alcinous, if he had lived at Bugden, 
 could not have lived better.' His palace at Lincoln 
 was ' built for none but the ancient Bishops of the 
 See that had four-and-thirty rich manors belonging 
 to them' . . . 'besides a vast jurisdiction of great 
 profit derived into other channels. This palace, fit 
 for the pomp of the great potentates, was formidable 
 to their poor successors that could not keep it warm 
 with the rent that remained.' Still though ' work- 
 men did ask so much, yet in three years he brought it 
 on and up to as much strength and comeliness as 
 when it was first inhabited.' 
 
 His way of life was as splendid as his houses. He 
 spent from £1000 to £1200 a year in charity. Many 
 of the sons of the nobility were educated in his house ; 
 ' the sons of Marquis Hartford, of the Earls of Pem- 
 broke, Salisbury and Leicester, with many others of 
 the gentry of the same tender age to bear them 
 company.' He looked diligently after their educa- 
 tion, and upon some points instructed them himself. 
 
 He was blamed for two things each of which in these 
 days may be regarded as merits. First, he was very 
 tolerant about the theological disputes of his day, 
 ' indulging his favours and preferment ' impartially to 
 Calvinists and Arminians. 'Many, that think the 
 Bishop not the worse patron for this neutrality, blame 
 him that he gave hospitality, showed equanimity, 
 afforded kindness and sufferance to Puritans.' His 
 other fault was that he ' admitted, in his public hall,
 
 300 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 a comedy once or twice to be presented before him ex- 
 hibited by his own servants for an evening recreation.' 
 Though the account of Williams's behaviour in his 
 see is rather long and sufficiently pedantic (it contains 
 amongst other things a digression to prove that the 
 Sibylline verses were not genuine), it gives a striking 
 picture of the courtly, splendid, liberal-minded, and 
 charitable bishop, which sets his character and that of 
 the party in the Church and State which he repre- 
 sented in a very amiable light. 
 
 Williams was forbidden to attend the second 
 Parliament of Charles (1626), and an attempt was 
 made to prevent him from attending the Parliament 
 of 1628, which passed the Petition of Eight. He 
 attended, nevertheless, and manfully supported the 
 petition. He ' went on to show that the contents 
 of the petition were suitable to the ancient laws of 
 the realm ever claimed and pleaded, expedient for the 
 subject, and no less honourable for the King, which 
 made him a king of men and not of beasts, of brave- 
 spirited freemen and not of broken-hearted peasants.' 
 On this occasion he was partially reconciled to 
 the King; but after Buckingham's assassination 
 Laud became vehemently jealous of him, and did 
 his very utmost, with only too much success, to ruin 
 him. He laboured at this task throughout the 
 whole of the interval between the Parliament of 1629 
 and the Long Parliament. Hacket's account of Laud's 
 malignity, extracted from Laud's own journals, is 
 extremely humorous. ' The undoing of his brother
 
 xii HACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 301 
 
 and colleague in dignity did so run in his mind that 
 it never was out of his dreams, to be seen in the 
 notes drawn with his own hands in Mr. Prynne's 
 breviate. He dreamt the Lord Keeper was dead, 
 23d Oct. 1623 — that is, being interpreted, in the 
 Duke's affections. 14th June 1626, he dreamt the 
 Bishop of Lincoln came he knew not with whom 
 with iron chains, but returning freed from them, he 
 leapt upon a horse and departed, neither could he 
 overtake him. 17th Mar. 1627, Mr. George Wright 
 whispered in his ear in his sleep that he was the 
 cause that Lincoln was not admitted again into 
 favour in the Court. 13th July 1633, he dreamt at 
 Anderwick that this Bishop came and offered to sit 
 above him at the Council Table (' Quae Deus in melius 
 crudelia somnia vertat ') ; that the Earl of Holland 
 came and placed him there.' 
 
 This summary of the dreams is grotesque enough, 
 but Hacket's comment is still odder. He quotes upon 
 the subject, Jeremiah xxix. 8, Eccl. v. 3, Salmasius 
 Clymact, p. 789, Isaiah xxix. 7, Plutarch's Life of Dion, 
 Acts ii. 17, Eph. iv. 22, Machiavelli's Prince, c. 26, 
 Quintus Curtius, Book vii., and Cicero's Epistles, iii. 37. 
 
 Laud, however, did something more than dream. 
 He instituted three prosecutions against Williams in 
 the Star Chamber. The first was in 1628, and was so 
 absurd that Noy, ' a man of cynical behaviour, but of 
 honest heart to his friends and clients,' refused to go on 
 with it after it had dragged on for two years. It was 
 taken up by a miserable creature called Kilvert, a petti- 
 
 [
 
 302 IIOEAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 fogging attorney, whose insolence towards the judges, 
 (he threatened to procure the Chief Justice of the 
 Common Pleas ' to be turned out of his place for his 
 forwardness') and iniquity towards the accused, are 
 related at length by Hacket, but seem scarcely 
 credible in these days. 
 
 The suit went on till 1636, the Bishop having 
 refused to compromise it by paying £8000 down to the 
 King in 1635. The charge was, that in the former 
 suit the Bishop had tampered with witnesses. He was 
 convicted in July 1636, and sentenced to pay a fine of 
 £10,000, to be imprisoned during pleasure in the 
 Tower, and to be suspended during pleasure from his 
 office as Bishop. Laud pressed ' for the degradation 
 of his brother Bishop, and his deportation God knows 
 where.' The Lord Keeper Finch said, ' That if it had 
 liked others he would have laid some ignominy on 
 the Bishop's person,' . . . ' it was conceived he meant 
 the cutting off his ears.' The Bishop was hereupon 
 committed to the Tower, where he was confined for 
 four years, whilst the wretched Kilvert plundered his 
 property at his own discretion, under pretence of 
 raising the fine. ' He killed up the deer of the Park ; 
 settles in Bugden house for three summers with a 
 seraglio of qucedam, sells an organ that cost £120 
 for £10, pictures that cost £400 at £5, books he 
 filched what he would,' etc. etc. 
 
 Even this, however, was not enough to satisfy 
 Laud's inveterate malice. He got up a third prosecu- 
 tion for what he called a libel, the libel being supposed
 
 XII RACKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 303 
 
 to be contained in some letters which the Bishop prob- 
 ably never received, written to him by Mr. Osbaldeston, 
 Master of Westminster School. On this absurd charge 
 he was fined .£8000 more, and Charles I. offered to par- 
 don him if he would resign his preferment, and take 
 an Irish bishopric instead. A more disgraceful attempt 
 at extortion and more brutal tyranny have seldom 
 been displayed. . Laud owed his original preferment 
 to Williams, and Charles was under great obligations 
 to him. 
 
 The Long Parliament restored the Bishop to liberty, 
 the proceedings - against him were soon afterwards 
 cancelled, and when it became clear that he would be 
 wanted, he was received into favour. His conduct in 
 the Long Parliament was very characteristic. He 
 was anxious to save Strafford. 'He would have 
 gone through jfire and water ' to do so ; still, ' this 
 being now a thing beyond wit and power,' he joined 
 with three other prelates, Usher, Morton, and Potter, 
 ' to propound how the tenderness of the King's con- 
 science might wade through this insuperable difficulty.' 
 Nothing in the whole of that striking history is more 
 characteristic than the necessity which Charles's con- 
 science felt for a sop, the readiness which the Bishops 
 showed to find one, and the entire efficacy for its pur- 
 pose of the device which they invented. 
 
 Not very long after Strafford's execution, Williams 
 became Archbishop of York, and within a year 
 after his liberation from the Tower he was sent 
 there again by the Parliament (in December 1641) 
 
 I
 
 304 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 for the famous protest which he, with eleven 
 other bishops, drew up against all legislation which 
 should take place in their enforced absence. He was 
 again released in about a year, and joined the King 
 at York. He afterwards held Conway Castle for the 
 King, and though he joined with a Parliamentary 
 officer to retake it, after a royal officer had dispos- 
 sessed him, he was devotedly loyal throughout the 
 civil war. Charles's execution broke his heart. He 
 spent the last few years of his life in strict retire- 
 ment in his native county, and died on his sixty- 
 eighth birthday, 25th March 1650. 
 
 The latter part of Hacket's book is taken up with 
 denunciations of the Parliament, and lamentations 
 over Charles, which, to a reader fresh from his details 
 of the cruelties of the Star Chamber, produce a 
 singular effect. Utterly forgetting the twelve years 
 between 1629 and 1641, he reproaches the Parlia- 
 ment bitterly for not trusting the King, and, as 
 Clarendon did, claims for him perfect honesty. ' They 
 would trust him with nothing. An affront of deep 
 indignity ! Dare not they trust him that never broke 
 with them 1 And I have heard his nearest servants 
 say that no man could ever challenge him of the 
 least lie.' He admits that Charles was not popular 
 — 'The common people's love to him was cold and 
 lazy.' He makes nothing of Ship-money and the Star 
 Chamber. ' "Wherefore so much outcry for Peccadil- 
 ldespand verily occasioned by the undutifulness of 
 former Parliaments and subsequent necessities ? '
 
 rju^ 
 
 /^tfOM^t// 
 
 xri BUCKET'S LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 305 
 
 As for the prominent persons in the popular party, 
 Hacket cannot express his feelings about them. ' Wha t 
 a venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that 
 black-mouthed Zoilus that blows his viper's breath 
 upon ' the Eikon Basilike — c a petty schoolboy scrib- 
 bler'; 'Get thee behind me, Milton.' In fairness to 
 Hacket it should be remembered that at this time 
 Milton was known principally as a political writer. 
 'Crorirwell, that imp of Satan, compounded of all 
 vice and violence, and Titan -like courage, devoid 
 of all pity and conscience.' . . . 'The Scotch at 
 Newcastle . . . sold their master as Judas did his 
 to the Jews, to the race of New England, the Inde- 
 pendent Salvages : oh barbarous ! perfidious ! mam- 
 monish ! sacrilegious ! to make bargain and sale of 
 him that sate in God's stead over them : — 
 
 Nomen erit pardus, tigris, leo, quicquid adhuc est 
 Quod fremat in terris violentius. — Juv. Sat. 8. 
 
 ' I roar it out to all people and languages, are you 
 not astonished at it?' and the good Bishop has to 
 ease his mind by quoting Habakkuk i. 5, Valerius, 
 Lib. vi., Floras, iv. 8, Manilius, ii. (He must ob- 
 viously have just bought Manilius.) And at last, 
 after raging and shrieking through many other 
 authors, he concludes with this remarkable quotation 
 about Cromwell : ' If I had ever met with a more 
 odious passage than that in St. Basil, "ep. 246, I 
 would afford it him Kard^pcofjba rod Sta/3o\ov — a 
 morsel fit for the devil's stomach.' 
 
 We have done our best to give a notion of the 
 vol. i x
 
 306 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 contents of this curious book. It is of necessity a 
 very imperfect notion, as the book contains much 
 which our space will not permit us to notice ; but 
 we have said enough to give some sort of indica- 
 tion of its multifarious contents. Probably no book 
 gives such a full-length portrait of a first-rate divine 
 of the seventeenth century, learned in all the learning 
 of his age and profession, and endowed with abilities, 
 and above all with industry, which must have put 
 him in the front rank in any age and any profession. 
 
 The general character of the portrait is surely an 
 attractive one. There was no superstition (unless 
 his passionate loyalty deserved that name) about 
 Williams, and no fanaticism. His fault lay in his 
 slyness, but he appears on the whole to have been 
 a bold, magnanimous, high-bred man, with all the 
 instincts of a scholar, a gentleman, and a statesman, 
 and with none of the characteristic vices of a church- 
 man. He was full of the contracted liberalism which 
 marks the infancy of the reformed Church of England. 
 His view of the Church appears to have been that it 
 was a vast and ancient body, with a complex system 
 of laAvs and maxims to be learnt by intense study of 
 history and anticpiity. 
 
 This explains the price which the divines of that day 
 set upon learning, and the enormous mass of quasi- 
 scientific apparatus with which they thought it neces- 
 sary to be equipped. They were practically their own 
 Popes, and their characters show much of the mag- 
 nanimity of those who are engaged in the task of
 
 xii HACKET'S LIFE OF AKCHBISHOP WILLIAMS 307 
 
 constructing a great scheme of ecclesiastical polity out 
 of materials of almost infinite extent and variety. 
 Their view of their opponents shows this feeling. To 
 them the Papists are audacious impostors, supporting 
 a system of priestcraft by misrepresenting history and 
 Scripture. The Puritans are narrow-minded bigots, 
 idolising the letter of Scripture, and afflicted with con- 
 sciences in a state of chronic hysterical weakness. It 
 has always appeared to us that there was much more 
 contempt than fanaticism in their persecution ; though, 
 as against the Roman Catholics, the popular feeling 
 forced them to be fanatical as well as contemptuous. 
 Their loyalty was their romance. Williams and 
 Hacket are striking instances of this. They could 
 see no serious faults in Charles, they could sanction 
 no real precautions against him, they could not even 
 admit to their own minds the undoubted fact that 
 he was thoroughly fraudulent and insincere. 
 
 On the whole, the position which they filled was, 
 and still is, eminently characteristic of the Church of 
 England. Its weakness and its strength always have 
 lain, and always will lie, in the fact that it is a 
 Church specially adapted to the rich, the powerful, 
 the learned, and those who combine a strong tinge of 
 scepticism with a genuine dash of devotional feeling. 
 
 Hacket's book is very interesting to students of 
 language. It contains many words which have died 
 out in the struggle for existence; and some which 
 strike the eye as modern in the seventeenth century. 
 Thus w T e read, ' Men that are sound in their morals
 
 308 HORAE SABBATICAE /* esbA' XII 
 
 are best reclaimed when they are ( mignarised and 
 stroked gently.' 'The chief miiie-wal "Vsrhich he be- 
 stowed was ... a library, the Best in Cambridge.' 
 ' Their platform ' (in the American sense — the word is 
 common also" in Hooker) 'comes so near to the old 
 Protestant Church of England,' etc. 'He put this 
 dodgery strongly upon those at London.' 'He gave 
 tne~Spaniard the dodge.'' ' The dodges of the Prince of 
 Parma.' ' The exequies of the dead'- — the correct form 
 of the absurd word ' obsequies.' ' As for the Duke, 
 his domestic creatures ^for servants simply, with no 
 unfavourable sense. Eliot calls himself Buckingham's 
 ' creature.' ' Novelists ' for innovators. ' It was heard 
 of long ago in the middle ages,' occurs in a sermon of 
 Williams about the yearT630. The most curious of 
 all is, ' When they found he was not selfish (it is a 
 word of their own' — i.e. the Puritans' — 'new mint').
 
 XIII 
 
 CLARENDON'S 
 'HISTORY OF THE REBELLION' 1 
 
 Though Clarendon's History of the Rebellion is not 
 only a well-established classic, but is also one of the 
 leading authorities upon the most interesting and 
 best-known period of our history, it is probable that 
 the number of well-educated men who can honestly 
 say that they have read it through is not very large. 
 It is the fate of standard books to pass by slow de- 
 grees out of circulation. They furnish materials for 
 writers whose works in their turn undergo the same 
 fate; and thus, after a time, they influence readers 
 through four or five different removes. 
 
 Hume had hardly any other authority for the 
 reign of Charles than Clarendon. Hallam's Con- 
 stitutional History put Hume's theories of the Stuart 
 times out of sight. Lord Macaulay's review of 
 Hallam is better knoAvn to many persons in the 
 
 1 The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. 
 By Edward, Earl of Clarendon.
 
 310 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 present day than Hallam himself; and it is to 
 be hoped that Mr. Forster's curious and learned in- 
 vestigations into the reign of Charles I. have given 
 to a still newer generation of readers more accurate 
 notions on the subject than they could well have 
 derived from any earlier source. 
 
 This is not to be regretted. If knowledge is to be 
 kept within any sort of compass, original authorities 
 must be gradually sifted, and laid on one side after 
 their main results have been extracted. Still it is in- 
 teresting from time to time to recur to them, even for 
 other purposes than those of special study of the matters 
 to which they refer. We have, no doubt, the means of 
 understanding the history of the reign of Charles I. far 
 better than Clarendon understood it ; but the history 
 of great events by a great man rather gains than loses 
 in interest by the acquisition of a point of view, and of 
 a set of thoughts, different from and wider than those 
 under which he wrote. 
 
 The first thing that strikes a modern reader of 
 Clarendon is the utter absence, from every part of his 
 book, of anything approaching to what, in the present 
 day, would be considered a philosophical or general 
 view of his subject. The civil war appears to him, 
 in the full sense of the words, an impious, wicked, 
 unnatural rebellion. From first to last he views it 
 with as much astonishment as horror. He cannot, 
 or will not, understand how or why it could have 
 happened. All his careful study of individual char- 
 acter, all his keen insight into the outrageous folly,
 
 xiii clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 311 
 
 wickedness, and selfishness of a great number of the 
 King's adherents, do not appear to enable him to 
 sympathise in the very least degree with the 
 Parliamentary leaders. Charles himself could hardly 
 have taken a more simple and decisive view of the 
 perfect justice of his own cause, and the perfect 
 wickedness of that of his opponents, than was taken 
 for him by his zealous Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 This is a singular contrast to the style of the 
 present day. Any book with the faintest pretensions 
 to rise above the rank of a collection of dates would 
 contain some view as to the general causes of the civil 
 wars — some account of the principles represented by 
 the two contending parties, and of the degree in which 
 those principles rose out of, or were suggested by, the 
 ancient institutions of the country. Indeed, we should 
 be apt to regard it as a merit if the author observed 
 any moderation in such reflections. 
 
 Their total absence, and the absence of any notion of 
 the very possibility of making them, produces as dis- 
 agreeable an effect in Clarendon as an affected profusion 
 of them often produces in our own times. It has for, 
 one thing, the disadvantage of making the story unin- 
 telligible. Why, the reader asks again and again, did 
 a quiet, orderly, loyal people rush into civil war 1 The 
 only explanation suggested by Clarendon is that they 
 waxed fat and kicked, that, being puffed up by peace 
 and prosperity, they took to cutting each other's throats 
 — a simply childish notion. The explanation that 
 their liberties both were, and were felt to be, in real
 
 312 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 danger, and that the circumstances of the time rendered 
 this almost unavoidable, never strikes Clarendon even 
 when he is on the brink of it. 
 
 For instance, after describing, probably with truth, 
 the years between 1630 and 1640 as times of great 
 plenty and riches, he actually adds: — 'All these 
 blessings could but enable not compel us to be 
 happy. . . . The country full of pride, mutiny, 
 and discontent ; every man more troubled and per- 
 plexed at that they called the violation of one law 
 [such a violation, for instance, as the forced loans, 
 ship-money, or arbitrary imprisonment for things 
 said in Parliament] than delighted or pleased with 
 the observation of all the rest of the charter ; never 
 imputing the increase of their receipts, revenue, and 
 plenty to the wisdom, virtue, and merit of the Crown, 
 but objecting every small imposition to the exorbitancy 
 and tyranny of the Government.' 
 
 The fact that, for one reason or another, the Eoyal 
 power on the one hand, and the popular appreciation 
 of liberty on the other, had been increasing for ages, 
 and that their collision was altogether inevitable 
 sooner or later, never seems to have occurred to 
 Clarendon, though the whole nation felt it, no doubt, 
 more or less obscurely. 
 
 This want of speculative power, however, applies 
 only to general views of history and morals. There 
 is in Clarendon's history a good deal of philosophy 
 of a certain kind ; that is to say, the book contains 
 isolated reflections upon particular circumstances
 
 xni clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 313 
 
 which show that it was not from want of ability that 
 its author did not take general views of what we 
 should now call the philosophy of history, but because 
 that philosophy or science was not then invented. 
 
 Many of our readers will, no doubt, remember with 
 very mixed feelings the famous but dreadfully difficult 
 chapters (iii. 82, 83, 84,) which contain the reflections 
 of Thucydides on the massacre at Corcyra. In the 
 7ttT"book of Clarendon's History there is a passage, 
 suggested by the quarrels in the Privy Council at 
 Oxford, which in some ways so much resembles them 
 that it is by no means unlikely that it is a conscious 
 imitation. It is an essay of four or five pages on the 
 nature of Councils, and on the sort of character and 
 conduct which fits men to succeed in them. It is 
 most characteristic of the man and of his mind. It 
 is throughout a refutation of depreciatory common- 
 places, and a vindication of truths which, though 
 they may look commonplace, are constantly forgotten 
 and disregarded. Debates in council, he says, are 
 by no means merely formal, nor are they, as rash 
 observers are apt to consider, useless. Men are often 
 ' in this particular argument unskilful, in that affected, 
 who may seem to have levity or formality or vanity 
 in ordinary conversation, and yet in formal counsels, 
 deliberations, and transactions are men of great 
 insight and wisdom.' The objections to them are 
 founded on ignorance of their practical working, and 
 of the way in which affairs are of necessity conducted ; 
 and the way to succeed in them is to attain a certain 
 
 )
 
 314 IIORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 even temper of mind, hard to be learnt, but absolutely 
 essential : — 
 
 ' There is not a more troublesome passion, or that 
 often draws more inconveniences with it, than that 
 which proceeds from the indignation of being unjustly 
 calumniated and from the pride of an upright con- 
 science ; when men cannot endure to be spoken ill 
 of if they have not deserved it.' 
 
 This summary of the temper of mind necessary for 
 public life, and the way of conducting public affairs, 
 is very like the speculation of Thucydides (referred 
 to above) on the temper of mind produced by, and 
 successful in, revolutions. The tone and reach of the 
 two speculations is similar, though their comparative 
 importance differs. 
 
 The descriptions of character on which the fame of 
 Clarendon as a writer principally depends are much 
 upon the same intellectual level as this speculation. 
 Each of them shows how closely and with what search- 
 ing curiosity he examined and revolved in his mind 
 any fact which interested him. Every one, his dearest 
 friend, his bitterest enemy, the objects of his deepest 
 contempt and of his highest admiration, are all passed 
 through the same crucible. He looks into them with 
 all the curiosity of a modern novelist, and gives in 
 a few phrases a summary which in the present day 
 would, by the invention of characteristic illustrative 
 instances, be made to fill the constitutional three 
 volumes of a novel. 
 
 The best, to our taste at least, are the characters
 
 xin clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 315 
 
 of the men with whom he lived, and who were upon 
 the same sort of level with himself. There is, for 
 instance, an admirable character of Lord Cottington, 
 who was his fellow-ambassador from Charles II. to the 
 Court of Spain in 1650. He was a very old man, 
 who passed the greater part of his life in diplomacy, 
 and changed his religion three or four times. This is 
 Clarendon's summary of his gifts : — 
 
 ' He was of excellent humour and very easy to live 
 with, and under a grave countenance covered the 
 most of mirth, and caused more than any man of the 
 most pleasant disposition. He never used anybody 
 ill, but used many very well for whom he had no 
 regard ; his greatest fault was that he could dissemble 
 and make men believe that he loved them well when 
 he cared not for them. He had not very tender 
 affections, nor bowels apt to yearn at all objects 
 which deserved compassion ; he was heartily weary 
 of the world, and no man more willing to die ; which 
 is an argument that he had peace of conscience. He 
 left behind him a greater esteem of his parts than 
 love to his person.' 
 
 It would be hardly possible in so few words to give 
 a livelier picture of an upright, amiable, rather cold- 
 hearted man of the world with a great sense of 
 humour. In the original, which is too long to extract, 
 these generalities are borne out by a well-selected 
 and well-told set of anecdotes and particulars which 
 make the man live again before those who read them. 
 
 Clarendon was not so happy in describing his anta-
 
 316 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 gonists. He could not understand a Puritan at all. 
 His charactef~of Cromwell, for instance, represents, 
 not a man, lint a monster made up of contradictions. 
 He describes him with great honesty, and was 
 obviously struck deeply by his wonderful genius and 
 force of character ; but there is not a touch of 
 sympathy in the whole description. He supposes, 
 apparently, that, from the very first, Cromwell meant 
 ; to be a usurper, and acted accordingly. 
 
 That a man could really believe in such principles 
 as he held, that he could honestly act upon them, that 
 his strength was derived from the fact that he clearly 
 understood what he wanted and steadily pursued it, 
 
 iand that what he did want was by no means entirely 
 bad, or even bad in the main — all this is utterly 
 incredible to Clarendon. He arrives at the result 
 that Cromwell was a living contradiction : ' In a word, 
 as he had all the wickednesses against which damna- 
 tion is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, 
 so he had some virtues which have caused the memory 
 of some men in all ages to be celebrated, and he will 
 be looked upon by posterity as a brave bad man.' 
 
 Perhaps a still better instance of Clarendon's 
 inability to enter into the feelings of a Puritan is to 
 be found in a much less conspicuous case, which shows 
 that to him it was a horrible mystery that the Puritans 
 should be anything else but a crew of unnatural 
 villains. In 1651 a Presbyterian, named Love, was 
 executed for treason against the Commonwealth. 1 
 
 1 See his trial in 5 S. T., iv. 267, ct scq.
 
 xin clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 317 
 
 He died like a martyr. Clarendon observes upon 
 this :— 
 
 ' It is a wonderful thing what operation this Presby- 
 terian spirit had upon the minds of those who were 
 possessed by it. This poor man Love, who had been 
 guilty of so much treason against the King from the 
 beginning of the rebellion as the pulpit could contain, 
 was so much without remorse for any wickedness of 
 that kind he had committed that he was jealous of 
 nothing so much as of being suspected to repent.' 
 
 He then describes the ' marvellous undauntedness ' 
 of his language, and the ' inward joy ' which his be- 
 haviour showed, and, after giving some of his dying 
 words, concludes thus : — 
 
 ' And in this raving fit without so much as praying 
 for the King otherwise than that he might propagate 
 the covenant, he laid his head upon the block with as 
 much courage as the bravest and honestest man could 
 do on the most pious occasion.' 
 
 The very essence of Clarendon's mind, and of the 
 spirit of the age in which he lived, is in these words. 
 The great lesson which the book, fairly read, would 
 appear to teach is, that the whole war was a lament- 
 able, but, as far as we can see, an inevitable mistake, 
 the result of ignorance and narrowness of mind on 
 each side, though no doubt Charles himself was more 
 deeply to blame for it than any other person. 
 
 Clarendon contrives to obscure the incidents con- 
 nected with its outbreak, and, as Mr. Hallam truly 
 observed, he (if he were the author of Charles's State
 
 318 HORAE SABBATICAE 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 papers) got much the best of the written controversy 
 with the Parliament ; but the true nature of the case 
 is plain beyond all dispute. 
 
 After his conduct in the early part of his reign, 
 and after the attenrpt to arrest the five members 
 (which we agree with Mr. Forster in considering 
 as an abortive coup d'ttat), it was impossible to 
 trust the King without security, and that security 
 he never would give. In a word, it was neces- 
 sary to depose him, at least for a time. The 
 Parliament wished to do this gently, and without 
 disturbing the forms of the Constitution ; and those 
 forms, of course, implied that the King was still to 
 be King. This gave Clarendon an immense contro- 
 versial advantage, for it was easy for him to show 
 that their proposals amounted virtually to deposition, 
 though they abounded in expressions of humility and 
 duty ; and this gave occasion for an inexhaustible 
 supply of charges of hypocrisy and falsehood — charges 
 which were well founded only on the supposition that 
 there are to be no such things as constitutional fictions, 
 and that a King of England ought to consider every 
 phrase which the law uses about his office, as investing 
 him individually with the full amount of the power 
 which the literal sense of the words professes to convey. 
 
 On the other hand, it cannot be denied that some 
 at least of the views of Charles and his principal 
 advisers were what we should in the present day 
 describe as far more liberal than those of their 
 opponents. Perhaps the most remarkable passage
 
 xiii clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 319 
 
 in Clarendon's works is a part of his Life in which 
 he describes the society in which he used to pass his 
 leisure during his youth in London. 
 
 His account of the friends who used to meet at Lord 
 Falkland's house near Oxford is charming, and there 
 can be no doubt that some of them — Falkland, Hales, 
 and Chillingworth, for instance — were at once the most 
 learned and the most liberal-minded men in England. 
 Of these, Falkland and Chillingworth lost their lives in 
 serving the King, and Hales received preferment from 
 Laud. 
 
 There can be little room for doubt that Charles 
 I., Clarendon himself, and Lord Falkland were really 
 and deeply attached to the Church of England, 
 and as really and deeply opposed to the Church 
 of Rome ; and there is as little question that they, 
 or at least that Charles and Clarendon, were opposed 
 on every ground to the cruel laws then in force 
 against the Roman Catholics, which it was one object 
 of the Parliament to have strictly executed. 
 
 It is also matter of fact that by far the most liberal 
 theological book of that age (Chillingworth's Religion 
 of Protestants) expressed the tone of opinion and senti- 
 ment prevalent amongst Clarendon's friends. It was 
 dedicated to Charles, and was greatly admired by 
 Laud. There are few more curious problems in 
 English history than that Avhich these facts suggest. 
 Why was it that religious liberalism in the seventeenth 
 century was allied with political Toryism, whilst the 
 most bigoted and narrow views of religion were held 
 
 (
 
 320 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 by the founders of our political liberties 1 We cannot 
 at present enter upon this inquiry ; but, in order to 
 understand Clarendon, it is necessary to be aware of 
 its existence, and to know that, though the highest 
 of high Tories, he was anything but a bigot. 
 
 One or two of the sentences in which he refers to 
 John Hales (who earned the epithet of the Ever 
 Memorable) are very characteristic upon this point. 
 He describes with manifest sympathy some of his 
 opinions, then viewed as dangerous novelties : — 
 
 'He therefore exceedingly detested the tyranny 
 of the Church of Rome more for their imposing un- 
 charitably upon the consciences of other men, than 
 for the errors in their own opinions ; and would often 
 say that he would renounce the religion of the Church 
 of England to-morrow if it obliged him to believe 
 that any other Christians should be damned; and 
 that nobody would conclude another man to be 
 damned who did not wish him so.' 
 
 This foundation of highmindedness and liberality 
 went admirably with the devotion of Clarendon to 
 his sovereign, and with that passionate belief in him 
 which blinded perhaps the keenest critic of character 
 in all England to the most patent, as it was the most 
 fatal, of all Charles's defects. Clarendon actually 
 begins his character with these words : ' He was if 
 ever any the most worthy of the title of an honest 
 man,' and this he says though not many pages before 
 he had given a full account of the secret treaty 
 between Charles and the Presbyterian Commissioners
 
 xin clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 321 
 
 from Scotland, which, says Clarendon himself, the 
 King signed on the representation ' that the treaty 
 was only made to enable them to engage the King- 
 dom of Scotland to raise an army . . . but when 
 that army should be entered into England . . . there 
 would be nobody to exact all those particulars.' In 
 other words, he agreed to it only because he believed 
 it to be a gross fraud. 
 
 Such blindness in our own days is scarcely conceiv- 
 able, but we cannot estimate the power of personal 
 loyalty as it then was. A king of England was to 
 Clarendon both a temporal sovereign and a pope ; and 
 nothing more clearly shows the clanger of this blind 
 personal devotion to a single man than the fact that so 
 wise and great a man as Clarendon was should have 
 been converted by it into an instrument of tyranny 
 and an enemy to the best interests of his country. 
 
 The general temper of Clarendon's mind, when he 
 wrote his History, is discernible enough. The found- 
 ation of the whole, as we have said, was a stately, 
 highminded conception of things human and divine ; 
 but this conception was twisted, by his distaste for 
 the narrowness and other faults of the Puritan party, 
 in such a manner, as to lead the man who held it to 
 a blind admiration for a party, not really more 
 exalted than the one which he hated, and by no 
 means so useful. 
 
 Falkland, Chillingworth, and others, no doubt, 
 had a stately and noble view of an English king, 
 but the stately view of the subject was by no 
 
 VOL. i Y
 
 322 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 means the only one. Every page of the History 
 of the Civil War and of Charles's exile is filled 
 with instances of meanness, brutality, cruelty, and 
 debauchery amongst the King's adherents, which 
 fully justify the bad opinion held by the Puritans of 
 the Court and its party. 
 
 The history of the war in the West of England, 
 where Lord Goring and Sir Richard Grenville were 
 the King's principal officers, is full of instances of 
 brutality and cruelty. Speaking of the Prince 
 of Wales's own quarters, Clarendon says : ' The 
 troops were without any discipline, and the country 
 as much exposed to rapine and violence as it could 
 suffer under an enemy.' Charles 'drew out his 
 garrison from Cambden House which had brought 
 no other benefit to the public than the enriching 
 the licentious governor thereof, who exercised an 
 illimited tyranny over the whole country, and took 
 his leave of it, in wantonly burning the noble 
 structure where he had too long inhabited, and which 
 not many years before had cost above £30,000 the 
 building.' 
 
 When Leicester was taken, 'the conquerors 
 pursued their advantage with the usual license of 
 rapine and plunder, and miserably sacked the whole 
 town without any distinction of persons or places ; 
 churches and hospitals as well as other places were 
 made a prey to the enraged and greedy soldier.' 
 Sir Richard Grenville hanged as a spy an attorney 
 who had been engaged against him in law proceed-
 
 xni CLARENDON'S ' HISTORY OF THE REBELLION.' 323 
 
 ings, and his general course of proceeding is thus 
 described. He used to summon men to attend him ; 
 if they failed to come, he sent to arrest them. ' If 
 the persons were taken, they were very well content 
 to remit their stock to redeem their persons ; for the 
 better disposing them whereto he would now and 
 then hang a constable, or some other poor fellow,' 
 etc. By these means this thief and robber ' had a 
 greater stock of cattle of all sorts upon his grounds 
 than any person whatsoever in the West of England.' 
 
 The book is full of misfortunes occasioned by the 
 habitual drunkenness of the King's officers. Lord 
 Wilmot ' drank hard and had a great power over all 
 who did so, which was a great people.' When Lord 
 Essex's army was surrounded in Cornwall, near 
 Fowey, his cavalry escaped because Goring was 
 drunk and disorderly ('the notice and orders came 
 to Goring when he was in one of his jovial exer- 
 cises ') when he ought to have been on duty. 
 Nothing can exceed the scene of petty, dirty intrigue 
 which was constantly going on at the Court, and the 
 impression left by the whole story is that, though 
 Clarendon and a very few others were of a noble 
 and magnificent character, the general hatred against 
 Charles and his government was by no means ill- 
 founded. 
 
 The natural result of this state of things upon a 
 highminded, enthusiastic, decorous man, whose tem- 
 per was naturally hot and keen, was to turn him to 
 grave but fierce humour, and his book is full of illus-
 
 324 HORAE SABBATIC AE ESSAY 
 
 trations of this. Its style is too well known to call 
 for description. Every one who has ever looked 
 into it knows the endless sentences, the involutions, 
 the strange constructions, which make it wearisome 
 to modern readers. The qualities to which it owes 
 its reputation are not so apparent but they may be 
 traced by an attentive reader who will take the 
 trouble to discard the historical tenses and to 
 modernise the stops. 
 
 The following passage is a fair specimen of the 
 defects and the energy of Clarendon's way of writing. 
 It is part of a manifesto on the commission to the 
 Earl of Essex against the King :■ — - 
 
 ' It was not possible that a commission could be 
 granted to the Earl of Essex to raise an army against 
 us, and for the safety of our person, and preservation 
 of the peace of the kingdom, to pursue kill and slay 
 us and all who wish well to us, but that in a short 
 time inferior commanders by the same authority 
 would require our good subjects for the maintenance 
 of the property of the subject to supply them with 
 such sums of money as they think fit upon the 
 penalty of being plundered with all extremity of 
 war and by such rules of arbitrary power as are 
 inconsistent with the least pretence or shadow of 
 that property it would seem to defend.' 
 
 A few verbal alterations will convert this clumsy 
 sentence into the style of the most cutting leading- 
 article or review. For instance : ' You issue a com- 
 mission to the Earl of Essex to raise an army against
 
 xni clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 325 
 
 us, and for the safety of our person and the preser- 
 vation of the peace of the kingdom to pursue, kill, 
 and slay us, and all who wish well to us. Inferior 
 commanders will soon learn the same lesson. They 
 will require our subjects, for the maintenance of the 
 property of the subject, to supply them with such sums 
 of money as they please, and those who refuse will be 
 plundered with all extremity of war. You thus erect, 
 for your protection, an arbitrary power which in its 
 very nature is inconsistent with the existence of the 
 rights which you say you mean it to protect.' 
 
 The following is, as it stands, as powerful as it 
 can be : — 
 
 ' By this rule if a member of either house commit 
 a murder you must by no means meddle with him 
 till you have acquainted that house of which he is a 
 member, and received their direction for your pro- 
 ceeding, assuring yourself he will not stir from that 
 place where you left him till you return with their 
 consent ; should it be otherwise it would be in the 
 power of every man under the pretence of murder to 
 take one after another and as many as he pleaseth 
 and so consequently bring a parliament to what he 
 pleaseth when he pleaseth. If a member of either 
 house shall take a purse at York (he may as probably 
 take a purse from a subject as arms against the 
 King) you must ride to London to know what to do, 
 and he may ride with you and take a new purse at 
 every stage, and must not be apprehended, or declared 
 a felon till you have asked that house of which he is
 
 326 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 a member ; should it be otherwise it might be in 
 every man's power to accuse as many members as he 
 would of taking purses, and so bring a parliament 
 and so all parliaments to nothing. Would these men 
 be believed 1 ' 
 
 A very little attention to the rules of composition 
 now generally understood, will show that Clarendon 
 might, with hardly an effort, have made his book as 
 brilliant as it is impressive, nor need it have lost any 
 of its weight in the process. Indeed, its weight 
 arises from the gravity of the author's thoughts, and 
 by no means from the cumbrousness of his style. 
 
 It is full of humour. Numerous instances might 
 be given, but we must content ourselves with a few. 
 Cromwell's ' physicians began to think him in danger, 
 though the preachers who prayed always about him 
 and told God Almighty what great things he had done for 
 him and how much more need he still had of his service 
 declared as from God that he should recover.' 
 Strafford's great fault was pride, which was punished 
 ' in that he fell by the two things he most despised, 
 the people and Sir Harry Vane.' Montrose refuses 
 to be prayed for by the Presbyterian ministers 
 because he knows how they would have prayed, 
 thus: ' "Lord vouchsafe yet to touch the obdurate 
 heart of this proud incorrigible sinner this wicked 
 perjured traitorous and profane person who refuses 
 to hearken to the voice of thy Kirk " and the like 
 charitable expressions.' Lord Berkshire's 'affection 
 for the Crown was good ; his interest and reputation
 
 XIII clarendon's 'history of the rebellion' 327 
 
 less than anything but his understanding.' Lord 
 Salisbury ' was a man of no words except in hunting 
 and hawking, in which only he knew how to behave 
 himself. In matters of state and council he always 
 concurred in what was proposed for the King and 
 cancelled and repaired all those transgressions by 
 concurring in all that was proposed against him as 
 soon as any such propositions were made.' 
 
 Undoubtedly the most remarkable of Clarendon's 
 gifts was his occasional eloquence. With one speci- 
 men of this we must conclude. It may be doubted 
 whether the language contains a nobler passage of 
 the kind. The very negligence of the composition 
 heightens its dreary pathos. The desolation of the 
 church, the smallness and sadness of the company, 
 the ' fellow from the town ' who alone happened to 
 know where lay ' King Harry VIII. and Queen Jane 
 Seymour,' the Governor locking up the place, 'which 
 was seldom put to any use,' when all was over, are 
 marvellous accompaniments to the funeral of an 
 English king who had died the death of a traitor. 
 
 The superiority of this passage over Mr. Wolfe's 
 poem on Sir John Moore's funeral shows how im- 
 possible it is for the finest imagination and the most 
 elaborate choice of words to equal the concentrated 
 emotion which colours the language of a man who is 
 writing of that which touches the very core of his 
 heart : — 
 
 ' Then they went into the church, to make choice 
 of a place for burial. But when they entered into it, \ 
 
 i
 
 328 HORAE SABBATICAE essay xiii 
 
 which they had been so well acquainted with, they 
 found it so altered and transformed, all tombs, in- 
 scriptions, and those landmarks pulled down, by 
 which all men knew every particular place in that 
 church, and such a dismal mutation over the whole, 
 that they knew not where they were ; nor was there 
 one old officer that had belonged to it, or knew where 
 our princes had used to be interred. At last there 
 was a fellow of the town who undertook to tell them 
 the place, where, he said, " there was a vault in which 
 King Harry the Eighth and Queen Jane Seymour 
 were interred." As near that place as could con- 
 veniently be, they caused the grave to be made. 
 There the King's body was laid without any words, 
 or other ceremonies than the tears and sighs of the 
 few beholders. Upon the coffin was a plate of silver 
 fixed with these words only — King Charles. 1648. 
 When the coffin was put in, the black velvet pall that 
 had covered it was thrown over it, and then the earth 
 thrown in ; which the Governor stayed to see perfectly 
 
 idone, and then took the keys of the church, which 
 was seldom put to any use.' 
 
 X
 
 XIV 
 
 LORD CLARENDON'S 'LIFE' 1 
 
 Lord Clarendon's Life is partly supplementary to, 
 and partly a continuation of, his more famous work, and 
 throws a good deal of additional light on the character 
 of the author and on the age in which he lived. There 
 are three principal periods which the memoirs illus- 
 trate. First, the early part of his life, down to the 
 meeting of the Long Parliament (birth, 18th February 
 1609, to November 1640). Secondly, some parts of 
 the history of the Long Parliament and the Civil War, 
 and of the residence of Charles II. abroad (16-10-1660). 
 Thirdly, the Restoration, the early years of Charles 
 II.'s reign (1660-1667), and the six years which 
 
 1 The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chan- 
 cellor of England, and Chancellor of the University of Oxford. 
 Containing, 1. An Account of the Chancellor's Life from his 
 Birth to the. Restoration in 1660 ; 2. A Continuation of the 
 same, and of his History of the Great Rebellion from the 
 Restoration to his Banishment in 1667. Written by Himself. 
 Oxford: 1761.
 
 330 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 Clarendon passed in banishment, until his death on 
 9th December 1673. 
 
 The first period is much the most entertaining. 
 Clarendon was not industrious in his youth. He 
 learnt very little at college, where indeed he was a 
 mere boy ; and his life as a law student ' was with- 
 out great application to the study of the law for some 
 years, it being then a time when the town was full 
 of soldiers. . . . And he had gotten into the acquaint- 
 ance of many of those officers, which took up too 
 much of his time for one year.' He read some 
 'polite literature and history,' however, and, as he 
 remarked in his old age, 'lived cautb if not castbJ He 
 had, however, the means of seeing good society. He 
 was connected by marriage with the family of the 
 Marquis of Hamilton, and he was brought very early 
 in his career into business of importance. In par- 
 ticular, he vindicated before the Privy Council the 
 rights of the merchants of London, in a dispute which 
 affected the revenue ; and, in consequence of his 
 management of the case, he was introduced to Arch- 
 bishop Laud. His professional success and distinction 
 put him in very pleasant circumstances. ' He grew 
 every day in practice, of which he had as much as 
 he desired ; and, having a competent estate of his 
 own, he enjoyed a very pleasant and a plentiful life, 
 living much above the rank of those lawyers whose 
 business was only to be rich, and was generally be- 
 loved and esteemed by most persons of condition and 
 great reputation.'
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 331 
 
 His account of these pleasant days is by far 
 the most interesting passage of his writings. It 
 is composed of characters of Ben Jonson, Selden, 
 Sir Kenelm Digby, May the historian of the Long 
 Parliament, Lord Falkland, Waller the poet, Sheldon, 
 afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, Hales, Chilling- 
 worth, and some others of less note. "The accounts 
 of Falkland and Chillingworth are memorable passages 
 in English literature, and deserve to be described as 
 portraits of the highest excellence. The other char- 
 acters are rather collections of remarks than pictures. 
 
 Clarendon's History and his Memoirs are full of 
 interest, but their interest is that of the conversation 
 of an experienced public man, who was, besides, one 
 of the strongest of all conceivable partisans. It is 
 not the interest of a work of art. Moreover, his 
 extreme gravity and stateliness, though it allowed 
 him to be sarcastic and occasionally humorous, pre- 
 vented him from devising any of those pointed 
 vigorous expressions which, as Mr. CaiTyle says of 
 some of Mirabeau's, make a complete portrait in three 
 scratches and a dot. This renders his portraits far 
 less amusing than they would otherwise have been, 
 and in some respects less instructive. 
 
 That Clarendon's partisanship continually blinded 
 his judgment is painfully obvious. This appears strik- 
 ingly in the worship which he lavished on Charles I. ; 
 but he partially redeems his fault by his views of the 
 Stuart family in general, and of Charles II. in particu- 
 lar. His account of him and his brother is an admirable
 
 332 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 specimen of the sarcastic vein which he sometimes 
 indulged : — 
 
 ' It was the unhappy fate of that family that they 
 trusted naturally the judgments of those who were 
 as much inferior to them in understanding as they 
 were in cpiality. . . . They were too much inclined 
 to like men at first sight, and did not love the 
 conversation of men of many more years than 
 themselves, and thought age not only troublesome 
 but impertinent. They did not love to deny, and 
 less to strangers than to their friends ; not out of 
 bounty or generosity, which was a flower that did 
 never grow naturally in the heart of either of the 
 families — that of Stuart or the other of Bourbon — 
 but out of an unskilfulness and defect in the counte- 
 nance ; and when they prevailed with themselves to 
 make some pause rather than to deny, importunities 
 removed all resolution, which they knew not how to 
 shut out nor defend themselves against, even when 
 it was evident enough that they had much rather not 
 consent. ... If the Duke seemed more fixed and 
 firm in his resolutions, it was rather from an obstinacy 
 in his will than from the constancy of his judgment.' 
 
 A delightful character, from the mostfaithful servant 
 and most zealous partisan that ever any family had. 
 
 We get, however, from Clarendon a very pleasing 
 notion of his early friends. Perhaps the most 
 characteristic point about them is their great in- 
 tellectual activity, and the extraordinary degree of 
 learning that some of them attained to.
 
 xiv LOKD CLARENDON'S 'LIFE 333 
 
 Falkland appears to have formed a kind of 
 centre for the Avhole party, when he was little over 
 twenty ; and the well-known passage in which his 
 pursuits are described is so beautiful that Ave tran- 
 scribe it : — 
 
 'His whole conversation was one continued con- 
 viviwm philosophicum or convivium theologicum, enlivened 
 and refreshed with all the facetiousness of wit and 
 good humour, and pleasantness of discourse, which 
 made the argument itself (whatever it was) very de- 
 lectable. His house, where he usually resided (Tew 
 or Burford, in Oxfordshire), being within ten or 
 twelve miles of the University, looked like the .Uni- 
 versity itself, by the company that was always found 
 there. There was Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Morley, Dr. 
 Hammond, Dr. Earles, Mr. Chillingworth, and indeed 
 all men of eminent parts and faculties at Oxford, 
 besides those who resorted thither from London ; 
 who all found their lodgings there as ready as in the 
 colleges ; nor did the lord of the house know of their 
 coming or going, nor who were in his house, till he 
 came to dinner or supper, where all still met ; other- 
 wise there was no troublesome ceremony or constraint 
 to forbid men to come to the house, or to make them 
 weary of staying there ; so that many came thither 
 to study in a better air, finding all the books they 
 could desire in his library, and all the persons to- 
 gether whose company they could wish, and not find 
 in any other society. Here Mr. Chillingworth wrote 
 and formed and modelled his excellent book against
 
 334 HOEAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 the learned Jesuit Mr. Knott, after frequent debates 
 upon the most important particulars.' 
 
 Lord Falkland's own studies were remarkable : — 
 
 ' There were very few classic authors in the Greek 
 or Latin tongue that he had not read with great ex- 
 actness ; he had read all the Greek and Latin fathers, 
 all the most allowed and authentic ecclesiastical 
 writers, and all the Councils, with wonderful care 
 and observation ; for in religion he thought too 
 careful and too curious an inquiry could not be made 
 amongst those whose purity was not questioned ' — and 
 whose authority was appealed to on both sides. The 
 sentence meanders on for thirteen lines more, which 
 we spare our readers ; but this is what it comes to. 
 
 This passage — to which other well - known 
 facts correspond — as, for instance, the prodigious 
 learning of Selde n, and the curiously minute acquaint- 
 ance with all the details of English history which was 
 shown in the great Parliamentary debates of the 
 period, and of which Mr. Forster's Life of Eliot sup- 
 plies numerous illustrations — raises the question 
 whether men in those days were more energetic and 
 industrious than in our own. To discuss it at length 
 would lead us far from our present subject, but 
 Clarendon's Life throws some light upon the matter. 
 
 There would seem to have been hardly any 
 light literature in those days, plays excepted ; and 
 the common subjects of education were fewer than at 
 present. Falkland, for instance, who was carefully 
 educated at Dublin, knew no Greek till he taught it
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 335 
 
 himself long afterwards. Clarendon learnt French 
 only during his second exile, 'not,' he says, 'towards 
 speaking it, the defect of which he found many con- 
 veniences in, but for the reading any books.' A man 
 might get through a great deal of reading if there 
 were no circulating library works, no periodical liter- 
 ature, and only one language besides his own, or at 
 most two, which he had any occasion to understand. 
 
 Next to his own immediate friends, the most in- 
 teresting personages described in the early part of 
 Clarendon's Life are Archbishop Laud and Clarendon 
 himself. He was very fond of Laud ; he ' had so 
 great an affection and reverence for his memory ' that 
 he ' believed him to be a man of the most exemplar 
 virtue and piety of any of that age.' Laud took 
 notice of him as he was just rising into large business 
 at the Bar, and when life in general must have looked 
 very bright to him ; and probably some of the rays 
 of that brightness fell upon the Archbishop. The 
 only fault that he could, or would, see in him was 
 the roughness of his manner. 
 
 Clarendon probably secretly liked him all the better 
 for defects which he was conscious of not sharing, 
 though he had a certain tendency towards them, 
 corrected by education. Of Laud he observes, in a 
 well-known passage : — 
 
 'It is the misfortune of most persons of that 
 education (how worthy soever) that they have rarely 
 friendships with men above their own condition, and 
 that their ascent being commonly sudden from low
 
 336 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 to high, they have afterwards rather dependants than 
 friends, and are still deceived by keeping somewhat 
 in reserve to themselves even from those with whom 
 they seem most openly to communicate, and, which 
 is worse, receive for the most part their informations 
 and advertisements from clergymen who understand 
 the least, and take the worst measure of human 
 affairs of all mankind that can write and read.' 
 
 It is easy to trace in this celebrated passage the 
 inward satisfaction with which Clarendon contrasted 
 his own social advantages with the somewhat narrow 
 education of Laud. His own temper apparently had 
 something of the same sort of roughness in it, for he 
 continually boasts of his habitual plainness of speech. 
 
 The following account of himself is one of the 
 oddest passages that ever were written : — 
 
 'He was in his nature inclined to pride and 
 passion, and to a humour between 'wrangling and 
 disputing, very troublesome ; which good company 
 in a short time so much reformed and mastered, that 
 no man was more affable and courteous to all kinds 
 of persons ; and they who knew the great infirmity 
 of his whole family, which abounded in passion, used 
 to say he had much extinguished the unruliness of 
 that fire. That which supported and rendered him 
 generally acceptable was his generosity (for he had 
 too much a contempt of money), and the opinion 
 men had of the goodness and justness of his nature 
 which was transcendent in him, in a wonderful 
 tenderness and delight in obliging. His integrity
 
 xiv LOED CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 337 
 
 was ever without blemish, and believed to be above 
 temptation. He was firm and unshaken in his 
 friendships ; and though he had great candour 
 towards others in the differences of religion, he was 
 zealously and deliberately fixed in the principles both 
 of the doctrine and discipline of the Church.' 
 
 Few men have sung their own praises with such 
 calm assurance. Has any other writer said in so 
 many words : ' Upon mature reflection, I pronounce 
 myself to be a man of transcendent goodness and 
 justice, wonderful tenderness, unblemished integrity, 
 a firm friend, and as candid as I am strict in my 
 religious views ' 1 In every part of his autobiography 
 Clarendon shows a solid, deliberate admiration of 
 himself, which it seems hardly fair to call vanity, 
 because it is so calm and grave. 
 
 The great blemish of the early part of the Memoirs 
 is that they throw very little light either upon the 
 history of Clarendon's earlier opinions or on the 
 nature of his change. Perhaps the most plausible 
 guess — for, after all, it is little more that can be 
 made — as to his frame of mind, is that he was one 
 of the very few who clearly understood the nature 
 of the struggle between the King and the Parlia- 
 ment, and took part emphatically and passionately 
 for the King ; and this although, in the earlier part 
 of his career, he was as well aware as any one of the 
 existence of great abuses which required a remedy. 
 
 All study of that period leads to the con- 
 clusion that the real question was the question of 
 VOL. i z
 
 338 HORAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 sovereignty. Was the King or the Parliament to 
 be the substantive or the adjective? Clarendon 
 took the royal side, perhaps, all the more warmly 
 because he had sufficient faith in it to wish to re- 
 form collateral abuses, like the Courts of the Earl 
 Marshal and those of the President of the North, 
 and the Council of Wales. He appears really and 
 honestly to have believed that it was an everlasting 
 divine decree that the King and the Bishops should 
 direct, substantially and really, all the temporal and 
 spiritual affairs of the nation, and that it was in the 
 highest degree morally wicked, and even impious, to 
 try to alter this arrangement. 
 
 Nothing is more difficult for us, at this distance of 
 time, to realise, than the view which in those days a 
 man like Clarendon took of a man like Hampden. 
 What Hampden thought of Clarendon we do not 
 know, but Clarendon obviously considered Hampden 
 as a wicked man, a rebel, a traitor, and a hypocrite. 
 
 ~In a curious summary of his own experience of life 
 with which the book concludes, he says, in language 
 too ample for quotation, that he began by ' so great a 
 tenderness and love towards mankind ' that he believed 
 every one to be virtuous, but that his Parliamentary 
 experience soon taught him that men 'upon whose 
 ingenuity and probity he would willingly have de- 
 posited all his concernments of this world' were 
 ' totally false and disingenuous ' ; that ' religion was 
 made a cloak to cover the most impious designs, and 
 reputation of honesty a stratagem to deceive and
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 339 
 
 cheat others who had no mind to be wicked.' It is 
 true that he adds that the Court was ' as full of mur- 
 muring, ingratitude, and treachery against the best 
 and most bountiful master in the world as the 
 country and the city ' ; but scores of passages might 
 easily be quoted from his works which show that he 
 was utterly unable to believe that the Parliamentary 
 party could have any conscientious belief at all in 
 their own principles. 
 
 This intense zeal is the more difficult to explain 
 because he stood almost alone in it. Falkland, for 
 instance, was obviously in great doubt as to the course 
 which he had taken ; but perhaps the most curious 
 case was that of Sir Edmund Verney, the standard- 
 bearer. On the march to Edge Hill he complimented 
 Hyde on his cheerfulness, adding that, for his own 
 part, he could not be cheerful : — 
 
 '"You," said Verney, "have satisfaction in your 
 conscience that you are in the right ; that the King 
 ought not to grant what is. required of him . . . 
 but for my part, I do not like the quarrel, and do 
 heartily wish that the King would yield, and con- 
 sent to what they desire. ... I will deal freely 
 with you. I have no reverence for the Bishops for 
 whom this quarrel subsists." ' 
 
 Clarendon's intense partisanship for the King and 
 the Bishops, wherever he got it, certainly went a 
 very long way, for it made him thoroughly disin- 
 genuous in his subsequent account of the transac- 
 tions in which he was concerned. No one would
 
 340 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 ever guess from his writings that he had voted for 
 Strafford's attainder, or for the Bill for perpetual 
 Parliaments. Other instances of great forgetfulness 
 or deceitfulness have been exposed elaborately by- 
 Mr. Forster in his Life of Eliot. It ought, how- 
 ever, to be observed that both his History and his 
 Life are exceedingly imperfect. He omits many 
 matters which ought to have found a place in his 
 
 I writings. For instance, he does not even allude to 
 the Act for abolishing feudal tenures. 
 
 In the second stage of his life — the Civil War, and 
 the years of exile which followed it — the autobio- 
 graphy adds little to the History of the Rebellion 
 except a certain number of personal anecdotes. The 
 most interesting relate to his residence at Jersey, 
 where he employed himself, between 1646 and 1648, 
 in writing his History. As usual, he commends his 
 own industry with that grave, measured self-esteem 
 which was peculiar to him : — 
 
 ' He seldom spent less than ten hours in the day ' 
 (amongst his books and papers), ' and it can hardly be 
 believed how much he read and writ there ; inasmuch 
 as he did usually compute that during his whole stay 
 in Jersey, which was some months above two years, 
 he writ daily little less than one sheet of large paper 
 with his own hand.' 
 
 Creditable enough, but nothing to make a marvel 
 of, one would think. 
 
 The third part of Clarendon's Life stands alone, 
 relating as it does, to a period subsequent to the
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 341 
 
 termination of his History. It relates to the first 
 years of the reign of Charles II. It is a good deal 
 occupied with Clarendon's own personal affairs, which 
 have now fallen much out of date. He finds it neces- 
 sary, for instance, to go with extreme minuteness 
 into most of the points on which his impeachment 
 was grounded, and to sIioav, step by step, how un- 
 reasonable they were, and how hardly he was used. 
 This he does successfully enough, but at wearisome 
 length to a modern reader. 
 
 One only of the personal scenes of the book is 
 curious enough to be worth particular reference. It 
 is the one in which he describes his behaviour on 
 hearing of his daughter's private marriage to James II. 
 When informed of the fact by the Marquis of Ormond 
 and the Earl of Southampton, at the desire of Charles 
 II., he behaved in a manner which it takes him two 
 pages to describe, the nature of which is sufficiently 
 indicated by the marginal notes which illustrate them. 
 ' The Chancellor struck with it to the heart ' is the 
 summary of about half a page ; ' and breaks out into 
 a very immoderate passion ' is the summary of the 
 remainder. It is a most appropriate one, for the 
 concluding sentences, the stately style of which is in 
 strange contrast to their character, are : — 
 
 ' He hoped their Lordships would concur with him 
 that the King should immediately cause the woman 
 to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a 
 dungeon, under so strict a guard that no person 
 living should be committed to come to her ; and then
 
 .342 HOKAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 that an Act of Parliament should be immediately 
 passed for the cutting off of her head, to which he 
 would not only give his consent, but would very 
 willingly be the first man to propose it ; and whoever 
 knew the man will believe that he said all this very 
 heartily.' 
 
 He also observed 'that he had much rather his 
 daughter—should be the Duke's whore than his wife,' 
 as, 'in the first case, he might turn her out of doors, 
 and have done with her ; whereas, in the second, his 
 duty as a loyal subject, and as first Minister of the 
 Crown, would be to get her head cut off. This story 
 is often told as a proof of the passionate, bigoted 
 loyalty of Clarendon. We agree with Lord Camp- 
 bell in thinking that his lordship did protest too 
 much, and that in truth he was by no means so angry 
 as he professed to be. 
 
 The worst part of his whole character — and the 
 fault is illustrated in endless ways — is his freque nt 
 insincerity. No doubt the events of his life afforded 
 much excuse for it, but it shows itself continually, and 
 almost always in the same form. He keeps continu- 
 ally saying, almost in so many words, but at all events 
 indirectly, 'I am a rough, honest, passionate, plain- 
 spoken man, proud of my sincerity, perhaps too secure 
 in my good conscience. My frank harshness of man- 
 ner was the cause of all my misfortunes.' The slyness 
 which lurks under this sort of roughness is the slyest 
 thing in the whole world. 
 
 The general view which the later part of the Life
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 343 
 
 affords of the state of the country at the Restoration 
 is exceedingly interesting. When attentively read, 
 it shows what an immense change had been made by 
 the Civil War in the position of Royalty, notwithstand- 
 ing the eagerness with which Charles was welcomed 
 back in the first instance. 
 
 It has been usual to represent Clarendon as the 
 grave Mentor, the partisan of decency and order, who 
 was driven into exile by the gross ingratitude and 
 wickedness of a King who could not bear his own vices 
 to be reproved, and of a Court which was the natural 
 enemy of all decency and gravity. In all this there is 
 a good deal of truth, but it is not the whole truth. 
 There are many indications which it is impossible to 
 mistake, though it would be difficult to exhibit them 
 at full length in a moderate compass, that, apart from 
 and over and above the offence given by Clarendon's 
 well-deserved rebukes of Charles and his vices, Charles 
 perceived that he did not enter into the spirit of the 
 times, but belonged to a different age. Throughout 
 the whole of his book he speaks of the Presbyterian 
 party in a tone of rancorous moral condemnation. 
 They had, he says in one place, no title to their lives 
 except the King's mercy. 
 
 All his policy was in the same direction. He 
 never could look upon any of the doings of the 
 Long Parliament with toleration. For instance, 
 the Triennial Act was then as much a part of the law 
 of the land as any other ; yet Charles said, in so many 
 words, apparently with the full concurrence of his
 
 344 HOHAE SABBATICAE ESSAY 
 
 Chancellor, that he would never permit a Parliament 
 to assemble under its provisions, because they were 
 derogatory to the Royal power. 
 
 So Clarendon continually tried to get the King to 
 dissolve the Parliament elected after his return — the 
 second Long Parliament, as it was called. This seemed, 
 and perhaps in some respects actually was, a constitu- 
 tional measure, but Charles's reasons for not doing so 
 show what the real issue between himself and his Chan- 
 cellor was. He refused to dissolve the Parliament be- 
 cause he thought he could govern through it. His 
 other counsellors told him ' that he would never have 
 such another Parliament, where he had near one hun- 
 dred members of his own menial servants and their 
 near relations, who were all at his disposal.' Claren- 
 don would, no doubt, have liked the Parliament to have 
 greater purity and less power. Charles felt that the 
 Parliament could never again recede to the position 
 which it had occupied in the early part of the century, 
 and that the only chance of maintaining his power 
 was by the use of influence. The honester man of 
 the two was less favourable to freedom than the other. 
 
 A remarkable summary of Clarendon's own views 
 is given in the latter part of the book : — 
 
 'He did never dissemble from the time of his 
 return with the King, whom he had likewise pre- 
 pared and disposed to the same sentiments, whilst 
 His Majesty was abroad, that his opinion was that 
 the late rebellion never could be extirpated and 
 pulled up by the roots till the King's regal and in-
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 345 
 
 herent power and prerogative should be fully avowed 
 and vindicated, and till the usurpations in both Houses 
 of Parliament, since the year 1640, were disclaimed 
 and made odious ; and many other excesses which 
 had been affected by both before that time, under 
 the name of Privileges, should be restrained or ex- 
 plained.' 
 
 This was the leading idea of all his policy, and it 
 is to be traced, in a variety of minute ways, in all 
 that he has to say on the management of public 
 affairs. He could not forgive Charles for being less 
 of a Tory than himself : — 
 
 ' The King had in his nature so little reverence or 
 esteem for anticpiity and did, in truth, so much con- 
 temn old orders, forms, and institutions, that the 
 objections of novelty rather advanced than obstructed 
 any proposition.' 
 
 There are a good many incidental remarks in 
 Clarendon's Life which throw light on the manners 
 of the age which he describes. 
 
 He gives an account, for instance, of his way of 
 spending his time when he began to get business 
 at the Bar — i.e. at some period being between 1630 
 and 1640. How he spent his mornings does not 
 appear ; but he saw his friends at dinner, in the 
 middle of the day. The afternoons ' he dedicated to 
 the business of his profession,' and he read 'polite 
 learning ' at night. ' He never supped for many years 
 before the troubles brought in that custom.' His 
 vacation he passed in study, except two months in 
 
 f
 
 346 HORAE SABBATICAE essay 
 
 the summer, when he went out of town. He after- 
 wards speaks of the House of Commons rising at 
 four as a 'disorderly hour,' and refers to dinners 
 given by the popular leaders after the House had 
 risen. Probably this is what he means by the 
 troubles bringing in the custom of supping. 
 
 During the Civil War there was a rapid transport 
 of despatches, ' when gentlemen undertook the ser- 
 vice, which they were willing enough to do,' between 
 London and York. Letters went out at twelve on 
 Saturday night and the answer returned at ten on 
 Monday morning. Clarendon, too, gives us the first 
 notice of newspapers : — 
 
 ' After he ' (the King) ' had read his several letters 
 of intelligence, he took out the prints of diurnals, 
 and speeches, and the like, which were every day 
 printed at London.' 
 
 After the Restoration, he speaks of bankers as 
 'a tribe that had risen and grown up in Crom- 
 well's time, and never were heard of before the late 
 troubles, till when the whole trade of money had 
 passed through the hands of the scriveners.' 
 
 He thinks it necessary to explain the word ' million ' 
 as often as he uses it, by adding, in a pare"ntEesis, 
 'Ten hundred thousand.' 
 
 In a notice of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, 
 we gave a specimen of his occasional eloquence. We 
 will conclude this notice of his Life, which is far 
 from being an elocpient book, with a specimen of 
 the wonderful clumsiness into which he habitually
 
 xiv LORD CLARENDON'S ' LIFE ' 347 
 
 allowed himself to slide when he wrote under no 
 special excitement. 
 
 ' The Earl of Falmouth and Mr. Coventry were 
 rivals who should have most interest in the Duke, 
 who lovecF the Earl best, but thought the other the 
 wiser man, who supported Pen (who disobliged all 
 the courtiers), even against the Earl, who contemned 
 
 Here are five ' who's ' in one sentence, and each 
 refers ttnr dtffereTftrantecedent, namely, 1, Falmouth 
 and Coventry ; 2, the Duke of York ; 3, Coventry ; 
 4, Pen \ and 5, Falmouth. The translation of the 
 passage is as follows : ' The Earl of Falmouth and 
 Mr. Coventry were rivals in the pursuit of interest 
 with the Duke of York. The Duke liked Lord Fal- 
 mouth best, but thought Mr. Coventry the wiser 
 man. Coventry supported Pen even against Lord 
 Falmouth, who contemned Pen. Pen on the other 
 hand disobliged all the courtiers.' 
 
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