monarch's illicit connexion with Lady Villiers, that his majesty promised never to see her again.

He officiated as primate at the coronation of Queen Anne, with whom he appears to have been by no means a favourite, although he had strenuously exerted himself to procure her a proper settlement in the preceding reign. He, doubtless, rendered himself obnoxious to her majesty, by his strong inclination for a protestant succession; which, in 1705, induced him to enter into a correspondence with the Electress Sophia. În 1706, he was chosen first commissioner for effecting the union with Scotland; and, on the death of Queen Anne, he was one of those who were appointed to take charge of the instrument, which gave the new monarch power to appoint a regency, until his arrival in this country. He did not long survive the coronation of George the First, at which he officiated as primate; his death occurring on the 14th of December, 1715. He was buried in Lambeth church, by the side of his wife, who had died without issue, in the preceding year.

Archbishop Tenison published an able treatise, in opposition to the opinions of Hobbes; Sir Thomas Browne's Tracts; The Remains of Bacon; A Discourse on Idolatry; a variety of sermons, and a number of tracts, in defence of the established church against popery. Of preferment, he appears to have been

Swift,

by no means ambitious. As a preacher, he was plain, but forcible; and, as a writer, clear and argumentative, but never brilliant. The parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields is indebted to him for its library; he rebuilt the chancel of Topcroft church, where his parents were buried; and, after having been eminently beneficent throughout life, bequeathed, at his death, very considerable sums to charitable uses. Macky says, that he was a plain, good, heavy man; very tall; of a fair complexion; and a great opponent of the progress of popery, in the reign of King James. doubtless under the influence of party rancour, terms him, the most good-fornothing prelate, and the dullest man he ever knew. The witty dean is also reported to have originated the saying, that, "Tenison was as hot and heavy as a tailor's goose." On the other hand, Baxter regarded him with warm admiration; Burnet, ignorant of Swift's animosity towards him, declared, that he had many friends, and no enemies; Kennett speaks of him as having been exemplary in every station of life; the anonymous author of his memoirs states that he was an exact pattern of that exemplary piety, charity, stedfastness, and good conduct, requisite in a governor of the church; and Garth, alluding to his elevation to the primacy, says :—

Good Tenison's celestial piety,
At last, bas raised him to the sacred see.

was admitted a probationer, and went through such examinations as qualified him, without ordination, to become a preacher in the church of Scotland. One of his relatives now offered him a good living, but he thought proper to decline it, modestly deeming himself unequal to the charge. On the death of his father, then a lord of session, in 1661, his friends advised him to resume his legal pursuits, with a view of practising at the Scotch bar. Burnet, however, refused to abandon the study of divinity, in which he continued to make extraordinary progress. In 1663, he

visited Oxford and Cambridge, where he became acquainted with most of the learned men of the day, and much improved himself in mathematics and philosophy.

On his return to Scotland, Sir Robert Fletcher offered him the living of Saltoun; but Burnet, wishing to visit Holland, begged leave to decline it in favour of a gentleman, from whom he had received some valuable instructions with respect to extempore preaching. Fletcher, however, determined to keep the living vacant, until Burnet's return from Holland; whither the latter proceeded in 1664, and while residing at Amsterdam, studied Hebrew under a learned Jewish rabbi. He subsequently removed to Paris, and thence to London, where he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. Returning to Scotland, he found the living of Saltoun still vacant, but Sir Robert Fletcher could not prevail upon him to take it, until, by preaching to the parishioners, for some months, he had ascertained that his ministry was acceptable. In 1665, he was ordained priest; and, for some years, performed the duties of his sacred office, at Saltoun, in a most exemplary manner; comforting, reproving, instructing, and assisting the members of his congregation, as occasion required. One of his parishioners having fallen into difficulties, Burnet asked him how much would be sufficient to set him up again in business. The man named a certain sum, which Burnet immediately ordered his servant to fetch. "Sir," said the servant, "it is all we have in the house." "Well, well," replied Burnet, "pay it to this poor man: you do not know the pleasure there is in making a man glad."

About this time, he drew up a statement of the abuses practised by the Scotch bishops, to each of whom he sent a copy of it, signed with his own hand. This bold proceeding, in so young a man, exposed him to the deep resentment of Archbishop Sharpe, who, had he been seconded by his brethren, would, as it appears, have taken immediate measures for Burnet's deprivation and excommunication. In 1669, he was elected professor of divinity at Glasgow; where, it is said, he continued four years and a half, hated by the presbyterians, lest his moderation should

lead to the establishment of episcopacy; and by the episcopalians, because he was for exempting the dissenters from their persecutions. While officiating at Saltoun, it was remarked, that he had used the only copy of the church of England prayer-book which had been known to have existed in the church of Scotland from the beginning of the reign of Charles the Second.

Soon after his election to the professorship, he published A Modest and Free Conference between a Conformist and a Non-conformist, which procured him an increase of esteem among the friends of moderation. He next occupied himself in compiling his Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, relative to which he visited London, and while there, it is said, he was offered, but refused, a Scotch bishopric. On his return to Glasgow, he married Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the Earl of Cassilis; to whom, on the day of their union, without any solicitation on her part, he unexpectedly delivered a deed, by which the whole of her fortune was secured to herself. This he did, it is said, to silence the imputation of having married a woman whose age exceeded his own, from interested motives.

In 1672, he published A Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland, a work which was strikingly at variance with his previous opinions. It met with great approbation at court, and procured for Burnet the offer of a Scotch archbishopric, which, however, he would not accept. In 1673, appeared his Mystery of Iniquity Unveiled. During the saine year, while he was in London, whither he had proceeded for the purpose of obtaining a license to print his Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, he was made chaplain to the king; with whom, and also with the Duke of York, he is said to have had several private interviews. But his

court-favour was of brief duration; his name being struck out of the list of royal chaplains, soon after his return to Scotland, for opposing the measures of Lauderdale. He shortly afterwards found it necessary, as it is stated, for his personal security, to resign the professorship of divinity, at Glasgow, and remove to London.

He now printed his Truth of Religion

Examined; and after having refused the living of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, which had previously been intended for his friend, Dr. Fowler, he was appointed, in 1675, preacher at the Rolls, and, soon afterwards, lecturer of St. Clement's. In 1676, he published his Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, and An Account of a Conference between himself, Coleman, and Dr. Stillingfleet. The rapid progress of popery, at this time, induced him to undertake a History of the Reformation; the first volume of which, after having remained a year in manuscript, to receive the corrections of his friends, was produced in 1679. It not only met with great approbation from the public, but procured for the author the high honour of thanks from both houses of parliament; with a request that he would prosecute his design to a conclusion. In 1681, appeared a second volume of the work; and, during the same year, he printed An Account of the Life and Death of the Earl of Rochester, which contained a most interesting account of his conferences with that profligate nobleman, whose death-bed he had attended, at the expiring libertine's request.

He soon afterwards published his Life of Sir Matthew Hale; The History of the Regale; The Method of Conversion by the Clergy of France examined; and An Abridgment of the History of the Reformation. About the same time, after having attended Mrs. Roberts, one of Charles the Second's mistresses, in her dying moments, he addressed a letter to that monarch, in which he boldly censured his majesty's misgovernment and licentiousness. "I told the king," he says, "I hoped the reflection on what had befallen his father, on the 30th of January, might move him to consider these things more carefully. The king read the letter twice over, and threw it into the fire."

In 1683, appeared his Translation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. He had now become so intimately connected with the party opposed to government, that, after having attended Lord Russell to the scaffold, he deemed it prudent to go to Paris; and while there, he was deprived of his lectureship, by the king's mandate, and forbidden to preach again at the Rolls. In 1685, he published his Life of Dr. Bedell; and, about the same

period, returned to England: but, on the accession of James the Second, he again fled to Paris, in order to avoid being inculpated with the conspirators in favour of Monmouth. From Paris, he proceeded to Rome, where Pope Innocent the Eleventh offered to give him a private audience in bed, to avoid the ceremony of kissing the slipper of his holiness; Burnet, however, declined the proposal. He was treated with great consideration by the Cardinals Howard and D'Estrées; but became involved in some religious disputes, on account of which, Prince Borghese recommended him to quit Rome. He then made a tour through Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and France; of which, he afterwards published an account, in a series of letters addressed to Mr. Boyle.

At the conclusion of his tour, he repaired to the Hague, on the invitation of the Prince and Princess of Orange, in whose councils, with respect to England, he took so prominent a share, that James the Second ordered a prosecution to be commenced against him for high treason, and demanded his person from the States General, but without effect, as he had previously acquired the rights of naturalization, by forming an union (his first wife being dead) with a Dutch lady, of large fortune, named Scott. He took a particularly active part in the revolution of 1688, and accompanied the new monarch to England, as chaplain. The king, soon afterwards, offered him the bishopric of Sarum, which, however, he begged his majesty to bestow on his old friend, Dr. Lloyd. "I have another person in view," coldly replied the king; who, the next day, nominated Burnet himself to the see, and subsequently conferred on him the chancellorship of the order of the Garter.

On taking his seat in the house of lords, he declared himself to be an advocate for moderate measures towards non-juring divines, and for the toleration of protestant dissenters. He acted as chairman of the committee to whom the bill, for settling the succession, was referred; and displayed so much zeal in favour of the house of Hanover, that the Princess Sophia corresponded with him until within a very short period of her death. In 1692, he published a pastoral letter to the clergy of his diocese, which, on account of its containing a statement

that the title of William and Mary to the crown, might be grounded on the right of conquest, was, three years afterwards, during the ascendancy of Burnet's political enemies, ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.

He published Four Discourses to the Clergy, in 1694; An Essay on the Character of Queen Mary, in 1695; and A Vindication of Archbishop Tillotson, in 1696. In 1698, he became tutor to the young Duke of Gloucester; and, during the same year, (having lost his second wife,) married Mrs. Berkley, the authoress of a pious work, entitled A Method of Devotion. In 1699, he produced his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles; in 1710, his Church Catechism Explained; and, in 1715, the third volume of his History of the Reformation. He died of a pleuritic fever, on the 17th of March, in the last-mentioned year, leaving three sons; one of whom published the deceased prelate's celebrated History of his own Times, with an account of his life, in 1723-4. In addition to his more important works already specified, Bishop Burnet was the author of several minor theological and political pieces; which, however, add but little to his fame.

He is described by Macky, his cotemporary, as "a large, strong-made, boldlooked man, and one of the greatest orators of his age. His History of the Reformation, and his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles," continues Macky, "shew him to be a man of great learning; but several of his other works shew him to be a man neither of prudence nor temper; his sometimes opposing, and sometimes favouring the dissenters, hath much exposed him to the generality of the people of England; yet he is very useful in the house of peers; and proves a great pillar, both of the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, against the encroachments of a party which would destroy both. On the queen's succession to the throne, he was the first who brought the news to her of King William's death, and saluted her queen; yet was turned out of his lodgings at court, and met with several

affronts."

alternately subservient to promoting his fortune. He was concerned in all the great changes, and had a hand in all the intrigues which agitated England, from the year 1680 till his death. Ever varying his principles according to circumstances, he was unshaken in nothing but his hatred to the house of Stuart. This hatred it was, that excited King William to promote him to the episcopal dignity, and confer on him the place of chancellor of the order of the Garter, and that of preceptor to the Duke of Gloucester. He was afterwards as warm a partizan of the house of Hanover, as he had been of the Prince of Orange; but death did not give him time to reap the fruits of this new attachment."

Some Tory wag, soon after his decease, proposed the following inscription for his monument:

Here Sarum lies, of late so wise,
And learn'd as Tom Aquinas;

Lawn sleeves he wore, but was no more

A Christian than Socinus.

Oaths, pro and con, he swallow'd down ;
Lov'd gold like any layman;

Wrote, preach'd, and pray'd; and yet betray'd
God's holy word for Mammon.

Of every vice he had a spice,
Although a rev'rend prelate ;
And liv'd and died, if not belied,
A true dissenting zealot.

If such a soul to Heav'n should stroll,
And 'scape old Satan's clutches;
We then presume there may be room,

For Marlb'rough and his duchess!

In

Many of his friends, blind to his real defects, which his enemies have greatly magnified, appear to have thought, as one of them admits, that "his talents gave him a privilege for straying from the strict rules of caution, and exempted him from the ordinary censure." extenuation of his activity as a politician, which, under different circumstances, would have been degrading to his character as a divine, it has been suggested that, in his times, the established church was in danger, from the probability of a popish succession; to defeat which, it became decorous and laudable for her most dignified supporters to take an influential part in public affairs.

That he was betrayed, by the ardour of his temperament, into frequent improprieties, it would be rash to deny ;

but his motives appear to have been always conscientious; and the general tenour of his conduct, was certainly more worthy of applause than deserving of censure. He possessed many virtues, some prejudices, several failings, but no positive vice. He was zealous for the promotion of religion; extensively tolerant, though conspicuously hostile to papacy; assiduous in the discharge of his episcopal duties; a warm advocate for bettering the condition of the poor clergy; an enemy to pluralities; a benefactor to the unfortunate; an excellent husband, a good father, and a constant friend. His chief failings were self-importance, credulity, officiousness, and a gossipping garrulity, which frequently rendered him offensive, exposed him to repeated inconveniences, and often led him into misrepresentations, although his breaches of veracity never appear to have been intentional.

With him originated the measure for augmenting poor livings out of the first fruits payable to the crown; during the progress of which, he either instituted to prebendal stalls, or bestowed small annuities upon, those ministers in his diocese, whose incomes were too slender for their comfortable maintenance. He allowed pensions to several clergymen's widows, who had been left destitute; contributed largely to the repairing and building of churches and parsonagehouses; supported four students at the university, and fifty boys at a school at Salisbury, whom, in due time, he apprenticed to tradesmen; assisted industrious persons, who were in distress; and constantly expended so much of his episcopal revenue in acts of benevolence and hospitality, that, at his death, he left no more than was barely sufficient to pay his debts.

Equally opposed to political as to religious persecution, he interfered, effectually, although in opposition to the wishes of the Whig lords, in behalf of the Earl of Clarendon, when that nobleman, in 1690, became involved in some of the plots of the day. He also interested himself in favour of Sir John Fenwick; and procured Queen Anne's pardon for Dr. Beach, a non-juring divine, who had preached a treasonable sermon. His letter to Charles the Second affords a strong proof of his disinterestedness; and it is said, that

during the reign of William and Mary, although he never lost the royal favour, he frequently digusted their majesties, by the bold candour with which he delivered his sentiments. He was careless of preferment, which, on several occasions, he felt anxious to decline, in favour of his friends. To him, pluralists, whom he designated as sacrilegious robbers of the revenues of the church, were so odious, that his chaplains were invariably dismissed on their obtaining promotion. A clergyman in his diocese, once asked him if, on the authority of St. Bernard, he might not hold two livings. "How will you be able to serve them both?" inquired Burnet. "I intend to officiate by deputy, in one," was the reply. "Will your deputy," said the bishop, damned for you too? Believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must be damned in person!" The Rev. Dr. Kelsey, a pluralist, who happened to be present, was so struck with these words, that, it is said, he immediately resigned one of his preferments.

"be

In the discharge of his duty, as a prelate, he remedied many abuses; and displayed his characteristic fearlessness, in supporting the true interests of the church. The lord chancellor having presented an ignorant young nobleman to a living in the bishopric of Salisbury, Burnet refused to institute him. He was, consequently, threatened with a prosecution by the chancellor, who, however, finding him resolute, consented to abandon the presentation. Burnet then made an offer, which was accepted, to perform the parochial duties of the living, until he should have qualified the young nobleman to discharge them himself.

In conversation, he is described as having been often unintentionally disagreeable, through a singular want of consideration. One day, during Marlborough's disgrace, and voluntary exile, Burnet, while dining with the duchess, who was a reputed termagant, compared the duke to Belisarius. "How do you account," inquired her grace, for so great a man as that celebrated Roman, having been so miserable and deserted?" "Oh! madam," replied the bishop, "he had, as you know, such a sad brimstone of a wife!"

When Prince Eugene visited England,