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himself, or perhaps that the king might change his mind, he desired that the king himself would let him know what he would have him to do; whether he should defend the one side or the other and he would do according to the orders he should receive, and make such discoveries for or against it as should pass the capacity of all Englishmen. Thus (ends he) Wakefield, who had more vanity than religion, was driving a traffic with his sentiments."

I have put in the margin the Latin of Pace's letters, and the account that M. Le Grand gives of it in French, that the reader may judge what can be thought of a man that represents things so unfairly, and makes such inferences from them. I confess this raised in me too much indignation to be governed as it ought to have been: I therefore thought such a writer deserved not to be followed in every step. I likewise employed at several times some who went to Paris, to try in what esteem that performance was; and if I was not much decieved in the accounts sent me from thence, the book had lost the esteem of all persons there, so that it was no more talked of, nor read. I cannot therefore bring myself to examine it minutely; yet where any matter of weight requires it, I shall either justify or retract what I had delivered in my History. I shall say no more of that work in this place, save only that the original judgment of the Sorbonne, about which M. Le Grand seemed to be chiefly concerned, both in the conference I had with him and in his book, is now found by Mr. Rymer, among the other judgments of the universities in the secret treasury, out of which that laborious searcher into our original treaties has already published fifteen great volumes in folio. Of this I shall give a more particular account in its proper place.

The next attack that was made on my work was in the year 1693, under the title of, A Specimen of some Errors and Defects in the History of the Reformation of the Church of England; by Anthony Harmer. It is well known that was a disguised name, and that the author was Mr. Henry Wharton, who had published two volumes with the title of Anglia Sacra. He had examined the dark ages before the Reformation with much diligence, and so knew many things relating to those times beyond any man of the age. He pretended that he had many more errors in reserve, and that this Specimen was only a hasty collection of a few out of many other discoveries he could make. This consisted of some trifling and minute differences in some dates of transactions of no importance, upon which nothing depended: so I cannot tell whether I took these too easily from printed books, or if I committed any errors in my notes taken in the VOL. III, PART I.

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several offices. He likewise follows me through the several recapitulations I had made of the state of things before the Reformation, and finds errors and omissions in most of these: he adds some things out of papers I had never seen. The whole was writ with so much malice, and such contempt, that I must give some account of the man, and of his motives. He had expressed great zeal against popery, in the end of King James's reign, being then chaplain to Archbishop Sancroft, who, as he said, had promised him the first of those prebends of Canterbury that should fall in his gift so when he saw that the archbishop was resolved not to take the oaths, but to forsake his post, he made an earnest application to me, to secure that for him at Archbishop Tillotson's hands. I pressed him in it as much was decent for me to do; but he said he would not encourage these aspiring men, by promising any thing before it should fall; as indeed none of them fell during his time. Wharton upon this answer thought. I had neglected him, looking upon it as a civil denial, and said he would be revenged; and so he published that specimen. Upon which I, in a letter that I printed, addressed to the present bishop of Worcester, charged him again and again to bring forth all that he pretended to have reserved at that time; for, till that was done, I would not enter upon the examination of that specimen. It was received with contempt; and Tillotson justified my pressing him to take Wharton under his particular protection so fully, that he sent and asked me pardon: he said he was set on to it, and that if I would procure any thing for him, he would discover every thing to me. I despised that offer, but said that I would at any price buy of him those discoveries that he pretended to have in reserve but Mr. Chiswel (at whose house he then lay, being sick) said, he could draw nothing of that from him, and he believed he had nothing. He died about a year after: so I will say no more of him, only this, that where I see a voucher for any thing that he objects, I will submit and own my error, but 1 have no reason to take any thing on his word. I have a work lying on my table, which shows how little regard is due to his collections. It was sent me by a worthy person in one of the universities, and is a collating of ten pages of his Anglia Sacra with the manuscript that he vouches: it swells indeed to a book. Wharton omits the most material passage of an instrument that blemished one of his heroes. In some places there are errors in every line; and there are three capital errors in one line, and about fifty in that small compass. I have showed the book to a great many persons, and will show it to any who desire to see it; but do not

descend here to further particulars, for that perhaps might discover the author, and expose him to the malice of an illnatured cabal. Since that time, a writer of a greater name has with abundance of ill-natured scorn pretended to undervalue my work. I name him not, for I love not to transmit the remembrance of such things to posterity. Where he gives such vouchers as can be come at, I will be ready to retract; but when he appeals to some nameless manuscript in his own possession, I will have no regard to this: for a writer that has been found too faulty in citing such vouchers as can be examined, ought not to expect belief when he has recourse to such as are kept by him as secrets, not to be communicated but to a few confidants; nor entirely to these, as I have been informed. All that has been hitherto objected to me, though with airs of great assurance and scorn, has been so trifling, that some good judges have thought I showed them too much respect to take any notice of them they thought it was enough to mark down such small mistakes as I saw had been made by me, without so much as mentioning those who made such reflections. I would have complied with their advice, if I had not a just zeal to maintain the credit of that work; which I cannot do better than by acknowledging the discoveries that had been made, even in the minutest matters, though with all the indecency and contempt possible.

A very worthy person in one of the universities has sent me a copious collection of remarks on both my former volumes, but upon condition not to name him; which I will observe religiously, because I promised it, though it is not easy to myself, since I may not own to whom I owe so great an obligation; but I suppress none of them, and give them entirely as he offered them to me. I have had assistance from some other hands, which I will gratefully own as I come to mention them in their proper places.

I have chosen rather to publish all that is of new offered to me, in a volume apart, than to reprint my former volumes with these corrections, as some have advised me to do. There are some thousands of the former impressions abroad in the nation, that would be of little value, if any such new edition should appear. I have ever looked on such enlarged editions as little less than a robbing the public; besides that, in so doing, I should only drop those errors of my former work, without that formal disowning and retracting of them, which I think I owe to the public. I have ever looked on falsehoods in history, when fallen into deliberately, as the worst sort of lying, both the most public and the most lasting. But if they are more innocently committed, and are yet persisted in after a discovery, they are

as bad as when done on design. I writ before as well and as carefully as I could; and if, in so great a variety of materials, some are spurious, and others appear doubtful; and if, in the haste in which the circumstances of that time almost forced me to publish that work, without looking out for more aid, and without waiting for further discoveries, there are some inconsiderable errors and defects in the less important parts of my work, that relate not to the main of things; I hope the world will be so just and so favourable as to make fair allowances for them, and to accept all the reparation I can make for past errors, when I own my failing, and set my readers right.

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I come next to give an account of the reasons that moved me to set about this work at this time. The reasons of my engaging in it at first seemed now to return upon me, and have determined me to delay the doing of it no longer. The danger of a popish successor then in view, and the dreadful apprehensions we had of the power of France, and of the zeal with which the extirpating that which some called the pestilent heresy, that had so long infested those northern kingdoms," was then driven on, made it seem a proper time to awaken the nation, by showing both what popery, and what the Reformation was; by showing the cruelty and falsehood of the former, and what the patience and courage of our reformers was: and the work had generally so good an effect then, that if the like dangers seem to revert, it may not be an improper attempt to try once more to awaken a nation, that has perhaps forgot past dangers, and yet may be nearer them than ever.

If there is any difference between the present state of things, and that we were in above thirty years ago, it is that we are now more naked and defenceless, more insensible and stupid, and much more depraved in all respects than we were then. We are sunk in our learning, vitiated in principle; tainted, some with atheism, others with superstition; both which, though by different ways, prepare us for popery. Our old breaches are not healed, and new ones, not known in former times, are raised and fomented with much industry and great art, as well as much heat: many are barefacedly going back to that misery, from which God with such a mighty hand rescued us, and has hitherto preserved us with an amazing chain of happy providences; but "the deaf adder stops her ear, let the charmer charm never so wisely."

All books relating to those controversies lie dead in shops, few calling for them; many of them (as men of the trade have told me) being looked on as waste paper, and turned to pasteboard. There are, after all, some real and sensible

arguments, that may perhaps have some effect on those who let not themselves be moved with matters of dry speculation, or with cold reasoning, I have made many discoveries, that may awaken some on whom the clearest demonstrations will perhaps make no impression.

In Queen Mary's time, beside all that scene which I had formerly opened, of a perfidious breach of solemn promises, of the corrupting and packing of parliaments, and of that unrelenting cruelty which was pursued to the end of that reign without intermission, I have had occasion to see much further into the spirit which then prevailed. I have had the perusal of the original council-book, that went from the beginning of her reign to the last day of the year 1557; in which such a spirit of cruelty and bigotry appears through the whole course of that reign, that I was indeed amazed to find a poor harmless woman, weak though learned, guilty of nothing but what her religion infused in her, so carried to an indecence of barbarity, that it appears that Bonner himself was not cruel enough for her, or at least for her confessor. She believed herself with child, and when the time came in which she expected to be delivered, she continued looking for it every day above a month; then a conceit was put in her head, that she could not bear her child as long as there was a heretic left in the kingdom.

It was a great part of the business of the council to quicken the persecution everywhere. Letters were writ to the men of quality in the several counties, to assist at the execution of those who suffered for heresy, and to call on all their friends to attend on them. Letters of thanks were writ to such officious persons as expressed their zeal, ordering them to commit all to prison who came not to the service, and to keep them in prison till the comfort of their amendment appeared. Directions were given to put such as would not discover others to the torture. Thanks were in a particular style sent to some gentlemen, who (as it is expressed) came so honestly, and of themselves, to assist the sheriffs in those executions. Pretences of conspiracies were everywhere under examination; many were committed and tried for words. Letters were writ to corporations about the elections of mayors; and the lords had many letters to look carefully to the elections of parliament men, and to engage the electors to reserve their voices for such as they should name. Sheriffs began to grow backward, and to delay executions, in hopes of reclaiming persons so condemned; but they were ordered to do so no more.

Letters were on one day wrote to the sheriffs of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Staffordshire, and to several mayors, to

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