2'"iS.VIII. Dec.3.'59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



449 



OBIGIM or TUB BBOWmSTS. 



A curious pamphlet, entitled A Three-Fold 

 Discourse hetweene Three Neighbours, Algate, 

 Bishopsgate, and John Heydeu, the late Cobler of 

 Houusditch, a professed Broivnist, Lond., 4to., 

 1642, contains the following particulars of Robert 

 Brown, the celebrated founder of the Indepen- 

 dents or Congregationalists : — 



" Algate. John, I pray thee tell me how earnest thou to 

 bee a Brownist at the first. 



" Bishopsgate. I have heard that the first beginner of 

 your sect was a miserable Doctor in the University, who 

 sold his commons, and seised away his part of white 

 bread, and lived all the week upon a sixpenny brown 

 loaf — which occasion gave you all j^our names. 



" Cobler. No, our first father was Mr. Brown, parson of 

 Achurch in Northamptonshire, where he died after his 

 many persecutions among the wicked. 



" Algate. So he that would have no church was after- 

 wards parson of a church [Achurch]. 



" Bishopsgate. But I assure j-ou, John, he recanted his 

 opinions, and died an orthodox protestant and an honest 

 man. It is true he was persecuted in all places; he fled 

 into Scotland, and had been hanged, had he not been 

 near akin unto the Lord Treasurer Cecil (for he was a 

 gentleman born, and of an ancient family of the Browns 

 of Tolthorpe). Besides, he was endued with many good 

 and gentile qualities; among the rest he was a singular 

 good lutenist, and he made his son Timothy usually on 

 Sundays bring his viol to church, and play the base to 

 the psalms that were sung: so Air was he (like you and 

 your fellows) from being an enemy to church music. 



" Cobler. I would have given all the shoes in my shop, 

 had I known so much before." 



It appears from Hey 1 in and Fuller, that while 

 Brown was industriously labouring to establish 

 bis sect at Northampton, Dr. Linsell, Bishop of 

 Peterborough, sent him a citation, which Brown 

 not obeying, be was excommunicated for his con- 

 tempt. This censure affected him so deeply, that 

 he soon after made his submission, and receiving 

 absolution was re-admitted into the communion 

 of the Church about the year 1590, and was soon 

 after preferred to the rectory of Achurch, near 

 Thrapstone, in Northamptonshire. Brown was a 

 man of good parts and some learning, but of a 

 nature imperious and uncontrollable. In a word, 



says Fuller, he bad a wife with whom he never 

 lived, and a church in which he never preached, 

 though he received the profits thereof : and, as all 

 the other scenes of his life were stormy and tur- 

 bulent, so was his end ; for the constable of his 

 parish, who was his god-son, requiring somewhat 

 roughly the payment of certain rates, his passion 

 moved him to blows, of which the constable com- 

 plained to Justice St. John, who was inclined 

 rather to pity than to punish him ; but Brown 

 behaved with so much insolence, that he was sent 

 to Northampton gaol, on a feather-bed in a cart, 

 being very infirm, and aged above eighty years, 

 where he soon after sicliened and died, anno 1630, 

 after boasting that he had been committed to 

 thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not 

 see his hand at noonday. J. Y. 



Truth stravger than Fiction. — In "N. & Q." of 

 12th Nov. there appeared a cutting from an old 

 Magazine, which was obviously a political squib 

 upon the change of tone in the Paris papers be- 

 tween the 9th March, 1815, when Napoleon's es- 

 cape from Elba was first announced by them, and 

 his arrival in Paris on the 21st. In this squib he 

 is styled on the 9th The Anthropophagus, on the 

 10th The Corsican Ogre ; and in the same style 

 until the 21st, when The Emperor is said to have 

 arrived at the Tuileries. Prompted by your 

 publication of that political jcu (Tesprit, and ji 

 little also by the sudden change which has just 

 taken place in the tone of the French papers with 

 respect to this country, I have amused myself by 

 seeing how Napoleon's escape was really recorded 

 by one of the oldest and most respectable of 

 them, the Journal des Debats. In this paper, of 

 the 9th M.irch, Napoleon is spoken of as 'Uhc 

 Pollron o/ 1814." On the 15th he is told, " Scourge 

 of Generations thou shalt reign no more .'" On the 

 16th he is "a Robespierre on horseback ;" on the 

 19th, " the Adventurer from the Island of Corsica ;" 

 but on the 21st, we are gravely told that " The 

 Emperor has pursued his triumphal course. The 

 Emperor having found no other enemies than the 

 miserable libels which were vaiidy scattered on his 

 path to impede his progress."" Verily, Truth is 

 stranger than Fiction. T. S. F. 



Dr. Dodd. — In a recent number of the British 

 Quarterly Review, the writer of a critique on Dr. 

 Doran's " New Panels," &o., suggests as a deside- 

 ratum a good Life of Dr. Dodd, and indicates the 

 sources from which the materials may be supplied. 

 Certainly, after the rough handling «ff Dr. Dodd 

 in the volume of Dr. Doran, it would be well to 

 ascertain how far a writer of a work half fiction 

 and half biography is justified in thus dealing 

 with the, character of an unfortunate man. If the 



