2nd §, No 2, Jan. 12. °56.] NOTES 
AND QUERIBS. 
21 
. 
LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 1856. 
Potes. 
BURNETT'S UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS. 
HIS CONDEMNED PASTORAL LETTER — PROMOTION 
TO SALISBURY — DISPOSAL OF VACANT SEES — 
MARLBOROUGH'S DISGRACE, 
[ Macaulay, in a note to his 8rd vol., p. 19., mentions 
the very great value of the rough draught of Burnet’s 
History of his Own Time, now No. 6584. of the Harleian 
MSS. in the British Museum, which contains “some facts 
which Burnet afterwards thought it advisable to suppress, 
and some judgments which he afterwards saw cause to 
alter. I must own,” he continues, “that I generally like 
his first thoughts best. Whenever his History is re- 
printed, it ought to be carefully collated with this volume.” 
The following extracts from this “rough draught,” will, 
we believe, be read with great interest; and may at the 
same time serve to convince the authorities at Oxford 
how much the value of their edition of Burnet will be in- 
creased by the adoption of this suggestion. ] 
Burnet’s condemned Pastoral Letter. — Macaulay 
states (vol. iv. p. 360.) that Burnet has preserved 
a most significant silence, in his printed History of 
his Own Time, about the ignominious judgment 
passed by the House of Commons on his Pastoral 
Letter, which was condemned by that august 
body to the flames. Fortunately for posterity, 
the historian has directed public attention to the 
bishop’s own version of this notable occurrence, 
which he describes with much feeling in his diary 
written at the time. This shall be our first ex- 
tract : 
“Tn the last session of Parliament some began to find 
fault with a notion by which some divines had urged 
obedience to the present government, that here was a 
conquest over King James, and that conquest in a just 
war gave agood title. This some had carried so far, as 
to say in all wars, just or unjust, conquests were to be 
- considered as God’s transferring the dominion from the 
conquered to the conqueror: yet all these writers had 
taken care to distinguish between a conquest of a nation 
and a conquest of King James; the latter being only that 
which was pretended, that, as they said, gave the king 
all King James's right. This doctrine was condemned by 
a vote of both Houses; and a book that had set it forth 
with great modesty and judgment [Charles Blount’s 
King William and Queen Mary, Conquerors}, was in heat 
condemned to be burnt. And because in a treatise that I 
had writ immediately after I was a bishop [his Pastoral 
Letter |, to persuade my clergy to take the oaths, I had 
only mentioned this as a received opinion among lawyers, 
and put it in among other topics, but had put the strength 
of all upon the lawfulness and justice of the present esta- 
blishment, they fell upon that little book, and ordered it 
likewise to be burnt. So it looked somewhat extraordi- 
nary that I, who perhaps was the greatest asserter of 
public liberty, from my first setting out, of any writer in 
the age, should be so severely treated as an enemy to it. 
But the truth was, the Tories never liked me, and the 
Whigs hated me, because I went not into their notions 
and passions; but even this and worse things that may 
happen to me, shall not, I hope, be able to make me depart 
from moderate principles, and the just asserting the liberty 
of mankind.” 
Burnet's Promotion to the Bishoprick of Salis- 
bury. — Our next extract will show that Burnet’s 
account of Church matters, and his own pro- 
motion to the see of Salisbury, in the MS., p. 295., 
is far more full and racy than the meagre notice 
of the same events which he has given in his 
printed work : 
“J must, in the next place, say somewhat of Church 
matters. The clergy did generally take the oaths, yet 
many of them discovered a great jealousy of the govern- 
ment upon the account of the favour that was showed 
the dissenters, and all King James’s party spread reports 
over England that the king was a presbyterian in his 
heart; his abolishing episcopacy in Scotland, and his 
consenting to the setting up of presbytery there, gave 
great eredit to the report, which was studiously infused 
into the leading men of the two universities, and began 
to have very ill effects over all England; those who did 
not carry the suspension so far, as to the pulling down of 
the Church, yet said that a latitudinarian party was like 
to prevail, and to engross all preferments. These were 
thought to be less zealous for the ceremonies, so it was 
given out that at least the zealous men for the Church 
would be neglected, while those that were more indif- 
ferent, would be trusted with the government of it; and 
because many of those were men that studied to make 
out all things by principles of reason, and had with ereat 
success both proved the truth of the Christian religion 
and the grounds of morality from rational principles, it 
was said they denied mysteries, and were Socinians. This 
aspersion had been first cast on them by papists, on de- 
sign to disgrace a knot of divines that had both written 
and acted with much strength against them, and it was 
now taken up by some at Oxford: all which was managed 
and secretly set on by Clarendon, and some of the bishops 
that were now falling under deprivation. The promo- 
tions that were made increased these jealousies, A great 
many bishops happened to die in a few months; so that 
the king made six bishops in the space of so many 
months: Salisbury, Chester, Bangor, Worcester, and 
Bristol. 
“ To the first of these, that was the first that fell, the 
king thought fit to promote me: he did it of his own 
motion; for though a great many of my friends, without 
any encouragement from me, moyed him init, he made 
them no manner of answer till he took occasion to speak 
to myself ; and he did in a way that was much more 
obliging than I could have expected from him. 
“ When I waited on the queen, she told me she hoped 
I would set a pattern to others, and would put in practice 
those notions, with which I had taken the liberty some- 
times to entertain her. She also recommended to me 
the making my wife an example to other clergymen’s 
wives, both in the simplicity and plainness of her clothes, 
and in the humility of her deportment. This I mention 
to show what is the queen’s sense of the duties of clergy~ 
men, and of the behaviour of their wives; the vanity ana 
pride of these have risen to a great excess, and I have put 
many out of countenance, and have-freed either them of 
their vanity, or at least their husbands of the expense of 
it, by letting this rule that the queen gave me be known. 
“T came into the House of Lords when the matter of 
comprehension and toleration was in debate, and I went 
so high in those points, that I was sometimes, upon the 
division of the House, single against the whole bench of 
bishops. But in the point of tendering the oaths to all 
the clergy, I did indeed oppose that upon this ground, 
that I thought if they joined in the public offices of the 
Church, and performed them sometimes themselves, this 
must needs bind them as firmly to the government as any. 
