180 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
Possibly our annalist, from his frequent gazing upon the religious 
horizon, may have at last grown dizzy, and by the workings of his 
fears transformed the dark spots he had really discovered there, into 
frightful and giant shapes. But, however the Bishop’s tirades against 
popery may have served to multiply the points of irritation between 
the Roman catholics and protestants, still we ought, in justice to him, 
to remember that auricular confession, priestly absolution, and the 
sacrifice of the mass, were then making great progress in England ; 
that an union with the Gallican church had been proposed by Lesley, 
a distinguished nonjuror and staunch defender of divine right ; that 
Dr. Hickes, the Coryphzeus of the Jacobite church party, had main- 
tained, without any reservation or qualification, that there was a pro- 
per sacrifice in the Eucharist ; that Dr. Brett had published a sermon 
on the doctrine of priestly absolution as essential to salvation ; and 
that some episcopalian writers, who manifested an excessive predilec- 
tion towards political servility, had spoken disparagingly of the Re- 
terms which must be displeasing to those who are conversant with the pages 
of our good martyrologist. His reference to Hall, who must have afforded 
him lights for which in vain he would have looked elsewhere, is also made in 
these disparaging words :—“ Hall was but a superficial writer, and was more 
careful to get full information of the clothes that were worn at the interviews 
of princes, justs, tournaments, and great soleminities, than about the counsels 
or secret transactions of the times he lived in.” Bishop Nicholson, too, in 
his Historical Library, p. 71, reiterates the same sentiment. “If the reader 
desires to know what sort of clothes were worn in each king’s reign, and how 
the fashions altered, this is an historian [speaking of Hall] for his purpose; 
but in other matters his information is not so valuable.” But both these 
learned prelates have fallen into great error, through oversight or negli- 
gence, in thus characterizing the writings of the honest chronicler ; for be- 
yond doubt or contradiction we are mainly indebted to this full and accurate 
reporter of fact, for all that we know as to the internal history of England 
during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Imperfect indeed would 
have been our insight into the different rebellions and insurrections under 
Henry VII, or our acquaintance with the refractory spirit evinced by the 
citizens and commons to the arbitrary exactions of Wolsey, if we could not 
have consulted the writiags of Hall. This willing partizan of the rights of 
the people—for we descry his attachment to them when he observes, upon 
the glaring scheme of usurpation practised by Henry, or his ministry, in 
attempting to levy money without an act of Parliament, that they (the peo- 
ple) “said, if men should give their goodes by a conimission, then wer it 
worse than the taxes of Fraunce, and so England should be bond, and not 
free”—is conjectured to have been born about the last year of the fifteenth 
century. A lawyer by profession, he became a sergeant, and was likewise a 
member of Parliament, an office which was then an object of little ambition. 
He died in 1548.—See Chalmers’ Biog. Dict. 
