186 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
convey a very inadequate conception of Burnett’s character as a 
writer of history, if we omitted to observe that his unwearied efforts 
and industry in ransacking archives, collating manuscripts, collect- 
ing records and charters highly curious and interesting in them- 
selves, and almost entirely untouched by former writers, qualified 
him to treat his subject in a fuller and more authentic manner than 
any of his predecessors, while, of course, this laborious examination 
and patient comparison of authorities and documents, enhance the 
credit and value of the work.* It were also a culpable omission not 
* To modern ears, the following exclamation may sound offensive to good 
taste, but it is very accordant with the spirit and habits of the man. In- 
deed, it may be almost excused ia any writer, when repelling a violent at- 
tack upon the accuracy of his researches, the fidelity and honesty of his opi- 
nions. ‘“ What, he to be accused of gross ignorance and wilful falsehood, 
that rummaged all the most considerable libraries of the kingdom to fetch 
out registers and authorities, records and acts and copies of despatches, me- 
moirs and other manuscripts of the times, out of which to compose his his- 
tory, who has printed a volume in folio of those sort of pieces, in justifica- 
tion of what he says—he to whom the nation and the parliament itself gave 
public testimony of the esteem which they had of his book?” &c.—See a 
a Letter to Mons. le Grand, on his History of Henry VIII. with a plain 
Vindication of the same-—Dr. G. B. Bishop Nicholson has passed this high 
encomium on the general fidelity and exactness of Burnett’s History :— 
“The defects of Peter Heylin’s History of the Reformation are abundantly 
supplied in our author’s more complete history. He gives a punctual ac- 
count of all the affairs of the Reformation, from its beginning in the reign of 
Henry VIII. to its final establishment under Queen Elizabeth, a.p. 1559 ; 
and the whole is penned with a masculine style, such as becomes an historian, 
and is the property of this writer in all his writings. The collection of re- 
cords which he gives at the end of each volume are good vouchers of the 
truth of what he delivers in the body of the history, and are much more per. 
fect than could reasonably be expected after the pains taken, in Queen 
Mary’s days, to suppress every thing that carried the marks of the Reforma- 
tion upon it.”—p. 74. Bishop Kennett thus pointedly alludes to this most 
useful undertaking :—“ I confess I have often wondered how there ever 
came in a party within our own church, who made it their business and their 
pleasure to degrade those admirable volumes of the History of the Reforma- 
tion, as if they were afraid or unwilling our church should be justified in her 
separating from the Romish church.”—See Register and Chronicle, Civil and 
Ecclesiastical, Lond. 1728, fol. p. 36. Foreign writers, also, of the most oppo- 
site religious and political opinions, have pronounced that Burnett has pro- 
duced one of the most important historical works of which modern English 
literature has to boast, and have commended him especially for observing a 
strict impartiality in many instances where it might be supposed that his 
bias in favour of certain persons and parties would have disqualified him from 
performing that important and difficult duty.—See the Bibliotheque Univer- 
