192 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
reasons for regarding the archbishop as ready to wound, yet afraid to 
strike*—as willing to gratify his personal pique or dislike at the ex- 
pense of candour and justice. 
With respect, however, to the opposition encountered to the work 
which he was to bequeath to posterity as a lasting memorial of his 
industry and genius, our own conviction is that it sprang from the 
Duke of York and the popish party. Few historical facts are now 
better established than that the overthrow of the protestant hierar- 
chy was the darling project of this infatuatedt prince, although we 
should have conceived, from its roots having struck so deep in the 
very centre of the state, that he must have been convinced the diffi- 
culties he had to struggle with would be insurmountable. Any 
thing, therefore, which tended to thwart this chimerical hope, this 
unconstitutional desire (and what could be more effective for this 
purpose than a full and authentic exposition of the errors and cor- 
ruptions of popery?), was sure to create in James extreme irritation 
and uneasiness. Now, Burnett he experimentally knew to be too 
impracticable{ to be awed into submission, and too wise to be the 
dupe of his political wiles. No way, therefore, presented itself 
to the theological despotism of James, half so easy and certain to nip 
this undertaking in the bud, as to cause it to be insinuated, in those 
ambiguous terms by which “ more is meant than meets the ear,” 
that Burnett was disqualified by his prejudices and passions for the 
task he meditated. These insinuations, we might suppose, coming 
from the heir presumptive to the throne, had the desired effect upon 
the mind of garter king at arms, a high tory both in church and 
* Although it is evident that the name of our author is quite hate- 
ful to the primate—see the Familiar Letters of Dr. William Sancroft, Lond- 
1757, p. 32—yet there is something very offensive to good taste in Burnett’s 
want of propriety of diction whenever he has occasion to introduce the name 
of the archbishop. The prelates of his own party he always mentions by 
their proper titles. But Sancroft is the only title with which he honours 
him. This is downright vulgarity, spite, and malevolence. 
+ “After the business was ended, in a familiar discourse, the king declared 
to this father that he would either convert England, or die a martyr ; and 
that he had rather die to-morrow, that conversion wrought, than reign fifty 
years, without that, in happiness and prosperity.”—See A Letter from a Jesuit 
at Liege toa Jesuit at Friburg, giving an account of the happy progress of re- 
ligion in England, 1687—8, February 2nd. 
+ See Burnett’s account of an interview (History of his Own Time, vol. v, 
p- 177) to which he was invited by James, when Duke of York, evidently 
with the purpose of gaining him to his party. 
“| Archdeacon Grenville, in a letter to Dugdale, is pleased to compliment 
