“ HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 197 
weighed and examined his facts and authorities ; and where he is 
most successful in playing off his reputation against Burnett he 
struts, if we are to believe a contemporary writer, in borrowed* 
plumage. That he possessed great knowledge of the times before 
the Reformation is candidly admitted by Burnett himself ; and his 
deep reading and patient industry there are employed, it must be 
confessed, to the purpose, in the following charge which he prefers 
against him. The bishop has observed that “there is in the rolls an 
inspeximus of King Edgar's erecting the priory and convent of Wor- 
cester, which bears date anno 964, Edgar VI or St. Innocent’s 
day, signed by the king, the queen, the archbishop, five bishops, 
six abbots, but neither bishop, see, nor abbey are named, nor dukes 
and five knights; but there is no seal to it.” Now as the inspexi- 
mus is the recital of the instrument only, Burnett, if he had been 
skilled in archzologic lore, would have known that no seal is to be 
found accompanying such a document. Moreover, in Edgar’s time 
seals were not affixed to charters, an assertion in which we are sup- 
ported by the authorities of the most learned antiquaries. The 
earliest royal seal affixed to a charter, at least of which we have any 
knowledge, being that of King Edward the Confessor. 
to attack the History of the Reformation ; and after the following passage no 
one will hesitate to admit that Burnett’s accusations were ill founded. “Die 
Octobris, Historiam Reformationis Anglicanze a Burneto scriptam evolvere 
czepi, co animo ut detectus et errores ejus notarem ac demum evulgarem. Quod 
facere statui, thm ut nimiam ejus, qua in damnum Ecclesiz abusus est, fa- 
mam convellerem ; tum ut Historize nostra Ecclesiasticse errores receptos 
posteris indicarem ; tum ut animo meo multis ab eo injuriis irritato nonnihil 
indulgerem.” In other parts, also, of this curious piece of autobiography, 
published by Dr. D’Oyley, there is striking evidence how deeply these prin- 
ciples were rooted in Wharton’s heart. It would appear, indeed, from other 
facts, that his moral excellencies did not keep pace with his literary ones, 
since a heavier accusation could scarcely be brought against a man than is 
contained in the following sentence :—“ At Mr. Geary’s I chanced to see Mr. 
Wharton’s book of the Historia Literaria, wherein I found several notes 
blotted out, which was about a year before he died. The notes that are 
added are highly injurious to me, and afford one of the most unaccountable 
instances of unfair and disingenuons dealing that perhaps ever passed among 
men of letters.”—See Dr. Cave’s letter to Archbishop Tennison respecting 
W. Wharton in D’Oyley’s Life o& Sancroft, vol. ii, p. 165. 
* Battely, the editor of Somers’ Antiquities of Canterbury, has this remark 
in a letter to Strype, the historian. “Of the History of the Reformation, he 
(Mr. Wharton) had made some few animadversions in his Historia de Episco- 
pis Londinésibrii, in the ‘ Life of Bonner.’ Of those which he published he 
was beholden to me for the greatest part." —J uly 9th, 1695, p. 445, 
