208* BURNETT'S “‘ HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 
rying the royal prerogative to the most despotic height, will pause 
before they acquiesce with Collier in regarding the following passage 
as a foul aspersion upon the purity and independence of the honour- 
able House of Commons. “ Gardiner, at that time the prime minis- 
ter, had beforehand prepared them (the commons) by giving the 
most considerable of them pensions ;”. an assertion so far from being 
contrary to fact that it is indirectly confirmed by an observation of 
Heylin on the parliament of Edward VI. that “ the cards were so 
well packed by Sir Ralph Sadler that there was no need of any other 
shuffling till the end of the game.” It must strike almost every im- 
partial reader as a most unconscientious contempt of truth and jus- 
tice, on the part of Collier, to accuse the bishop of falsifying history, 
because he says that “one Beale informs us that, in many places of 
the country, men were chosen for Queen Mary’s parliament by force 
and by threats ; when this angry polemic could not but have seen, in 
such well-known books as Fox and Heylin, that it is there set forth 
that one John Hales made the same declaration in an oration before 
Queen Elizabeth.” It would be tedious to rehearse the other speci- 
mens of Collier’s acrimonious hostility against the historian of the 
Reformation. They are, for the most part, equally founded on mis- 
representations and mistakes; the whole attack thus furnishing a 
lamentable proof of the sorcery of party spirit, which conjectures 
without modesty, judges without lenity, and defames without 
scruple. 
M.R.S.L. 
(To be continued in the next number. ) 
