203 



RUSHWORTH, JOHN. 



BUSKIN, JOHN. 



204 



have been published in four years. Their contents consist of about 

 thirty separate essays, all on subjects of medical interest ; each distin- 

 guished by the philosophical character of the author, and not a few 

 interesting to general readers, to moralists, and to statesmen. The 

 essays ' On the State of Medicine among the Indians ; ' ' On the Influ- 

 ence of the Military and Political Events of the American Revolution 

 upon the Human Body ; ' ' On the Influence of Physical Causes upon 

 the Moral Faculty ; ' and ' On the Stats of the Mind and Body in Old 

 Age,' are strongly indicative of the observing and reflecting habits of 

 the author. The account of the climate of Pennsylvania presents a 

 model of medical topography, a subject at that time little cultivated. 

 Several of the essays on separate diseases, as the Scarlatina Angiuosa, 

 the Cholera of Infants, the Influenza, &c., are distinguished by 

 accuracy of remark and a well-exercised judgment. The essay ' On 

 the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body,' contains the 

 strdngest original arguments that could be employed by -the most 

 zealous advocate of temperance ; and in the ' Inquiry concerning the 

 Causes and Cure of Consumption ' we recognise the doctrine of the 

 general or constitutional origin of that fatal disorder, subsequently 

 supported by Dr. Beddoes, but more distinctly and ably illustrated by 

 Sir James Clark. The celebrated doctrine so often and so eloquently 

 expounded by the late Mr. Abernethy, of the ' Constitutional Origin 

 of many Local Diseases,' is very perspicuously announced in Dr. Rush's 

 1 Inquiry into the Causes and Cure of Sore Legs.' 



RUSHWORTH, JOHN, is said by Anthony Wood to have been 

 born in Northumberland about 1607, of a good family, and to have 

 studied for a short time at Oxford, where however he did not remain 

 long enough to be matriculated. Coming up to London, he entered 

 himself of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar ; but it does not 

 appear that he ever practised. So early at least as the year 1630, he 

 began, according to his own account (in the preface to the first volume 

 of his ' Historical Collections ') to attend in the Star Chamber, the 

 Court of Honour, the Exchequer Chamber, the council, and other 

 places, whenever any matter of importance was in question, and to 

 take notes of the proceedings ; and in this way his time seems to have 

 been wholly occupied. When the first parliament of 1640 assembled, he 

 eagerly embraced the opportunity of being present at the debates and 

 conferences of the two houses ; and after its dissolution he proceeded 

 to the north, the scene of the Scottish invasion, where he witnessed 

 the fight of Newburn, and afterwards found admission to the meetings 

 of the great council at York and of the commissioners at Ripon. 

 When the Long Parliament met, in November, Rushworth was 

 appointed assistant to Henry Elsyngne, Esq., clerk to the house of 

 commons ; and by the opportunities which he enjoyed in this situation, 

 lie was enabled to make ample collections relating to all the most 

 interesting public transactions of the time. It appears to have been 

 hia practice to take down in a species of short-hand whatever was said 

 in the house which he thought worth preserving. Thus, he tells us 

 himself, that on the evening of the day on which the king made his 

 attempt to seize the five members, " his majesty sent for Mr. Rush- 

 worth, the clerk, whom he observed to take his speech in characters, 

 requiring a copy of it ; who pleaded in excuse how Mr. Neville was 

 committed to the Tower for telling his majesty what was spoken in 

 the house ; he smartly replied, ' I ask you not to tell me what was 

 said by any member, but what I said myself; ' upon which a copy 

 being transcribed, it came out in print next morning, by the king's 

 order." 



But besides his services as clerk and reporter, after the king had 

 left London, Rushworth (being, it would appear, a good horseman) 

 was the person usually employed to carry addresses and other com-' 

 munications from the house to his majesty ; and Wood records that 

 on those occasions he was wont to perform the journey to York in 

 twenty-four hours. At a somewhat later date he appears to have been 

 in like manner entrusted to convey the messages of the house to 

 their general, Essex. On the 14th of June 1643, the house ordered 

 " That the mare and young horse belonging to Mr. Endymion Porter, 

 lately brought up from Enfield to London, be forthwith delivered to 

 Mr. John Rushworth, to be employed in the service of the parlia- 

 ment in sending messages between this house and the Lord- General." 

 On a subsequent day it was further resolved that he should be 

 recommended to the committee of the house for excise, and to the 

 treasurers and commissioners, to be employed in some office or place 

 .suitable to his condition and the recommendation of the house, 

 " towards a recompense of the several services he hath done for the 

 kingdom." It is not known however that he derived any substantial 

 benefit from this vote. 



In 1643 he took the covenant with most of his party. In 1645, 

 when the command of the parliamentary forces was given to Sir 

 Thomas Fairfax, who was his near relation, Rushworth was appointed 

 his secretary ; and from this time he was principally with the army, 

 till Fairfax's resignation of his command in 1650. Being at Oxford 

 in Fairfax's suite in 1649, ho received from the university the degree 

 of MA. Having returned to London and taken up his residence in 

 Lincoln's Inn, he was, in 1652, appointed one of the committee for 

 the reform of the common law. The next time we hear of him is as 

 one of the members for Berwick in Cromwell's last parliament, which 

 met in January 1653 ; and he again sat for the same borough in that 

 which restored Charles II., in April 1660. The overthrow of the 



Protectorate however was fatal to Rushworth's rising fortunes. We 

 have seen the zeal with which he served the republican party ; and 

 there can be no doubt that this was the side to which he was heart 

 and soul attached ; he had submitted the first volume of his ' His- 

 torical Collections,' in manuscript, to Oliver Cromwell ; and when it 

 appeared in print it was ushered in by a dedication in very high- 

 flown terms to the new Protector Richard. When the king came 

 back, Rushworth withdrew this unlucky dedication; and he also 

 made a modest attempt to conciliate Charles by presenting to him 

 some registers of the Privy Council which had fallen into his hands. 

 Thanks were formally returned to him in the king's name for the 

 books, but he received no encouragement to expect any further 

 evidence of the royal favour. 



Rushworth had not, like many of his party, taken advantage of his 

 opportunities and of the appointments he had held, to secure a fortune 

 to himself out of the misfortunes of his country, and he was now 

 probably in rather straitened circumstances. When Sir Orlando 

 Bridgeman was made lord keeper however, in 1677, he appointed 

 Rushworth his secretary ; and we find him sitting again for Berwick, 

 both in the parliament which met in March 1679, and also in that 

 which met at Oxford in 1681. But after this, it is stated, he lived in 

 retirement and obscurity; till, in 1684, he was arrested for debt and 

 sent to the King's Bench prison, where he remained till he died, on 

 the 12th of May 1690. He had latterly taken to drinking to drown 

 care, and his mind and memory were nearly gone for some time before 

 he died. Rushworth left several daughters, " virtuous women," says 

 Anthony Wood, " of which one was married to Sir Franc. Vane, of the 

 North." 



The first part, in one volume folio, of Rushworth's 'Historical 

 Collections of Private Passages of State, Weighty Matters in Law, and 

 Remarkable Proceedings in Parliament,' embraces the space from 

 1618 to 1629, and was published in 1659. It was reprinted clan- 

 destinely in 1675, and also again in 1682. Part second, in two 

 volumes, extending from 1629 to 1640, appeared in 1680; and that 

 same year Rushworth also published, in one volume folio, his account 

 of the ' Trial of the Earl of Strafibrd,' which is now considered as 

 forming the eighth volume of his ' Historical Collections.' The 

 remaining parts of that work were left ready for the press at his 

 death; and part third, in two volumes, extending from 1640 to 1645', 

 appeared in 1692 ; part fourth, also in two volumes, and coining down 

 to 1648, in 1701. All the seven volumes, together with Strafford's 

 Trial, were reprinted ia 1721. Rushworth's intention, as he states 

 in the preface to his second volume, had been to bring down the work 

 to the dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653. 



Of the importance of this active and industrious compiler's labours, 

 and of the value of what he has bequeathed to us, there can be no 

 doubt. His collection contains an immense number of papers and 

 notices now nowhere else to be found, and many which never were 

 to be found elsewhere. And it may also be admitted that the promise 

 of perfect impartiality with which he sets out, is upon the whole as 

 well kept as we have any right to expect that it should be. The book 

 however was loudly cried out against for its unfairness, its positive 

 falsehoods and inventions, as well as its omissions and suppressions, 

 by the high church and Tory party on the appearance of the first 

 volume. An elaborate exposition of the grounds of these charges 

 (which however are very unsatisfactorily made out after all) may be 

 found in the long introduction to Nelson's ' Impartial Collection of 

 the Great Affairs of State from the beginning of the Scotch Rebellion 

 in the year 1639;' which indeed was professedly published "by his 

 majesty's special command," in opposition to Rushworth's work, but 

 of which, although it was intended to come down to the death of 

 Charles I., no more than two volumes ever appeared, the first in 1682, 

 the second in 1683, carrying the history no farther than to January 

 1642. 



*RUSKIN, JOHN, was born about the beginning of 1819. He 

 says, " I was born in London, and accustomed for two or three years 

 to no other prospect than that of the brick walls over the way ; had 

 no brothers nor sisters, nor companions." His father was a wealthy 

 merchant, and he enjoyed, he tells us, " an early life of more travelling 

 than is usually indulged to a child." To this city birth and early 

 journeying he ascribes his intense love of the grandeur of natural 

 scenery ; " though I could always make myself happy in a quiet way, 

 the beauty of the mountains had an additional charm of change and 



adventure which a country-bred child would not have felt." 



" The first thing which I remember, as an ovent in life, was being 

 taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater ; 

 the intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the 

 hollows in the mossy roots over the crag into the dark lake, has asso- 

 ciated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever since. 



These feelings [of ' awe and heart hunger ' in the presence 



of mountains] remained in their full intensity till I was eighteen or 

 twenty, and then, as the reflective and practical power increased, and 

 the ' cares of this world ' gained upon me, faded gradually away." 

 But there remained " the gift of taking pleasure in land- 

 scape, which I assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men ; 

 it having been the ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the 

 choice of its field of labour." (' Modern Painters,' v. iii., ch. 17.) 



Mr. Ruskiu's academic education was completed at Oxford, where 



