Account of 

 W. Tytler, Efq; 



(24) ^ HISrORT of the SOCIETT. 



merits, and elaborate analyfes of the chain of its arguments. 

 As an argument on evidence^ no fuffrage could perhaps be more 

 decifive of its merit than that of one of the greatefl lawyers, 

 and indeed one of the ablefl men that ever fat on the woolfack 

 of England, the late Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who decla- 

 red Mr Tytler's Enquiry to be the beft concatenation of cir- 

 cumftantiate proofs brought to bear upon one point, that he had 

 ever perufed. What effecfl that body of evidence, or the argu- 

 ments deduced from it, ought to have upon the minds of thofe 

 to whom the fubjedl becomes matter of invefligation, I do not 

 prefume to determine. The opinion of the late Dr Henry, 

 author of The Hijlory of Great Britain on a new Plan^ may per- 

 haps be thought neither partial nor confident ; who fays, in a 

 letter to Mr Tytler, publifhed in the volume of Tranfidions of 

 the Antiquarian Society of Scotland^ That he would be a bold man 

 who fhould now publiih an hiflory of Queen Mary, in the 

 fame flrain with the two hiftorians, (Mr Hume and Dr Ro- 

 bertson), whofe opinions on the fubjedl the Enquiry had exa- 

 mined and controverted. 



I CANNOT help obferving, in juftice to Mr Hume's impar- 

 tiality, that no poffible motive could be afligned for the preju- 

 dice which the favourers of Queen Mary have fuppofed him 

 to entertain againft her. As a party queftion, in which view 

 Mr Tytler has placed it in his IntroduGlion to the latter edi- 

 tions of his work*, Mr Hume had furely no bias to millead 



him 



* " The charafter, accotnplifhments and misfortunes of this Princefs, (fays the 

 Introdudlion), have been the fubj eft of much writing and controverfy among the 

 Britilh hiftorians. Republican writers, equally averfe to monarchy and to the 

 Houfe of Stuart, have drawn her picture in the blackeft colours, by traducing her as 

 an accomplice with the Earl of Bothwell in the murder of the Lord Darnley her 

 hufband. On the other hand, the writers attached to the ancient confl.itution of their 

 country, and to the Family of Stuart, have regarded that unfortunate Princefs as 

 one of the moft virtuous and accomplilhed charafters of that age, and as a viftim to 

 the fecret confpiracies carried on by feme of the heads of the reformed party in her 

 kingdom for her deftruftion." 



