236 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Bedford the Parliamentarian was one and the same person. Alas ! 
however, for the constancy of even the best of men, so it was. 
John Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, wrote divers theological 
works; among others the " Dissertationes de Morte Christi et de 
Predestinatione" Davenent died in 1641, and Dr. Edward 
Davenant sent this and other works to Archbishop Usher for 
publication ; but the wretched state of the times prevented their 
appearing for some years; and in 1650 the work came out, edited, 
not by the archbishop, but by T. B. In an epistle to the well- 
affected reader, avowedly by Thomas Bedford, he says that 
"Having divers years since delivered some few (sermons) out of 
this text to mine auditory I did lately (upon warning given) take 
it once againe in hand, and alter, change, correct, and enlarge it till 
I brought it to this quantitie in which it is, so preparing it for a 
more noble audience. Then finding it to be overlong to be re- 
hearsed at once I was constrained againe to epitomize. Here 
therefore hast thou at large the whole body of that discourse 
whose epitomie was rehearsed in publique." 
In 1650 Bedford, at the suggestion of Usher, published, along 
with two divinity theses of his own, a letter of Bishop Davenant 
to Dr. Ward, entitled "Epistola de Sacramentis ;" and in the same 
year presented his own and Bishop Davenant's works, edited, it 
will be remembered, by T. B., bound together, to Zion College 
Library ; and he also gave Bishop Davenant's work to the library 
of Queen's College, Cambridge, where he had been educated. 
When through the industry and research of the Bev. J. Ingle 
Dredge, of Buckland Brewer, the proof had reached this point, there 
was hardly any room for doubt that the persecuted Koyalist of 1643 
was the promoted Parliament-man of 1647. What were the chain 
of circumstances leading up to this culmination will probably never 
be known. The great fire of London in 1 666 destroyed the evidence 
which could have been very interesting. The Books of Merchant 
Tailors are perfectly silent ; they seem to have accepted the appoint- 
ment sullenly ; conjecture only is left us. It may be that the 
Parliament regretted having silenced a learned and honoured divine, 
and gave him preferment on a tacit understanding that he should 
keep clear of politics ; or it may be that the sharp whip of poverty 
compelled Bedford to ask for assistance, even when in so doing he 
had to put his pride in his pocket, in order to save wife and children 
from want. What the exact facts were we probably never shall 
