 Section 5 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy, Volume 1 by John Tulloch. The commencement of our movement is associated with the name of romantic interest in English history—that of Lucius Carey, the second Lord Falkland. There are a few more charming sketches in English literature, and none more charming in all the attractive series from the same pen, than Lord Clarendon's sketch of this friend of his youth, while his melancholy fate, almost at the opening of the Civil War, has deepened the interest of a singular career and lent to it something of tragic pathos. Footnote—Lord Clarendon has sketched his friend's character in his History of the Rebellion, chiefly in Book 7, Volume 2, pages 445-455, Clarendon Press Edition, but also, and still more elaborately, in his later work, The Memoirs of His Life, written in continuation of his history after his final banishment from England in 1667, Volume 1, 42-50, Clarendon Press Edition. End of footnote. It is true that Clarendon's portrait is warmly colored. Not only the magic of his art, but the ideal enthusiasm which lit up the image of a long-vanished friend may be traced in its glowing lines. Such side-lights of contemporary testimony as we possess regarding Falkland are also somewhat vaguely admiring and indefinite. There is a sort of nimbus about the figure which prevents us seeing it in the full daylight in which we see many of his contemporaries. But when men like Horace Walpole infer from this that Falkland has been greatly overestimated, and that his actions by no means equal his fame, they forget how brief his career was, and mistake its true significance. He was only thirty-three when he fell at Newbury, and it is not as a politician that he claims our special admiration, as it is not in this aspect indeed that he is so applausefully described by Clarendon. Falkland may not have been fitted for the stormy career in which he had reluctantly embarked. He was incapable of becoming either a Clarendon on the one side or a Cromwell on the other. He lacked the hardy fiber which makes men go straight and unscrupulously at their object, a special source of weakness in such a time. But hardyhood of political bias is by no means so rare a virtue that it is to be placed above all others, and Falkland's true portrait is not that of the politician or the soldier, but of the poet, the scholar, the theological controversialist, and above all the inspiring chief of a circle of rational and moderate thinkers amidst the excesses of a violent and dogmatic age. Fortunately also it is in these aspects that we can now most fairly judge him. His poems, his speeches concerning episcopacy, and his discourse on infallibility survive and bring before us as living an image of his mind and stamp of thought as we could desire. If Walpole had appreciated what indeed was not to be expected of him, the intellectual significance of Falkland's position, and the true charm of his influence, he would never have spoken of his weakness in mediocrity. A man's contemporaries may not always be the best judge of his character and abilities, but it would indeed have been strange if one who not only has been celebrated by Suckling, Ben Johnson, and Cowley, and lovingly sketched by Clarendon, but who was also honoured by Hales and consulted in argument by Chillingworth should not have possessed remarkable powers. The study of Falkland's remains appear to us fully to warrant the distinction which has gathered around his name and the importance which we assign to him in our history. Lucius Carey was descended from the Careys of Cockington in Devonshire, an old, nightly family. His grandfather, Sir Edward Carey, appears to have removed to Hertfordshire where his father Henry was born at Aldenham, probably about the middle of Elizabeth's reign. This, the first Lord Falkland, was a man of distinguished, although unsuccessful, political eminence. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, which he left without taking any degree, but where he seems to have left behind him a celebrated social name. It is said by Fuller that his chamber was the rendezvous of all the wits, philosophers, and divines of the period, but it has been conjectured, not improbably, that there is some confusion betwixt this traditionary repute of the father as a student and the subsequent well-known social position occupied by his son in connection with Oxford. After being introduced at court, Sir Henry Carey rose rapidly from post to post till he became a privy councillor in 1617, and in 1620 was created Viscount of Falkland in the county of Fife in Scotland in pursuance of a policy begun by James and continued by Charles of bestowing Scotch titles upon Englishmen with an idea of thereby bringing the two countries into union. Under this title he proceeded to Ireland two years later where he governed as Lord Deputy till 1629. He was then recalled in disgrace, a victim to intrigues both in Ireland and the English court. On the one hand he has been blamed for keeping too strict a reign over the Roman Catholics, and on the other hand Leland and his history of Ireland accuses his government of indolence and weakness. The truth appears to be that he failed to appreciate Charles' true designs or to make himself useful in furthering them. He was evidently an ambitious, strong tempered and accomplished man with more address in gaining power than ability in maintaining it. His later position at the English court without definite trust or employment must have been highly uncomfortable. Clarendon speaks of his broken fortunes and his relations to his son after the latter's marriage without his approval cannot have added to his happiness. He composed a history of the most unfortunate Prince King Edward II, which was not published till 1680, and an epitaph, not bad, Walpole says, on Elizabeth Countess of Huntington. Footnote. This epitaph is also, and more probably, ascribed to the son. End of footnote. He was also remarkable, according to the same authority, for an invention to prevent his name being counterfeited by artfully concealing in it the successive year of his age. The mother of Lucius was the sole daughter and heir of Sir Lawrence Tenfield, wife Baron of Exchequer. We know little of her beyond the fact of her perversion to Romanism. She was so devoted to her new faith that she came in 1634 under the notice of Lod, who, in a letter to the King, dated July in that year, asks Leav to bring the old lady for her interfering zeal before the court of High Commission. She was, like Buckingham's mother, one of the victims of the Jesuit missionaries who then infested England, and seems to have carried with her not only her daughters, but her younger sons. This is to be remembered in connection with Falkland's earnestness on the subject of infallibility. If himself unmoved by the same influences he had yet in many ways been brought into contact with the unceasing activity and marvelous seductions of Jesuitism. Lucius Carey was born, according to the common authorities, at Burford, a market town in Oxfordshire, about the year 1610. Footnote. There is no record of the birth in the public register of the place which commences about the beginning of the reign of James I. End of Footnote. The manner of Great Two, which afterwards became so associated with his name as his favorite residence, and the rendezvous of his poetical and theological friends, was in the immediate neighborhood. This and another estate, which is described by Wood as the priory with the rectory and domains of Burford, were the property of his maternal grandfather, and came to him by direct inheritance. Footnote. Clarendon says that his grandfather settled his property, quote, in such manner upon his grandson Sir Lucius Carey without taking notice of his father or mother, that upon his grandmother's death all the land, with two very good houses, very well furnished, worth above two thousand pounds per annum, in a most pleasant country and the two most pleasant places in that country, with a very plentiful personal estate, fell into his hands in possession and to his entire disposal. End of Footnote. Wood infers that he was born at Burford because from inquiry at the ancients of that town he learned that he was certainly nursed there. Lucius was accordingly about twelve years of age when his father went to Ireland as Lord Deputy in 1622. Immediately thereafter he appears to have begun his studies at Trinity College, Dublin. All contemporary registers have disappeared and we can only conjecture what his course of education was by its results. Clarendon says that he made better progress in academic, quote, exercises and languages than most men do in more celebrated places, in so much as when he came into England, which was when he was about the age of eighteen years, he was not only master of the Latin tongue and had read all the poets and other of the best authors with notable judgment for that age, but he understood and spake and writ French as if he had spent many years in France, close, quote. The religious influences which surrounded him in Trinity College were decidedly Calvinistic, inclining to Puritanism. In the close of Elizabeth's reign Ireland became the refuge of many of the reforming divines, uneasy under the Prolatic restraints which hem them about in England, and Trinity College, at its foundation in 1593, was supplied with eminent Calvinistic professors from Cambridge. The Irish Articles of 1615 remain the abiding memorial of the hardy predestinarianism of the Irish Protestant Church. Usher, their reputed author, was provost of Trinity College when young Falkland entered it, and during his time of study here, in 1624, was promoted to the Irish primacy. It is not improbable that the theological atmosphere which thus surrounded our young student influenced him through life. For unlike his friends, Hales and Chillingworth, Falkland seems to have remained a Calvinist, and even strongly denounced Arminianism along with Popory in his first speeches in the long Parliament. Nor is it impossible that he derived from this early time the first impulse towards those latitudinarian views of church government for which he was afterwards distinguished. For the university authorities in Dublin and Usher conspicuously, strange as this may seem, were no less remarkable for their liberal ecclesiasticism than for their rigid doctrinal orthodoxy. They strongly rejected that idea of a eustaveenum of episcopacy which had been spreading in England from the beginning of the century, and advocated a modified episcopal organization which left room for presbyterial action and certain elements of popular or congregational freedom. On his return to England it has been alleged that Falkland entered St. John's College, Oxford. But there is no evidence of this. His name does not occur in the register of St. John's Oxford, and the story frequently repeated has probably arisen from the fact that, so early as 1621, before his father went to Ireland, he appears to have been entered with his brother Lorenzo at St. John's Cambridge. This at least is the inference left to be drawn from a statement in Baker's history of this college, recently printed, as well as from a letter of Falkland's address to Dr. Beal, the head of the college, in January 1641 to 42. Extended Footnote The fact remains doubtful, notwithstanding, and we have not been able to clear it up. The biography of Britannica expressly says, there is no account of his admittance in St. John's College registers. If admitted in 1621, it can only have been with a view to future attendance, which never took place. The father's departure for Ireland, having led to the abandonment of the plan of his son studying at Cambridge. The following is the letter addressed by Falkland to Dr. Beal, the head of the college, in the beginning of 1641 to 42. Sir, I received lately a letter from yourself and others of your noble society, wherein as many titles were given me to which I had none, so that which I should most willingly have acknowledged and mottled with most justice claim, you are not pleased to vouchsafe me, that is, of a St. John's man. I confess I am both proud and ashamed of that, and the latter in respect that the fruits are unproportionable to the seed-plot. Yet, sir, as little learning as I brought from you, and as little as I have since increased and watered what I did bring, I am sure that I shall carry about with me an indelible character of affection and duty to that society, and an extraordinary longing for some occasion of expressing that affection and that duty. I shall desire you to express this to them, and to add this, that as I shall never forget myself to be a member of their body, so I shall be ready to catch at all means of declaring myself to be not only to the body, but every member of it, sir, your very humble servant, Falkland, endorsed for the President of St. John's College in Cambridge with my humble service." This letter, with the Latin letter to which it is a reply, and which certainly does not spare epithets, is found at page 532, Volume 1, of the edition of Baker's History, from which we have already quoted. It was also printed long ago in the notice of Falkland in the biography of Britannica, yet in the face of all, and even quoting the above letter in a footnote, Lady Theresa Lewis, in her Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Clarendon, the first volume of which is almost entirely given to Lord Falkland, especially asserts that it was St. John's College, Oxford, of which he was a member. He playfully alludes to this circumstance, she says, in speaking of himself as a St. John's man. The parish history of Burford also says that Lucius Carey completed his education after Dublin by a residence at Oxford, end of footnote. It is clear on other grounds that academic study cannot have been Falkland's occupation during the years that followed his return to England. Within a year of this event he succeeded to his grandfather's estates. Clarendon expressly says that this took place about the time that he was nineteen years of age, or in 1629. About the same time he had begun to form those literary connections which became so great a feature in his life. This is evident from Ben Johnson's verses in the series of poems which he has entitled Underwoods. Footnote. As the multitude called timber-trees promiscuously growing a wood or forest, so I am bold to entitle these lesser poems of lesser growth by this of Underwood, out of the analogy they hold to the forest, in my former book and no otherwise. Close quote. Ben Johnson to the reader. End of footnote. The verses are inscribed to the immortal memory and friendship of that noble pair Sir Lucius Carey and Sir Henry Morrison. Now Sir Henry Morrison was the brother of the lady whom Falkland married before he was of age, and previous to this event Morrison died. We must suppose therefore not only his courtship, but the commencement and completion of this memorable friendship in which Johnson shared to have been embraced within these years. Both Morrison and Falkland had plainly made a strong impression upon Johnson and the literary society to which he belonged, and the verses in which he describes their affection for each other and seeks consolation for Morrison's untimely death are here and there very touching. Nothing, for example, can be more exquisite than the following lines which might be applied prophetically to Falkland himself. Quote. It is not growing like a tree in bulk doth make men better be, or standing long in oak three hundred year to fall along at last dry bald and sear, a lily of a day is fairer far in May, although it fall and die that night. It was the plant, the flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, and in short measures life may perfect be. Thus early young Falkland was launched upon the world and become known as the friend of Ben Johnson and the bright circle of poetic wits, suckling, davenant, caroo, and others that formed his earliest literary and social connection. But during this period, sixteen twenty-nine to thirty-one, he was busy not only with such distractions, but with others still more incompatible with quiet academic study. He was a prisoner in the fleet for misdemeanor during ten days in the commencement of sixteen thirty. In a letter or petition from his father to the king at this time, Lord Falkland says, quote, I had a son until I lost him in your Highness's displeasure where I cannot seek him because I have not will to find him there. Men say there is a wild young man now prisoner in the fleet for measuring his actions by his own private fence. This was no doubt the source of Wood's statement that Lucius was a wild youth, and the suggestion has been tempting to biographical gossip. The full explanation of the affair, however, is given in the correspondence and extracts from the council register presented in the appendix to Lady Lewis's volume. It appears that a company of which young Falkland had the command was transferred by order of the king to Sir Francis Willoughby. Willoughby explains at length that he had nothing to do with the act of transference, but our young soldier is highly indignant and demands satisfaction with the sword. I do confess you, he says, quote, a brave gentleman, and for my own sake I would not but have my adversary be so, but I know no reason why, therefore, you should have my britches, which if every brave man should have I should be feigned shortly to beg in trousers. I doubt not, but you will give me satisfaction with your sword, of which if you will send me the length with time and place you shall be sure, according to an appointment, to meet." He was evidently a fiery and high-tempered gentleman at the age of twenty, and resolved, as he himself says, as he could not strike at the head to strike at the stone that lies lower. The result was that a warrant was issued from Whitehall to the warden of the fleet to receive into his custody the person of Sir Lucius Carey, and to keep him prisoner until further order. Happily the order for his liberation is dated, as we have indicated, only ten days later, so that the intervention of his father appears to have been successful. There is no information as to the king's purpose throughout the business, or as to whether the withdrawal of the son's command had anything to do with the father's dishonored position at court. Whatever its cause may have been, the slight at his plane was deeply resented by young Carey, driving him, as it did, beyond all reasonable bounds of quarrel with his successor in the command of the company. It may be doubted whether it was ever entirely forgotten amidst all the painful experience which Falcon had of the after-conduct of the king. Falcon's marriage was not without the romantic interest which attaches more or less to all his life. The lady, we have seen, was the sister of his beloved friend and companion, and he married her in spite of his father's earnest wishes to form a richer and more noble alliance for him. FUTNOTE The father was Sir Richard Morrison of Tule Park, Leicestershire. END OF FUTNOTE So strongly did the latter resent his son's conduct, that he broke off all connection with him and refused all offers of mediation. The affair, as described by Clarendon, well illustrates the temper of both father and son. In a short time after he had possession of the estate his grandfather had left him, and before he was of age, he committed a fault against his father in marrying a young lady whom he passionately loved, without any considerable portion, which exceedingly offended him and disappointed all his reasonable hopes and expectation of redeeming and repairing his own broken fortune and desperate hopes in court by some advantageous marriage of his son about which he had then some probable treaty. Sir Lucius Carey was very conscious to himself of his offence and transgression and the consequence of it, which though he could not repent having married a lady of a most extraordinary wit and judgment and of the most signal virtue and exemplary life that the age produced, and who brought him many hopeful children in which he took great delight, yet he confessed it with the most sincere and dutiful applications to his father for his pardon that could be made, and for the prejudice he had brought upon his fortune by bringing no fortune to him he offered to repair it by resigning his whole estate to his disposal and to rely wholly upon his kindness for his own maintenance and support, and to that purpose he had caused conveyances to be drawn by counsel which he brought readily engrossed to his father, and was willing to seal and execute them that they might be valid, but his father's passion and indignation so far transported him, though he was a gentleman of excellent parts, that he refused any reconciliation and rejected all the offers that were made him of the estate, so that his son remained still in the possession of his estate against his will for which he found great reason afterwards to rejoice. ExTended Footnote The character which Clarendon gives to Lady Falkland does not appear overdrawn, and it is somewhat singular that we hear so little of her, for her life had a distinct religious interest of its own. A small volume entitled The Holy Life and Death of the Lady Lettuce, Viscountess Falkland, etc., by John Duncan Parson, sequestered, ran through several editions in the period preceding the Restoration. The edition before us is the third, bearing the date of 1653. It contains not only a life, but certain letters, all designed to set forth the many excellent virtues of the Lady Falkland, and to present the figure of a pious soul with its vicissitudes of comfort and grief. The letters are not her own, but composed, as well as the answers to them, by the author of the volume, thus giving, as he says, not a strict relation, but a representation. Having learned all her objections against herself, he explains, and having seen the chief sorrow of her heart, I composed them into these letters, and annexed these answers to them, and left them with her. In short, the lineaments are drawn from the Holy Lady's soul, not exactly, but with a view to the general purposes of a pious manual. From such a volume it is not easy to glean any clear outline of facts, or indeed of wonder. Yet the somewhat vague lineaments which it records evidently shows that Lady Falkland was no ordinary person. She seems quite entitled to take her place beside Mrs. Hutcherson, or Evelyn's accomplished and pious friend Lady Margaret Godolphin, who on opposite sides gave the luster of their simple, earnest, and unaffected piety to soften and irradiate the miseries of a period of gloomy, religious conflict. We are told, quote, she spent some hours every day in her private cloisters and meditations, and these were called her busy hours. Then her maids came into her chamber every morning, and ordinarily she passed about an hour with them in praying, catechizing, and instructing them. On the Lord's day she rose in the morning earlier than ordinarily, yet enjoined herself so much private duty with her children and servants, examining them in the sermons and catechizing, and with her own soul, that oftentimes the day was too short for her. There was near acquaintance between her and some strict papists, and is near between her and some stricter nonconformists. And she not only warily avoided the superstition of the one and the nonconformity of the other, but also earnestly labored to reduce the one and the other from their erroneous ways. Her young and most dear son Lorenzo, whom God had endowed with the cleverest of natural abilities and to whom her affections were most tender by reason of these fair blossoms of piety, God takes away from her. This added to her former troubles of the loss of her husband, of her crosses in the world, and her spiritual afflictions. Enough has been extracted to bring the picture of a fair and high character before the reader, and yet this is the same lady of whom Aubrey, in his sketch of her husband, tells the following ridiculous and unworthy story. When she had a mind to beg anything of my lord for one of her maids, women, nurses, she would say, however unreasonable a request, I warrant you for all this I will obtain it of my lord, it will cost me but the expense of a few tears. Now she could make her words good, and this great wit, the greatest master of reason and judgment of his time, at the long run being stormed by her tears, I presume there were kisses and secret embraces that were also ingredients, would this pious lady obtain her unreasonable desires of her lord. Close quote. Those who can believe a story of this kind may also believe Aubrey's further scandal, quote, that it was the grief of the death of Mrs. More, a handsome lady at court, who was his mistress, and whom he loved above all creatures, was the true cause of his falcons being so madly guilty of his own death. Close quote. In a future page we discuss the credibility of Aubrey's statements and show how entirely undeserving of trust they must be held in matters of opinion or character, or indeed in any matters save those personal details and recollections which lie within the province of the gossip. End of footnote. In consequence of this disagreement with his father, and probably also on account of his unpleasant relations with the court, and the frustration at home of the military ambition which he had cherished, and which remained one of his strongest impulses, he transported himself and his wife into Holland, resolving, says Clarendon, to buy some military command and to spend the remainder of his life in that profession. Footnote. In his natural inclination, says Clarendon, he acknowledged that he was addicted to the profession of a soldier. End of footnote. Here also, however, disappointment awaited him. He found no scope for his military aspirations, and returned again within a brief interval to England. Holland was at this time resting after its long internal conflicts, following the independence which it had so bravely won under the great William of Orange and his son. Maurice's death had brought comparative peace to the raging factions of Gomarists and Remonstrants which had divided it, and in the very year, 1631, a Falklands visit, Grosius had returned from his long exile in France, and been temporarily received with great rejoicing throughout the country which had treated him so shamefully. It is not improbable that our enthusiastic young Englishman, with that singular affinity which he had for whatever was noble and distinguished in character, may have made, during his visit, the acquaintance of the great jurist and divine. The verses which he afterwards inscribed to him are full not only of lofty admiration, but of some warmth of personal feeling. Quote. Our ages warder, by thy birth the fame of Belgium, by thy banishment the shame, thy age and art seemed to unite at once the youth of Phoebus and the light, your acquaintance all of worth pursue and count it honoured to be known of you. He had evidently, in any case, studied Grosius and felt his own love of truth and clearness of thought, developed by contact with this luminous, liberal, and eminently rational intellect. Though truth do naked to thy sight appear, and scarce can we doubt more than thou canst clear, though thou at once dost different glories join, a lofty poet and a deep divine, canst in the purest phrase clothe solid sense, Scevola's law in Tully's eloquence. Though thy employments have excelled thy pen, showed thee much skilled in books, but more in men, and proved thou canst at the same easy rate correct an author as uphold estate. All this yet of thy worth makes but a part, and we admire thy head less than thy heart, which, when in want, was yet too brave to close, though with thy ungrateful country's foes. Since all our praise and wonder is too small for each of these, what shall we give for all? All that we can we do, append divine, and differing only in the tongue from thine, doth thy choice labours with success rehearse, and to another world transplants thy verse. At the same height to which before they rose when they forced wonder from unwilling foes, now Thames with Ganges may thy labours praise, which their breed faith and hear devotion raise. A reference to Grosius' well-known treatise De Veretate Religionis Cristiani, the original design of which was the conversion of the Indians. On Falkland's return to England he abandoned for the time all political and military pursuits, and retired to his residence at great Tew, to a country life and to his books, that since he was not like to improve himself in arms he might advance in letters. This must have been in the course of 1632. And now for seven years, during all the unhappy period of Wentworth's and Lod's tyrannies, known as Thurow, Falkland is to be conceived in the main as settled on his estates in Oxfordshire, engaged in the study of Greek, Classical, and Patristic, completing his education pursued in so desultory a manner during the three preceding years, elaborating those religious and political opinions which were to guide his public career, and gathering around him that group of thinkers which, though they exercised for a while but little influence on the course of affairs, were even then acknowledged to be a distinct and significant party. Footnote. The word Thurow, as defining the policy of the government from 1633 onwards, appears first in the correspondence between Lod and Wentworth. As for the state, says Lod, writing to Wentworth, September 9, 1633, Indeed, my Lord, I am for Thurow, but I see that both thick and thin stays somebody where I conceive it should not, and it is impossible for me to go Thurow alone. The word once introduced, they play upon it between them in future letters, writing it sometimes in Cypher, sometimes openly. Thus Wentworth to Lod, August 23, 1634. Go as it shall please God with me, believe me, my Lord, I will be Thurow and Thurow out, one and the same. Do which, Lod replies, October 20. As for my marginal note, I see you deciphered it well, and I see you make use of it too. Do so still, Thurow and Thurow. Massons Milton, p. 620 and 621. End of Footnote. The progress of violence, first on the one side and then on the other, had its way, and bore down both him and them. But the influence of their opinion survived, and continued to gather force with advancing thought, and the resurgence of excited passions on both sides. We have no particular information as to the manner in which Falkland and his friends looked upon the doings of Wentworth and Lod. But in the light of his later speeches on Episcopacy there is little difficulty in understanding his feelings, and the deep indignation which the prevalent ecclesiastical cruelties must have excited in his breast. It is strange to reflect on the outrages against religious liberty which were proceeding during the very time that Falkland and Chillingworth were debating over the religion of Protestants. In the same year in which Chillingworth's great work, which had been argued out betwixt the two friends and mainly composed at Falkland's residence, saw the light, Prynne and Bastwick and Burton had their ears cut off in Palace Yard Westminster for venturing to impune the prolatic constitution of the Church of England. The period was one in which all wise men were more or less in retirement, and when many, as is well known, would have gladly left England for ever if they had not been prevented, unwittingly detained on the part of those who interfered with them for higher work at home. Hampton and Cromwell both, it is well known, along with others destined to be conspicuous in the ensuing troubles, had made up their minds to emigrate when Charles's tyrannic policy, blind in every direction, interfered to prevent them. End of Footnote The death of his father in 1633 formed a temporary break in his retirement. It took him back to London sooner than he intended, and of course waited him with cares and duties from which he had been heathered to exempt. The fact of his having been thus obliged to return unexpectedly to London is particularly noticed by Clarendon. He had declared when he went to the country that he would not see London in many years which was the place he loved of all the world. But now his father's death by an unhappy accident, a fall which he had from a stand in Theobalds Park, made his repair to London absolutely necessary in fewer years than he had proposed for his absence. He does not seem, however, with all his fondness for town and its companionships, to have tarried longer in it on this occasion than was necessary. As soon as he had finished the transactions consequent on the death of his father, quote, he retired again to his country life and to his severe course of study which was very delightful to him as soon as he was engaged in it. But he was wont to say that he never found reluctancy in anything he resolved to do but in his quitting London and departing from the conversation of those he enjoyed there, which was in some degree preserved and continued by frequent letters and often visits which were made by his friends from thence whilst he continued wedded to the country. End of Chapter 3 Part 1 Section 6 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy Volume 1 by John Tullock. It is evident that Falkland had two sets of friends among his intellectual contemporaries and that the graver philosophical and theological set to which Clarendon specially eludes came in some degree in succession to the poetic friends of his youth. Gradually he abandoned poetry for divinity and it is in the later years of his residence at Tew, following his second retirement after his father's death, say from 1635 to the spring of 1639, that we may conceive him to have added divines such as Hammond and Sheldon and Morley to his acquaintance and converted his society into the convivium theologicum so well described by Clarendon. His well-known lines imply this, while along with his own verses on the death of Ben Johnson they bring before us a vivid picture of that earlier group of the wits of the town whose companionship and conversation were so enjoyable to him when in London. It is interesting to notice that Hales and Chillingworth are both mentioned in suckling's lines, and so we gather that they were amongst Falkland's friends in his earlier as well as his later mood of mind and were indeed his friends and intellectual associates in a sense which can hardly be supposed true of men like Sheldon and Morley. It was natural for Clarendon, writing after the Restoration, to emphasize such names, but Falkland himself would probably have dwelt more upon the bright circle of his more youthful years. Digby, Carew, Killigrew, and Main could often waller that inspired train. Footnote. Eclog on the death of Ben Johnson. Of the less known names of Killigrew and Main it may be mentioned that the first was King Charles's Jester, and the second Dr. Jasper Main, a dramatist and versifier as well as preacher of the period. The same names are found associated with Falkland's own in George Daniel's manuscript poems, the noble Falkland, Digby, Carew, Main, Bowman, Sands, etc. End of footnote. The list is more fully given by suckling and deserves to be transferred to our pages for its own sake, as well as for the pleasant glimpse which it gives us of a bygone literary society of which Falkland was evidently a conspicuous member. There Seldon, and he sat hard by the chair, went him and not far off, which was very fair, Sands with Townsend, for they keep no order, Digby and Shillingworth a little further. And there was Lueckens' translator, too, and he that makes God speak so big in poetry. Seldon and Walter and Bartlett's both the brothers, Jack Vaughan and Porter and divers others. The first that broke silence was good old Ben, prepared before with Canary Wine, and he told them plainly he deserved the bays for his recalled works where others were but plays. Tom Carew was next, but he had a fault that would not well stand with the laureate. His muse was hard bound, and the issue of his brain was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain. Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischief that he had got lately travelling in France, modestly hoped the handsomeness of his muse might any deformity about him excuse. Suckling next was called but did not appear, but straight one whispered Apollo at the ear that of all men living he cared not Fort. He loved not the muses so well as his sport. What Montague now stood forth to his trial and did not so much as expect a denial, but would he Apollo asked him first of all if he understood his own pastoral? Hales, set by himself, most gravely did smile to see them about nothing keep such a coil. Apollo had spied him but, knowing his mind, passed by and called Falkland that sat just behind. He was of late so gone with divinity that he had almost forgot his poetry, though to say the truth and Apollo did know it he might have been both his priest and his poet. Close quote. It is impossible to draw out into the light such a group of names, some of whom have left no impress upon our literature and no memory of any kind, but passing by in the meantime hails and Chillingworth, who will afterwards appear prominently in our pages, there are a few of the others that claim recognition both in connection with Falkland personally and with our subject. Seldens is the first and in some respects the most distinguished. He was at this time, say 1637, when Suckling's verses were published, about fifty years of age, and had long enjoyed an exceptional reputation for the extent and variety of his learning. His famous treatise on tithes had appeared about twenty years before, 1618. By the help of a strong body and vast memory, says Wood, he had become, quote, a prodigy in most parts of learning, especially in those which were not common. He had great skill in the divine and human laws, he was a great philologist, antiquary, herald, linguist, statesman, and what not, close, quote. Clarendon is even more enthusiastic, quote. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages, as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings, that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing. Yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability was such that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, needed that breeding, close, quote. While in his writings his style, quote, seems harsh and sometimes obscure, in his conversation he was the most clear discorser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and presenting them to the understanding of any man that hath been known, close, quote. A great friend of Ben Johnson he belonged himself in a slight way to the poetic fraternity as an occasional writer of verses in English, as well as in Greek and Latin. Faulkland greatly admired him, and according to Clarendon knew him so well that he became on an important occasion on which Charles wished to influence Seldin the medium of communication between him and the king. He may have learned from the older statesman's cynical thoughtfulness and contempt of extremes something of his own clearness and liberality in religious matters. Seldin's facility during the troubles that ensued has been blamed, but there is no reason to doubt that he was animated throughout by a sincere love of liberty, that liberty which, according to his own chosen motto, was above everything. He had been early disgusted at the bishops by the treatment to which they subjected him after the publication of his book on tithes. Their usage sunk deep into his stomach, and he was heartily glad when the storm swept them away. But while he worked with the Puritan Party he was entirely free from their prejudices. A story is told by Whitelock of the delight which he took in perplexing some of the divines in the Westminster assembly of which he was an active member. Sometimes when they had cited a text of Scripture to prove their assertions he would say, quote, Perhaps in your little pocket-bibles with gilt leaves, which they would often pull out and read, the translation may be thus, but the Greek and Hebrew signify thus and thus, close quote, and so would totally silence them. There is as much insolence as wit it must be allowed in this story. Many of the Westminster divines must have been quite a match for even Seldin in biblical learning. Yet a tradition of this kind serves to show the spirit of the great lawyer. He had evidently no love for the clergy, either Episcopal or Puritan, and especially detested clerical prejudices, the pretensions to special orthodoxy, and the dogmatic opinionativeness so prevalent in his time. One of the best and most characteristic of his sayings in his table-talk, which is hardly worthy of his reputation as a whole, clearly and admirably shows this. Quote, Tis vain to talk of an heretic, for a man for his heart can think no other wise than he does think. In the primitive times there were many opinions, nothing scarce but some or other held. One of these opinions being embraced by some prince and received into his kingdom the rest were condemned as heresies, and his religion, which was but one of the several opinions, first is said to be orthodox, and so to have continued ever since the apostles. Close quote. George Sandus, the sands of the poem, was one of Falkland's choicest friends not mentioned by Clarendon at all. He was the youngest son of the Archbishop of York, whose sufferings in the cause of the Reformation and subsequent promotion in the reign of Elizabeth are well known, and the brother of Hooker's pupil associated with the half-pathetic, half-ludicrous story of the great author of the laws of ecclesiastical polity rocking the cradle in his parsonage at Drayton-Bochon. He was more than thirty years Falkland's senior, having been born in 1577, but peculiar ties of sympathy and affection seemed to have united them. Twice he inscribes verses to my noble friend Mr. George Sandus upon his excellent paraphrase on the Psalms, and again upon his Job ecclesiasties and the lamentations clearly, learnedly, and eloquently paraphrased. The lines to Hugo Grosius, from which we have already quoted, are also prefixed to a translation by Sandus. He was a great traveler as well as a translator and versifier, having visited not only the several parts of Europe but many cities and countries of the East extending to the Holy Land. His travels were published in 1615, and widely read with great interest. Falkland evidently felt a special attraction in his fame as a traveler and his stores of foreign observation and experience. He assures Grosius, quote, None hath a larger heart, a fuller head, for he hath seen as much as you have read. The nearer countries passed, his steps have pressed the newfound world and trod the sacred East, where, his browsed you, the loftier palms do rise where the proud pyramids invade the skies, and, as all think, who his rare friendship own, deserves no less a journey to be known. His travels were his choice, and all those numerous realms returned again and knew he traveled over with his pen. And, Homer to himself, doth entertain with truths more useful than his muse could feign. Next, Ovid's transformations he translates with so rare art that those which he relates yield to this transmutation and the change of men to birds and trees appears not strange. Next, the poetic parts of scripture on his loom he weaves, and Job and Solomon his pen restores with all that heavenly choir, and shakes the dust from David's solemn lyre, from which, from all with just consent, he won the title of the English Buchanan, close quote. In the verses directly inscribed to Sandus there is the same admiring enthusiasm, combined with a genuine warmth of personal feeling. Stress is laid upon the smoothness of Sandus' diversification, which has also been highly commended by Dryden. Falkland contrasts it with his own imperfect attempts. Quote, Such is the verse thou writes'd, that who reads thine can never be content to suffer mine. Such is the verse I write, that reading mine I hardly can believe I have read thine, and wonder that their excellence once known, I nor correct nor yet conceal mine own. Close quote. Again he pays his friend a compliment, more than once repeated, for the high and sacred strain of his verse. Quote. Now thou hast diverted to a purer path thy quill, and changed Parnass's mount to Zion's hill, so that blessed David might almost desire to hear his harp thus echoed by thy lyre. Those who make wit their curse, who spend their brain, their time, and art in looser verse, to gain damnation and amistris, till they see how constant that is, how inconstant she, may from this great example learn to sway the parts th're blessed with some more blessed way. Close quote. Occasional allusions may be traced to the questions of the time which seem to indicate a fellow-feeling and coincidence of opinion betwixt the two friends regarding the favorite ideas of the Laudians and the absurd pretensions of Popory. Referring to the sight of the early Eastern churches, described by Sandus in his travels, he says, quote, in whom these notes so much required be agreement, miracles, antiquity, which can a never broke succession show from the apostles down, hear bragged of so, but confute her most immodest claim, who scorn apart yet to be all doth aim. Close quote. Finally, there is in the closing poem to Sandus, probably the last that Falkland wrote, a fine and touching passage which seems to forecast his own death, the pathetic beauty of which mingles strangely and solemnly with cheerful anticipations of his friend's future fame. Quote. How ere I finish here, my muse, her days ends in expressing thy deserved praise, whose fate in this seems fortunately cast to have so just an action for her last. And since there are who have been taught that death inspireth prophecy, expelling breath, I hope when these foretell what happy gains posterity shall reap from these thy pains, nor yet from these alone, but how thy pen, earth-like, shall yearly give new gifts to men, and thou fresh praise and we fresh good receive, the so-taught will not belief refuse to the last accents of a dying muse. Close quote. Of Thomas Carew and Sir William Davenant, the former the well-known author of some exquisite love-verses, and one of the most celebrated wits of the time, the latter, Poet Laureate after Johnson, it is unnecessary to speak. Both were eminent members of the poetic fraternity with which Falkland mingled, but there is no reason to think that either was among his special friends. With Johnson himself, however, his relations were highly cordial and intimate, while difference of age lent something of respectful admiration to his affection. Johnson had already learned to know and appreciate Falkland in those early years, before 1631, when he and Sir Henry Morrison attracted attention by their youthful friendship, quote, till either grew a portion of the other, and lived to be the great sir names and titles by which all made claims unto the virtue, nothing perfect done but as a carry or a Morrison, close quote. At that time Johnson was the acknowledged head of English literature. He was also still active and imperial in London intellectual society, although self-indulgence and a stroke of palsy had made ravages on his massive frame. Footnote. Johnson's habits of self-indulgence in his later years are well known. Suckling probably alludes to them in the lines, Old Ben prepared before with canary wine. Whatever else he wanted, he was sure, according to Isaac Walton, not to want wine, of which he usually took too much before he went to bed, if not oftener and sooner. End of footnote. He held his court in a place well known as the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, and hither all aspiring literary enthusiasts flocked. To be admitted to the Guild of Literature, which assembled in the great room in this tavern called the Apollo, was to be sealed of the tribe of Ben in the literary can't of the day. Whatever may have been his faults, Johnson was, like his later namesake, a powerful and varied genius, whose great qualities are not too highly extolled even in Falkland's verse. The lines upon his death are, upon the whole, our poet's most elaborate performance, there in the form of an eclog in which two shepherds, Hylis and Melibius, discourse, and this absurd arrangement, detracts from the naturalness and simplicity of the feeling, yet it breaks out here and there in true tones as well as in elaborate eulogy. It is a doubtful problem, not easy to resolve, quote, which in his works we most transcendent see wit, judgment, learning, art, or industry. His learning such no author old or new except his reading that deserved his view, and such his judgment so exact his test as what was best in books, as what books best, that had he joined those notes his labours took from each most praised and praised deserving book, and could the world of that choice treasure boast it need not care though all the rest were lost. And such his wit he writ past what he quotes, and his productions fire exceed his notes, so in his works where ought inserted grows the noblest of the plants engrafted shows, that his adopted children equal not, the generous issue his own brain begot. So great his art that much which he did write gave the wise wonder and the crowd delight. Each sort as well as sex admired his wit, the he's and she's, the boxes and the pit, and who less liked within did rather choose to tax their judgments than suspect his muse. With thoughts and wills purged and amended rise from the ethic lectures of his comedies where the spectators act and the shamed age blusheth to meet her follies on the stage, where each man finds some light he never sought, and leaves behind some vanity he brought, whose politics no less the minds direct than these the manners nor with less effect, when his majestic tragedies relate all the disorders of a tottering state all the distemperes which on kingdoms fall when ease and wealth and vice are general." Of the other special names mentioned by Suckling and in Falkland's own lines previously quoted, Digby, Winemann, Godolphan, Waller, Montague and Suckling himself, all with the exception of Suckling and Montague, live in Clarendon's pages. Extended quote Sir Kenolm Digby was a person very eminent and notorious throughout the whole course of his life from his cradle to his grave, of an ancient family and noble extraction, and inherited a fair and plentiful fortune notwithstanding the attainer of his father. He was a man of a very extraordinary person and presence, which drew the eyes of all men upon him, which were more fixed by a wonderful graceful behavior, a flowing courtesy and civility, and such a volubility of language as surprised and delighted. And though in another man it might have appeared to have somewhat of affectation, it was marvelously graceful in him, and seemed natural to his size and mold of his person to the gravity of his motion and the tune of his voice and delivery. He had a fair reputation in arms, of which he gave an early testimony in his youth, in some encounters in Spain and Italy, and afterwards in an action in the Mediterranean Sea. In a word he had all the advantages that nature and art and an excellent education could give him, which, with a great confidence and presentness of mind, buoyed him up against all prejudices and disadvantages which would have suppressed and sunk any other man, but never clouded or eclipsed him from appearing in the best places and the best company, and with the best estimation and satisfaction. Digby was a notorious pervert, having been educated a Protestant, although his father was a Catholic, and suffered for his share in the gunpowder plot. His perversion took place in France about 1635, and from this time he appears to have made himself conspicuous in the French capital for his constant intrigues with the Jesuits and parade of his new persuasion to the prejudice of the English Church. His doings were the subject of elaborate negotiation betwixt Lord Leicester, then in Paris, and Laud in the early summer of 1638. Arbery says that he was called the mirandula of his age, and had such a goodly handsome person and so graceful elocution and noble address that had he been dropped out of the clouds in any part of the world he would have made himself respected. He admits, however, that the Jesuits who knew him well said, to us true, but then he must not stay there above six weeks. The fact seems to be that, with striking superficial qualities and an imposing air of ability, Sir Kennell Digby was a man distinguished more by a certain restless liveliness of nature than by any higher attributes of head or heart. He belonged to the Falkland set before 1633, but there is no evidence of any special or more cordial intimacy betwixt him in Falkland. With Sir Francis Wendman, however, Falkland was allied by the closest ties. Footnote. There can be no reasonable doubt that the Wendman of Suckling's Lines was Sir Francis Wendman, Falkland's neighbor in Oxfordshire, although Suckling's editor, the Reverend Alfred Suckling, L.L.B., does not seem to have perceived this. End of footnote. They were not only associates of the same circle in town, but neighbors in the country, and in so entire friendship and confidence that Sir Francis had great authority in the society of all Falkland's friends and acquaintance. Of ancient and noble family, possessed of a competent estate, and of high repute for wisdom and integrity, Wendman was greatly esteemed at court, but he preferred being considered simply a country gentleman. He was a man, adds Clarendon, quote, of great sharpness of understanding and of a piercing judgment. No man better understood the affections and temper of the kingdom, or indeed the nature of the nation, or discerned further the consequence of councils and with what success they were like to be attended. He was a very good Latin scholar, but his raseousa nation was above his learning, and the sharpness of his wit incomparable. He was equal to the greatest trust and employment, if he had been ambitious of it, or solicitous for it. But his want of health produced a kind of laziness of mind which disinclined him to business, and he died a little before the general troubles of the kingdom, which he foresaw with wonderful concern and when many wise men were weary of living so long, close, quote. Sidney Godolphin was a youth about Falkland's own age, trained at Oxford, and recently returned from his travels abroad, quote, there was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room, so large an understanding, and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body, so that the Lord Falkland used to say merrily that he thought it was a great ingredient into his friendship for Mr. Godolphin, that he was pleased to be found in his company where he was the properer man, and it may be the very remarkableness of his little person made the sharpness of his wit and the composed quickness of his judgment and understanding the more notable, close, quote. He had been abroad on diplomatic employment with the Earl of Leicester, and seems to have coveted advancement with the court at home, but his constitution was hypochondriacal, and he loved very much to be alone and to retire amongst his books. Quote. He was contented to be reproached by his friends with laziness, and was of so nice and tender a composition that a little rain or wind would disorder him and divert him from any short journey he had most willingly proposed to himself, in so much as when he rid abroad with those in whose company he most delighted, if the wind chanced to be in his face he would, after a little pleasant murmuring, suddenly turn his horse and go home. Close, quote. The outbreak of the Civil War, however, roused him to energy, and he embarked with vigor and earnestness in the royal cause. He put himself into the first troops which were raised in the West for the King, and bore the uneasiness and fatigue of winter marches with an exemplary courage and alacrity. Like his friend he fell gallantly fighting in the same fatal year, 1643, the victim of too brave a pursuit of the enemy into an obscure village in Devonshire. Edmund Waller we feel almost reluctant to number amongst Falkland's friends, as genius may be held to redeem his weakness. The excellence and power of his wit and pleasantness of his conversation are allowed even by Clarendon, who does not spare him, to have been of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults. But his political cowardice is a reproach to the moderate party which numbered him amongst its members, and with all his brilliant poetic gifts and social accomplishments, Waller's presence seems to have been a mean and poor nature, selfish and pleasure-loving in prosperity and abject and servile in adversity. Society pardoned his public baseness for his private pleasantries, which had the power to reconcile him to those whom he had most offended and provoked. Having forfeited his life by his treachery to the Parliament, he saved it at the expense of others, and continued to his age, says our portrait painter exquisitely, with that rare felicity that his company was acceptable where his spirit was odious, and he was at least pitied where he was most detested. Falkland's friendship with him seems to have been chiefly in the earlier years of his literary enthusiasm, before the political struggles which broke down Waller's integrity. Poetic tastes united them, and perhaps a common relation to Dr. Morley, who had read and studied with Waller, and who has said, although this scarcely seems likely, to have introduced him to Falkland's society. Footnote Clarendon says this, but Waller's first biographer asserts that it was his connection with the Falkland society that brought him acquainted with Morley. End of footnote His lines, to my Lord Falkland, are not distinguished by any particular warmth or poetic skill, but they show a graceful and happily expressed interest in the fate of his friend when he went forth with the King in the first Scottish expedition in 1639, to civilize and to instruct the North. Footnote The following are perhaps the best lines. Quote Ah, noble friend, with what impatience all that know thy worth and know how prodigal of thy great soul thou art, longing to twist bays with that ivy which so early kissed thy youthful temples, with what horror we think on the blind events of war and thee, to fate exposing that all-knowing breast among the throng as cheaply as the rest, where oaks and brambles, if the cops be burned, confounded lie to the same ashes turned. End of footnote Suckling himself and Wat Montague claim to be mentioned in connection with our subject for special reasons. Both were friends of Falkland, but not merely on this account do they deserve notice. Suckling, strange as it may appear to those who only know his career as a poet, wrote a brief religious treatise entitled, An Account of Religion by Reason. There is little of thought or genuine argument in the treatise. It is the work of an elegant literateur handling a subject which he knows imperfectly and only from the outside, but the mere fact is a testimony to the theological excitement which then everywhere pervaded society, and indicates the desire there must have been in many minds, besides those whose writings and speculations have come to the surface, to examine the subject of religion rationally. Suckling avows that he feared the charge of Sosinianism in his undertaking. Then, as in later times, this charge was recklessly applied to all who thought for themselves in religion, or, in other words, who did not take aside with either theological extreme. Every man, he says, that offers to give an account of religion by reason is suspected to have none at all, yet he has made no scruple to run that hazard, not knowing why a man should not use the best weapon his creator hath given him for his defense. The treatise itself, if only a meager and imperfect sketch of the great subjects which it touches, the trinity, incarnation, passion, and resurrection of our Lord, is substantially orthodox. God has declared, quote, to be one and but one, it being gross to imagine two omnipotence, for then neither would be so. Yet since this good is perfectly good, and perfect goodness cannot be without perfect love, nor perfect love without communication, nor to an unequal or created, for then it must be inordinate. We include a second co-eternal, though begotten, nor are these contrary, though they seem to be so, close, quote. Thus theologize the gay suckling at Bath in the year 1637, and although the points of contact betwixt him and Falkland must have been superficial rather than real, we can imagine them not only contending for the Laurel, as depicted in the well-known verses, a contention in which our poet would have had no chance with him, but also trying their strength and religious argument during those stirring years. Suckling's fate was a sad one. He lekt it along with his friend, a member of the long parliament. He had so far at first joined in the general outcry against Stratford. But with a slight hold on the deeper principles at stake in the contest, he had left the popular party even before the impeachment, and madly lent himself to a design for rescuing the great Earl from the Tower. With the design having been discovered, a charge of high treason was issued by the parliament against suckling and the other conspirators. Footnote. The affair is known as Goring's conspiracy. End of footnote. He fled to the continent, and there, in disgrace and penury, he terminated his life by his own hand before the close of 1642. He is said by Aubrey to have been only twenty-eight years of age. The same gossiping authority adds, quote, he was of middle stature and slight strength, brisk round eye and reddish face. His head not very big, his hair a kind of sand color, and his beard turned up naturally, so that he had a brisk and graceful look. What Montague, we may certainly say, was the same Walter Montague with whom Falkland corresponded on the subject of potpoury, and whose letter, with Falkland's reply, is printed along with the discourse on infallibility. He was the author of The Shepherd's Paradise, the pastoral alluded to so dubiously in suckling's verses. Footnote. The editor adds, in corroboration of our statement in the text, that what Montague was a papist and suspected of having been concerned in the perversion of Lady Newberg, on that occasion he adds, quote, it is said in a letter of Lord Conway's, the king did use such words of what Montague and Sir Toby Matthew, another of suckling's poets, that the fright made what keep his chamber longer than his sickness would have detained him. Close, quote. End of footnote. His letter to Falkland is brief and slight. It goes over the usual ground of the necessity of a continuously visible church, and the question of, where was the Protestant church before Luther? Falkland's reply is acute, ingenious, and satisfactory, and contains at least one good hit on the point of the church's visibility. His patristic studies had convinced him that neither the Roman nor the Protestant church could find their exact parallel in the early Christian ages. Neither of these churches, therefore, he argued, have been always visible, in the sense contended for by Montague, but with the significant difference in the two cases, quote, that we are most troubled to show our church in the later and more corrupt ages, and they, the Roman Catholics, theirs in the first and purist, that we can least find ours at night, and they theirs at noon, close, quote. So far as his general argument is concerned, it is very much the same as that to be found in his discourse on infallibility, and will remain for consideration when we come to examine this discourse and his general position on the subject of religious authority. Such was the brilliant literary circle in which Falkland mingled in the earlier half of that significant decade which preceded the great constitutional struggle which was destined to end in the Civil War. If we add to the background of the picture Hobbes, who returned to England in 1631 and remained till 1634, and of whom it is said that Falkland was a great friend and admirer, it would be difficult to conceive a more remarkable intellectual coterie. Poetry and literature in its lighter forms were no doubt its chief interests, and as yet probably these were the chief employments of our intellectual enthusiast. The fact that his own poetic vein is found flowing as early as 1631 on the occasion of the death of Dr. Dunn may be held to indicate this. However, with the graver interests which subsequently occupied him he did not abandon poetry, as some of his verses such as those to Grosius and probably the closing lines to Sandus are at least as late as 1640. After the extracts which we have already given from Falkland's it is unnecessary that we should quote much further from them. With the exception of the lines on Dr. Dunn and a considerably longer poem, indeed the longest of the series, upon the death of the lady Marquess Hamilton, cast, like the eclog on Johnson, into the artificial form of the past oral dialogue, we have quoted something from them all. Footnote. She was a vileer and the first wife of King Charles's friend, James, Marquess, and afterwards Duke of Hamilton. End of footnote. There is a peculiar tenderness in the lines on Lady Hamilton, whose beauty and high character seem to have specially inspired our poet, and the rural imagery which abounds in it is touched sometimes with a graceful and charming felicity, as, for example, when Chloris, one of the interlocutors of the poem, says of her lover, quote, His best of wheat and cream before me pours, brings me his ferris fruit, his freshest flowers. What birds his twigs, what fish his nets can take, all that his silkworms or his bees can make. The friskingst calves and kids his pastures hold, and purist lambs the honour of his fold, close, quote. Or again, when she describes the courtiers weeping for Lady Hamilton, who had been Lady of the Queen's Bedchamber, and a great confidant of her royal mistress, quote, Now wearied with their sorrows and their way near the fresh banks of silver Thames they lay, and wept so fast as if they meant to try to weep a flood like that they wept it by, whose faces bowed and bright and moist, did show like lilies loaded with the morning dew, close, quote. The description of the Lady herself, as she had been used to walk, by Ferris Greenwich, also deserves to be quoted. Often in the sun's declining heat, she, Chloris says again, quote, Would view the downs where we are flocks did keep, and stay to mark the bleating of our sheep, and often from her height hath stooped to praise our country sports, and hear our country lays, sharing with us, after her ended walk, our homely kates and our more homely talk. What beauty did in that fair form reside? What any greatness hath, excepting pride? Eyes of so modest yet so bright a flame, to see her and to love her was the same. And if by chance, when she did near us stand, her bright smooth palm but touched my rudder hand, that did both senses so at once delight the purest swans seemed neither soft nor white, close, quote. But we cannot extend our extracts, or indeed our notice of this aspect of Falkland's life in intellectual activity. As a whole, his poems will hardly bear criticism in comparison with the melodious sweetness and gay sparkling vivacity to be found in the happier efforts of suckling or caro, or even with the smoother verse of Sandus, not to speak of the vigorous and more varied muse of such poetic chiefs as Ben Johnson, Waller, and Cowley. Dr. Earl, one of his later theological friends, quote, Would not allow Falkland to be a good poet, though a great wit. He writ not a smooth verse, but a great deal of sense, close, quote. Summary as this judgment is, there is a great deal of truth in it. Falkland's poetic vein does not run smoothly, with that liquid clearness and bright flow of expression without which even a strong and rich genius fails to yield poetry, or at least such poetry as seizes and charms men's hearts, and becomes a procession which they do not willingly let die. And so his poems passed away almost entirely from the memory of his own generation and the generations which followed, and it has remained to our time to draw attention to them and even to collect them together for the first time. Footnote Attention was first drawn to Lord Falkland's poems by Mr. Mitford in 1835 in the Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 158, and only last year, 1871, they have been collected and edited for the first time after the original texts, with memorial introduction and notes by the Reverend A. B. Grossart. The slight volume is printed for private circulation, and Mr. Grossart deserves the thanks of all admirers of Falkland for his painstaking enthusiasm. End of Footnote With all, it must be admitted that they are full of earnest poetic enthusiasm. They glow no less than his prose, with the genuine life of thought and feeling. And as we have seen, there are not a few delightful bits, both of imaginative picturesqueness and a vigorous elusive versification which deserve to be remembered in our poetic annals. End of Chapter 3 Part 2 Section 7 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy Volume 1 by John Tulloch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3 Lord Falkland, a Moderate and Liberal Church. Part 3 Even in this earlier and more purely literary society, there are indications that subjects of theology and the great question of the Church obtruded occasionally. If a mind like sucklings did not escape the pressure of such thoughts, it can hardly be supposed that any were free from it, and a company which numbered Digby and Wat Montague amongst its members was not likely to be without some gusts of controversial excitement. But it was Falkland's later society in the neighborhood of Oxford, where the conversation was, as Clarendon says, one continued convivium philosophicum or convivium theologicum. After his marriage, and still more apparently after his father's death, 1633, Falkland betook himself, with characteristic enthusiasm, to ecclesiastical and theological studies. Having made himself master of Greek, he passed from the study of the classics to that of patristic antiquity. Clarendon speaks with warm admiration of his prodigious progress in learning. Quote, There were very few classic authors in the Greek or Latin tongue that he had not read with great exactness. He had read all the Greek and Latin fathers, all the most allowed and authentic ecclesiastical writers, and all the councils with wonderful care and observation, for in religion he thought too careful and too curious inquiry could not be made amongst those whose purity was not questioned and whose authority was constantly and confidently urged by men who were furthest from being of one mind amongst themselves, and for the mutual support of their several opinions in which they most contradicted each other. And in all those controversies he had so dispassion to consideration such a candor in his nature and so profound a charity in his conscience that in those points in which he was in his own judgment most clear he never thought the worse or in any degree declined the familiarity of those who were of another mind, which without question is an excellent temper for the propagation and advancement of Christianity. With these great advantages of industry he had a memory retentive of all that he had ever read and an understanding and judgment to apply it seasonably and oppositely with the most dexterity and address and the least pedantry and affectation that ever man who knew so much was possessed with of what quality so ever. These are the studies in which we must conceive him mainly occupied after his permanent retirement to Tew. To what extent his gay or London friends, Ben Johnson's sons, mingled with the society there it is difficult to say, that to some extent they did so is implied in Clarendon's account. But the main elements of this later society, of which Falkland himself was obviously the chief and not merely one amongst others, and of which his own residence was the rendezvous, were Oxford men and theologians. All the names are those of well-known church divines, Viz, Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Morley, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Earls, Mr. Chillingworth. Hales, curiously, is not mentioned, but we may almost certainly conclude that he was one of the number, although probably his distance at Eaton or London rendered him a less frequent visitor than those named. Footnote. Since 1613 he had been one of the fellows there. End of footnote. Many others, both Oxford and London men, must have been occasionally present. Clarendon's addendum to the names given by him plainly supposes this, and indeed all men of eminent parts and faculties in Oxford besides those who resorted thither from London. Falkland's house, within ten or twelve miles of the university, looked like the university itself, by the company that was always found there, and all, quote, found their lodgings there as ready as in the colleges, nor did the Lord of the house know of their coming or going, nor who were in his house till he came to dinner or supper, where all still met. Otherwise there was no trouble, ceremony, or restraint, to forbid men to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there, so that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the books they could desire in his library, and all the persons together whose company they could wish, and not find in any other society. Close, quote. With the exception of Chillingworth, all the divines mentioned survived to the restoration. Not only so, but their lives became so identified with the later movements which followed first the temporary overthrow of the Church of England, and then its re-establishment, that it is comparatively difficult to conceive of them in that early time when they were Falkland's guests and joined in his favorite discussions. This is especially true of the two first mentioned, Sheldon and Morley. After the restoration Sheldon was appointed first Bishop of London, and then in 1653 Archbishop of Canterbury. He was not only active, but zealous in the disgraceful legislation which issued in the ejectment of St. Bartholomew's Day, 24th August 1662, and the Five Mile Act, 1665. While others were for leniency, Sheldon, according to Burnett, pressed the execution of the law and undertook to fill all the vacant pulpits that should be forsaken in London better and more to the satisfaction of the people than they had been before. According to the same authority, he seemed not to have a deep sense of religion, if any at all, and spoke of it most commonly as of an engine of government and a matter of policy. Their credit may be due to this statement of Burnett, and it can hardly be received without confirmation. It is beyond question that Sheldon's whole career proves him to have been more of a politician than a divine. Extended Footnote Burnett's statement is supposed to receive confirmation from certain remarks of Dr. Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford, who had been Sheldon's chaplain to the effect that the Archbishop, quote, Though very assiduous at prayers, yet did not set so great a value on them as others did, nor regarded so much worship as the use of worship, placing the chief point of religion in the practice of a good life, close quote. But while Parker tells this, he at the same time says that Sheldon was a man of undoubted piety, and the real import of all such remarks can only be fairly judged from a knowledge of all the circumstances, the point of view of the speaker and the character of those whom he is addressing. The same thing is to be said of his alleged, quote, Advice to young noblemen and gentlemen who by their parents' commands resorted daily to him was always this, let it be your principal care to become honest men and afterwards be as devout and religious as you will. No piety will be of any advantage to yourselves or anybody else unless you are honest and moral men, close quote. Outspoken manliness and an intense aversion to all religious pretense may explain such sayings without supposing any lack of true religious feeling in the speaker. End of footnote. He cannot therefore be supposed to have added much to the purely intellectual side of the debates which interested Falkland and Chillingworth. But his clear and firm judgment, Burnett admits that he had a very true judgment, and direct vigorous sense even then gave him special influence over his friends. Chillingworth's correspondence with him on the subject of subscription plainly shows this. His remarkable powers of conversation contributed to give weight to his opinions. Quote. He had a great pleasantness of conversation, perhaps too great. He had an art that was peculiar to him of treating all that came to him in a most obliging manner. He was also, according to uniform testimony, generous and charitable, and it was no doubt his agreeable politeness and a certain munificence of nature which led Sir Francis Wenman to say of him when he resorted to the conversations at Tew that Dr. Sheldon was born and bred to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He was twelve years older than Falkland and having been elected warden of all souls in 1635, when the meetings at Tew were in full vigor he was probably one of the most regular visitors there. Of morally we have already heard in connection with Waller. He too survived the restoration and became bishop first of Worcester and then of Winchester where, like Sheldon, he distinguished himself by his munificence. He was less active and prominent in promoting the repressive measures of the restoration, but he must also be held accountable for them, and the shadow of their disgrace so far also covers his name. Baxter says that he was the chief speaker of all the bishops at the Savoy Conference and frequently bore down objections by his fervor and interruptions. Strangely, with all his enthusiasm for the royal cause with which he became identified in many special ways, he was very zealous against Popery and had the reputation of being a great Calvinist. On this latter account he seems to have suffered somewhat at the hands of Lod in the early years of his intimacy with Falkland. The story is told of him at this time that on being, quote, asked by a grave country gentleman who was desirous to be instructed what their tenets and opinions were, what the Arminians held, he pleasantly answered that they held all the best bishoprics and denaries in England, which was quickly reported abroad as Mr. Morley's definition of the Arminian tenets. Morley appears to have been an eminently sensible and vigorous minded man, a hard student, usually rising about five o'clock in the morning, both in winter and in summer, and a hard thinker, extremely fond of argument, of great wit, readiness, and subtlety in disputation, says Clarendon, and of remarkable temper and prudence in conversation which rendered him most grateful in all the best company. What was temper and prudence in agreeable society may have readily passed into heat and vehemence when he was contradicted and crossed in argument, and so may be explained the hot spirit ascribed to him by Baxter, and Burnett's words that while a pious and charitable man of a very exemplary life he was extreme passionate and very obstinate. Burnett adds that Morley first became known to the world as a friend of the Lord Falklands and that was enough to raise a man's character. In comparison with Sheldon he thinks him to have been the honester but the less able man of the two. Henry Hammond was a higher character and certainly a much higher divine than either Sheldon or Morley. Sheldon's ability, so far as we know, never took the form of authorship, and Morley only became an author after the Restoration or in his old age, as he himself cynically said when he published a few sermons and tracts chiefly of an official character. Hammond was a voluminous author and his practical catechism, 1644, and paraphrase and annotations on the New Testament, 1653, give him special rank in the list of Anglo-Catholic theologians. His life has been drawn at length by one of his own contemporaries and presents a beautiful picture of self-devotion, simplicity, and saintliness. His friendship with Sanderson is well known, and the likeness yet the contrast betwixt the two friends, their equal enthusiasm and earnestness of piety with the more compliant temper and less rigorous practices of Sanderson, and the stiffer Anglican churchmanship of Hammond give a curious and graphic insight into the character of Episcopacy during its time of persecution. At this time Hammond was reduced to great poverty, but his meek and quiet spirit never murmured. His gentleness under suffering is especially commemorated. He had learned to make the best of all circumstances, saying with epictetus, quote, that everything had two handles, if the one proved hot and not to be touched we may take the other that is more temperate, close quote. He delighted, he said himself, to be loved rather than reverenced, and one of his sayings, memorable for its solemnity, may be taken as the keynote of his lofty Christian earnestness. Oh, what a glorious thing how rich a prize for the expense of a man's whole life were he to be the instrument of rescuing one's soul. It was in the view of Charles II to appoint him to the bishopric of Wooster, but he died in the spring of 1660 before the king's arrival. Dr. Earl's, or Earl, as the name is also written, is perhaps the least remembered of all the divines mentioned by Clarendon. But in 1630 he was the only one who had really distinguished himself as an author. He had then written a very clever series of sketches entitled Microcosmography, or A Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters. The sketches were published anonymously in 1628 and ran through six editions betwixt that date and 1633. They bore to be printed for Ed Blount, and so are known by many as Blount's characters, but their authorship is beyond question. Clarendon says, in evident allusion to them, that some very witty and sharp discourses were published in print without his consent, and that when known to be his, he grew suddenly into a very general esteem with all men. And this is not to be wondered at. The sketches which compose the Microcosmography are extremely clever, and to this day highly amusing. They are everywhere marked by a lively, incisive wit, a proverbial felicity of expression, and an ingenious, compact, and sarcastic turn of portraiture which, notwithstanding some crudeness of arrangement, keeps the attention alive throughout, and seizes it with unexpected surprises of humorous pleasure. A perfect anthology of good sayings might be selected from it, sayings both rich in themselves and richly illustrative of the manners and tendencies of the time. Extended Footnote We can only give a few here, and these perhaps not the most telling or descriptive. Of a child, the author says, quote, he is nature's fresh picture, newly drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. The elder he grows, he is a stare lower from God, and, like his first father, much worse in his britches, close quote. Of the sermon of a young, raw preacher, quote, the labor of it is chiefly in his lungs, and the only thing he has made in it himself is the faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for bellarmine. Yet he preaches heresy if it comes in his way, though with a mind I must need say very orthodox. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday, for the stuff is still the same only the dressing a little altered, close quote. Of a grave divine, quote, he makes more conscience of schism than a surplus. He esteems the church hierarchy as the church's glory, and however we jar with Rome would not have our confusion distinguish us, close quote. Of a mere formal man, quote, his religion is a good quiet subject, and he prays as he swears in the phrase of the land. He apprehends a jest by seeing men smile and laughs orderly himself when it comes to his turn. An idle gallant is one that was born and shaped for his clothes, and if Adam had not fallen had lived to no purpose, he is one never serious but with his tailor, close quote. The devotion of a female hypocrite, quote, is much in the turning up of her eye and turning down the leaf in her book, when she hears named chapter and verse. She loves preaching better than praying, and of preachers, lecturers. She overflows so with the Bible that she spills it upon every occasion and will not cudgel her maids without scripture. She is an everlasting argument, but I am weary of her, close quote. End of Footnote It is easy to understand the affinity betwixt such a man as Earl and Falkland. He was an excellent poet, it is said, both in Latin, Greek, and English, though he suppressed many of his English pieces out of an austerity to those sallies of his youth. He was very dear, adds Clarendon, quote, to the Lord Falkland, with whom he spent as much time as he could make his own, and as that Lord would impute the speedy progress he made in the Greek tongue to the information and assistance he had for Mr. Earl's, so Mr. Earl's would frequently profess that he had got more useful learning by his conversation at Tew, the Lord Falkland's house, than he had at Oxford, close quote. After the restoration Earl became Bishop of Salisbury, and, unlike both Sheldon and Morley, showed himself extremely favourable to the nonconformists. He laboured, with all his might, against the Five Mile Act. He was evidently a sweet-natured and tolerant man of unaffected piety and goodness. Walton says of him that, since the death of Hooker, none had lived whom God hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper. But of all the divines mentioned by Clarendon, Chillingworth is, of course, the most significant, and there is abundant evidence that he was Falkland's friend and the frequenter of his house in a more intimate sense than any of the others. Here, at Tew, says Clarendon, quote, Mr. Chillingworth wrote and formed and modelled his excellent book against the learned Jesuit, Mr. Knot, after frequent debates upon the most important matters, in many of which, it is characteristically added, he suffered himself to be overruled by the judgment of his friends, though in others he still adhered to his own fancy, which was skeptical enough, even in the highest points, close, quote. There is a tradition that Falkland actually assisted in the composition of Chillingworth's great work. Of this, however, there is no evidence, and it may be said to be contradicted by the internal character of the work, yet evidently the two friends were associated to the mind of their generation in a quite peculiar manner. Mr. William Chillingworth of Trinity College in Oxford, Arbery says, quote, was his most intimate and beloved favourite, and was most commonly with my Lord. They had such extraordinary clear reasons that they were wont to say at Oxon that if the Great Turk were to be converted by natural reason, these two were the persons to convert him, close, quote. All this intellectual companionship was broken up with the first mutterings of war in 1639. Before this, Ben Johnson was dead and the meetings in the Apollo discontinued. The convivium theologicum probably met at Tew for the last time in the spring of that year, before Falkland went away with the Royal Army, then raised to suppress the rebellion in Scotland. This expedition is known as the First Bishops' War. Troops were collected by a circular letter in the king's name addressed to all the English nobility who were invited to assist his majesty in recalling his northern subjects to a sense of their allegiance. Falkland considered himself bound by the Royal Summons, where the old soldierly inclinations may have returned upon him irrepressibly with renewed opportunity of gratifying them. Falkland's language rather implies this latter view, and moreover that a further disappointment befell him in reference to the command of a troop of horse which he had been promised. Thwarted in this ambition, he went a volunteer with the Earl of Essex. The history of the expedition to Scotland is aside from our purpose. It came to nothing, ended in fact in a somewhat ignominious manner for Charles and his army, and all the success remained with Henderson and the Scottish covenanters, who arranged a temporary settlement with the king in sight of Dunn's law where the armies lay facing each other. There is no account of Falkland throughout the expedition. He cannot be supposed to have entered upon it with any enthusiasm, not withstanding his military ardor. A crusade in favour of Episcopal power and a compulsory liturgy, however it temporarily secured his sword, cannot have enlisted his sympathy. But we have no means of estimating his judgment of what proved so hapless a movement of the royal policy. It was this event of his life which is commemorated by the verses of Waller and Cowley inscribed to him. To the former we have already eluded. Cowley's verses upon the whole have more nature and life than Waller's, while they show even more strikingly the extraordinary impression which Falkland's character and abilities had made upon the more intellectual men of his time. And Cowley's testimony is all the more remarkable that we have not hitherto encountered him among Falkland's special friends. It is hardly possible, not withstanding Walpole's sneers, that such a combination of judgments could have been mistaken. We give but a few of Cowley's lines. Quote, Great is thy charge, O North, be wise and just, England commits her Falkland to thy trust. Return him safe. Learning would rather choose her bodily or her Vatican to lose. All things that are but writ or printed there in his unbounded breast and grave and hour. And this great Prince of Knowledge is by fate thrust into th'noise and business of a state. Such is the man whom we require, the same we lent the North, untouched as is his fame, he is too good for war and ought to be as far from danger as from fear he is free. The Scottish expedition had ended, and the King was again at White Hall by the mid-summer of 1639. We hear nothing, however, of Falkland till the following spring when he was elected to sit for Newport in the Isle of Wight in the short Parliament, which then met for three weeks, 15th of April to 5th May, 1640. There is no record of his having spoken during this brief parliamentary experience, but the impression produced upon him was fruitful and important according to Clarendon's statement. From the debates which were there managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, he contracted such a reverence for Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom, or that the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission of them, and from the unhappy and unreasonable dissolution of that convention he harbored it may be some jealousy and prejudice to the court towards which he was not before immoderately inclined. It is no part of our intention to sketch, even in the most summery manner, the series of political events which now followed each other in rapid succession. It will be enough to indicate very briefly the part taken by Falkland, first on the popular side, and then, evidently after great hesitation and misgiving, on the side of the king. To do justice to the political side of his character, or to attempt any vindication of his political action, would far outrun our space, besides leading us away from our special subject. Falkland's brief but busy public career may be divided into three parts. First, from the opening of the long parliament, 3 November 1640, to the execution of Stratford, 12 May 1641. Second, from this great event, to his acceptance of office under the king about eight months later, 1 January 1641 to 2. And lastly, the twenty months from January 1642 to September 1643 of his official life. During the first of these periods Falkland is entirely at one with the popular party, and amongst the most active in urging their measures of redress and punishment. Within six months the whole system of Thoreau had not only been swept away, but its authors committed to the tower, and the most conspicuous of them, after a trial of fourteen days in Westminster, brought to the scaffold. Others, the secretary Windebank and the Lord Keeper Finch, only escaped the same fate by flight. No one ventured to say a word for the delinquents or to stop the current of events. Falkland appears most notably in the case of Finch, but he and Hyde also joined in Stratford's condemnation. Even in his severity, his fairness and sense of justice appear. He bore no love to the great Irish viceroy, not only for his political delinquencies, but from the memory of some unkindness not without a mixture of injustice from him towards his father, some old score no doubt arising out of Stratford's relation to his father as his successor in the Government of Ireland. Yet he was the only member of the House of Commons, who, when the proposition was made for immediate impeachment, ventured to suggest any delay. He desired the House to consider, quote, whether it would not suit better with the gravity of their proceedings, first to digest many of those particulars which had been mentioned by a committee before they sent up to accuse him, declaring himself to be abundantly satisfied that there was enough to charge him, close quote. The suggestion was opposed by Pym and rejected by the House under apprehensions of Stratford's influence with the King and the risk of his being induced once more to try the policy of dissolution. From the first, Falkland appears to have taken an active part in the discussions of the Parliament. The impeachment of Stratford took place almost within a week of its meeting, and on the 4th of December, 1640, he is found speaking at length on the subject of the illegal exaction of ship money. Here, as everywhere, it is the sense of justice, in this case of outraged justice, which animates him and inspires his eloquence. The Constitution of this Commonwealth, he said, quote, hath established, or rather endeavored to establish, to us the security of our goods, by appointing for us judges so settled, so sworn, that there can be no oppression. But this security, Mr. Speaker, hath been almost our ruin, for it hath been turned, or rather turned itself, into a battery against us, and those persons who should have been as dogs to defend the sheep have been as wolves to worry them. These judges, he continued, have delivered an opinion and judgment in an extrajudicial manner, that is, such as came not within their cognizance, they being judges and neither philosophers nor politicians, close, quote. He desired to vindicate the king while condemning the judges, quote, a most excellent prince hath been most infinitely abused by his judges telling him that by policy he might do what he pleased, and as these men have trampled upon the laws which our ancestors have provided with their utmost care and wisdom for our undoubted security, we must now be forced to think of abolishing of our grievances, and of taking away this judgment and these judges together, and of regulating their successors by their exemplary punishment, close, quote. Having then alluded to the accusation of Strafford for intending to subvert our fundamental laws and to introduce arbitrary government, he implies that whatever doubt might exist as to his conduct, none can exist as to the conduct of the judges, no law being more fundamental than that they have already subverted, and no government more absolute than that they have really introduced. In conclusion, he concentrates his eloquent indignation upon Lord Keeper Finch. Mr. Speaker said he, quote, there is one that I must not lose in the crowd whom I doubt not but we shall find when we examine the rest of them, with what hopes they have been tempted, by what fears they have been assayed, and by what and by whose importunity they have been pursued before they consented to what they did. I doubt not, I say, but we shall find him to have been a most admirable solicitor, but a most abominable judge. He it is who not only gave away with his breath what our ancestors had purchased for us by so large and expensive their time, their care, their treasure, and their blood, but strove to make our grievances immortal and our slavery irreparable lest any part of our posterity might want occasion to curse him. He declared that power to be so inherent to the crown as that it was not in the power even of parliaments to divide them. This speech was fruitful in results. The system of illegal imposts which had produced such a flame in the country was not only swept away, but Falkland, assisted by Hyde, was appointed to prosecute the chief delinquent at the bar of the House of Lords. Finch, as we have seen, did not wait to face the trial, but fled in disguise to Holland. Thanks, however, were voted by the House of Commons on the 14th of January, to Mr. St. John and Mr. Whitelock, the Lord Falkland and Mr. Hyde, for the great services they have performed to the honour of this house and the good of the commonwealth in their conduct of this business. It is in reference to Falkland's conduct in this matter particularly that Clarendon observes, he was, quote, so rigid an observer of established laws and rules that he could not endure the least breach or deviation from them, and thought no mischief so intolerable as the presumption of ministers of state to break positive rules for reasons of state, or judges to transgress known laws upon the title of convenience or necessity. Close, quote. But Falkland's attitude in the great series of debates which followed on the Church is more interesting to us. Here also at first he was entirely on the popular side, and in his zeal against the bishops even separated himself for a time from his friend Hyde, with whom he had hitherto acted in all things. His friend afterwards remembered the circumstance and has touchingly signalised it in his history. We shall confine ourselves at present to a rapid review of the different stages of the subject as it came before the Parliament and the part taken by Falkland in the course of the debates. His special position in the matter of Church government will again come before us in the closing discussion of his opinions. The conduct of the bishops came before Parliament very early after its opening. Immediately following Strafford's accusation, Wren, Bishop of Ely, was impeached, and on the 18th of December Lod was voted a traitor by the House of Commons and conveyed to the Tower. Falkland disliked the Archbishop, and the dislike was probably reciprocal. It is true that Lod, while baiting the Puritans with merciless severity, maintained kindly personal relations with men like Hales and Chillingworth. He did this probably from mixed motives, but certainly from no sympathy with their opinions, and any toleration he was disposed to give to old friends, whom perhaps he thought it possible to win over to his own side, he was not at all likely to extend to one in the position of Falkland, who showed both readiness and ability to put himself at the head of a moderate or liberal party in Church as well as State, who had in fact already become distinguished as the leader of such a party. The instinct of the genuine sacerdotalist is still more true to hatred of liberalism than of Puritanism. It was all the more creditable to Falkland that he seems to have taken no part in the impeachment of the Archbishop. But numerous petitions having been presented in December, alleging the manifold grievances of the country from the oppression of the bishops, and praying for their abolition, Falkland made his first great speech on Episcopacy on the 9th of February following, when the petitions were taken up in disgust. The whole of the speech apparently has been preserved, and is marked throughout, in the highest degree, both by eloquence and sense, the enthusiasm of patriotic sentiment, and yet the moderation of a reflective intellect. It commences as follows. Mr. Speaker, he is a great stranger in Israel who knows not this kingdom hath long labored under many and great oppressions both in religion and liberty, and his acquaintance here is not great, or his ingenuity less, who doth not both know and acknowledge that a great if not a principal cause of both these have been some bishops and their adherents. Mr. Speaker, a little search will serve to find them to have been the destruction of unity under pretense of uniformity, to have brought in superstition and scandal under the titles of reverence and decency, to have defiled our church by adorning our churches, to have slackened the strictness of that union which was formerly between us and those of our religion beyond the sea, an action as impolitic as ungodly. We shall find them to have tithed mint and anise and have left undone the weightier works of the law. It hath been more dangerous for men to go to some neighbors' parish when they had no sermon in their own than to be obstinate and perpetual recusants. While masses have been said in security, a confentacle hath been a crime, and which is yet more, the conforming to ceremonies hath been more exacted than the conforming to Christianity." He deplores the check thus given to Christian instruction and the consequent ignorance which would best introduce that religion which accounts at the mother of devotion. He continues, quote, the most frequent subjects even in the most sacred auditories have been the use divinem of bishops and tithes, the sacredness of the clergy, the sacrilege of appropriations, the demolishing of puritanism. Mr. Speaker, to go yet further some of them have so industriously labored to deduce themselves from Rome that they have given great suspicion that in gratitude they desire to return thither or at least to meet it half way. Some have evidently labored to bring in an English, though not a Roman, potpourri. I mean not only the outside in dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people upon the clergy and of the clergy upon themselves, and have opposed the papacy beyond the seas that they might settle one beyond the water. Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the performance of England, and to be so absolutely, directly, and cordially papists that it is all that fifteen hundred pounds a year can do to keep them from confessing it. So far, and further, in reference to many particulars carefully detailed, but for which we can find no room, Falkland's enthusiastic patriotism breaks forth against the bishops. But before the close of his speech he recalls the fact that the order and the men who had so abused it in England were not to be confounded. We shall make no little compliment to those, and no little apology for those to whom this charge belongs if we shall lay the faults of these men upon the order of the bishops upon the episcopacy. I wish we may distinguish between those who have been the stream that carried them." He remembers that the first planters and spreaders of Christianity and the main conducers to its resurrection at the Reformation were bishops. And that even now in the greatest defection of that order there are yet some who have conduced in nothing to our late innovations but in their silence, some who, in an unexpected and mighty place and power, have expressed an equal moderation and humility, being neither ambitious before nor proud after, either of the Crozer's staff or White staff, some who have been learned at opposers of popery and zealous suppressors of Arminianism, between whom and their inferior clergy in frequency of preaching have been no distinction, whose lives are untouched not only by guilt but by malice, scarce to be equal by those of any condition or to be excelled by those of any calendar. I doubt not, I say, but if we consider this, this consideration will bring forth this conclusion, that bishops may be good men, and let us give but good men good rules, and we shall have both good governors and good times." Falkland argues, therefore, even in this first speech, for the maintenance of the order of episcopacy cleared of its abuses, if temporal power or employment or the extent of their revenues interfered with the usefulness of bishops, let these things he urged be considered and taken care of. But he can hardly deem it possible that the House of Commons should, quote, think it fit to abolish upon a few days' debate an order which hath lasted, as appears by story, in most churches these sixteen hundred years and in all from Christ to Calvin, close, quote. And even in proposing to cut down the proportions and income of the Episcopal office he is strongly opposed to doing this to such an extent as would interfere with the dignity of learning and the encouragement of students, which, as he puts it, would invert the policy of Jeroboam and, as he made the meanest of people priests, make the highest of the priests the meanest of the people. Episcopacy to his mind, in short, was not a divine though an ancient and primitive order. I do not believe them, bishops, to be uredivino, nay I believe them not to be uredivino, but neither did he hold them to be injuria humana. He considered them in fine as neither necessary nor as unlawful, but as convenient or inconvenient, and drew his thoughtful eloquence to a conclusion in words weighty with wisdom for all time, and which it would have been well if the long parliament had remembered and acted upon. Quote. Since all great mutations in government are dangerous, even where what is introduced by that mutation is such as would have been profitable upon a primary foundation, and since the greatest danger of mutations is that all the dangers and inconveniences they may bring are not to be foreseen, and since no wise man will undergo great danger but for great necessity, my opinion is that we should not root up this ancient tree, as dead as it appears, till we have tried whether by this or the like topping of the branches, the sap, which was unable to feed the whole, may not serve to make what is left both grow and flourish. Close quote. Many speakers followed on this occasion, and the subject was referred to a committee formerly appointed for the London and other petitions. It was destined to reappear before the house in many forms and to test and dissolve the unanimity with which its members had hitherto worked. Gradually it became evident that there were two distinct parties, one for a moderate reform of episcopacy and all other abuses, and a root and branch party which desired not only the overthrow of the church, but were prepared for still more extreme measures. Falkland advanced a step, but only a single step further, with the anti-episcopal party. He voted not only for the exclusion of the bishops from judicial functions, but also, at first, for their exclusion from the House of Peers. Footnote. 11 March 1641, when the discussions asked to the position of the bishops in the House of Lords seemed to have begun. End of footnote. It was on this last occasion that he separated from Hyde, and hope seems to have been temporarily cherished that he might throw himself heart and soul into the extreme movement. Hyde and he had been noted as inseparable. They sat together in the House, beside Sir John Colpepper, member for Kent, so soon to be associated with them in office, on the left-hand side at entering. This was so much taken notice of that, if they came not into the House together, as usually they did, everybody left the place for him that was absent. When the bill for excluding the bishops from the upper House first came under discussion, Hyde spoke earnestly for throwing it out on the ground of its involving a grave constitutional change. Suddenly Falkland rose from his seat beside his friend, quote, and declared himself to be of another opinion, and that as he thought the thing itself to be absolutely necessary for the benefit of the Church, which was in so great danger, so he had never heard that the Constitution of the Kingdom would be violated by the passing of that act, and that he had heard many of the clergy protest that they would not acknowledge that they were represented by the bishops, close, quote. At the same time he implied the matter was one for the House of Peers itself, amongst whom the bishops sat and had their votes, rather than for the House of Commons to determine. If they could make it appear that they were a third estate, then that House would reject the bill, and so with some facetiousness answering some other particulars he concluded for the passing of the act. It was a marvellous delight to many, adds the historian, to see the two inseparable friends divided in so important a point, and the more because they saw Mr. Hyde was much surprised by the contradiction, as in truth he was. But Clarendon is here forgetful of the real sentiments of his friend expressed in his previous speech. He had then plainly stated that the position of the bishops in the House of Peers, or their Lordships as he called it, was no essential part of the Episcopal authority, and that if their usefulness demanded it they might well be deprived of this position. Falkland was in truth substantially consistent throughout all the discussions on the subject of the church, even where his consistency is most open to challenge. It is perfectly clear from the tenor of his speeches, even when denouncing the bishops, that he desired to uphold Episcopacy, and for this purpose was willing to sacrifice all that was merely adventitious in the office, and which seemed to him upon the whole rather to mar than to add to its usefulness. He looked at the substance and reality of church order, which was plainly dear to him, and for the sake of securing this was ready to yield whatever seemed to him unnecessary and unimportant. But when he discovered that the enemies of Episcopacy were not to be satisfied by such concessions, but were determined on his overthrow, he immediately took his stand against them. This is the simple explanation of his having opposed six months later, or in the following October, a bill of the same character, for depriving the bishops of their votes, as that which he had formerly supported. Hampton taxed him on this occasion with a change of opinion, but Falkland quite pertinently retorted, quote, that he had formerly been persuaded by that worthy gentleman to believe many things which he had since found to be untrue, and therefore he had changed his opinion in many particulars as well as to things and persons. It was on this occasion, apparently, that he made his further extended speech concerning Episcopacy, a draft of which was afterwards found amongst his papers in his own handwriting and printed at Oxford in 1644. This speech is by no means so vigorous and eloquent as the first, from which we have already quoted in the text, but it is also very interesting in relation to Falkland's ecclesiastical views. It is chiefly taken up with urging the inconvenience of a radical change of church government, especially in favor of the scotch ecclesiastical government, whose ure divino pretensions, to meet when they please, to treat of what they please, to excommunicate whom they please, even parliaments themselves, are somewhat scornfully set forth. End of footnote. The truth was that in the interval the course of events had rapidly advanced. The Root and Branch Bill, for abolishing Episcopacy, had been introduced in June, and not only had the movement against the church gathered strength, but more significantly still, the extreme party had prepared, although not yet presented, the grand remonstrance in the face of the desire of all moderate politicians to consolidate the reforms already obtained and open up the way for reconciliation with the king, instead of further aggravating differences. In short, by the autumn of 1641, the Patriots of the Long Parliament had already separated into two divisions. The constitutionalists, with Falkland and Hyde and Cold Pepper at their head, had taken their stand against further encroachments, while the radical reformers, headed by Pym, Hampton, and others, were determined upon still more extensive changes and an increased weakening of the royal prerogative. Falkland had plainly been let understand by Hampton that if the bill for the exclusion of the bishops from the house of lords were carried, nothing further would be attempted against the church. And when he found that he was deceived in this, he felt himself quite warranted in revising his original decision upon the point. To some extent probably Hampton himself was deceived, for Clarendon mentions that at first he did not feel inclined to the introduction of the Root and Branch Bill, although he afterwards gave his assent to it. The current of events hurried him and others away, and the tide for the time was running so strongly against the very name of bishops that he and Pym and no doubt others, who profess themselves favorable to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, reformed of its abuses, were swept away with the general stream. CHAPTER III PART III