1 1 ' I Iftftfl winnfiffWMJviHJHuJ 18 Bffi! IvK I ■ ■H IHRfll i ■ ■*'.'->. ^H ■ i ■ ■ ■ 1 * H ■ ■ Haft* o >o x if* <\ v -< TA 'c^ a"^ -.^ oO *>^ Jlibrarp of £)m Znt^ors. THE TABLE-TALK OF JOHN SELDEN. WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE AND NOTES BY S. W. SINGER, F.S.A. THIRD EDITION. LONDON: JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, SOHO SQUARE. 1860. i( There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." — Coleridge. ADVERTISEMENT. r HE flattering reception and rapid sale of the former edition of this little book given by the late Mr. Picker- ing in 1847, has encouraged the present pub- lisher to solicit me to superintend this re-im- pression ; and I have spared no pains to make it at least equally worthy of public favour. The text has been again carefully revised, and the notes, with some augmentation, are now placed beneath it, instead of at the end of the volume. It has been a source of infinite satis- faction to me to be called upon in the -evening of life to revise the text of the dramas of our great poet and that of this little golden manual, and to renew my intercourse with the minds of Shakespeare and Selden. s. w. s. Mickleham, November 19, 1855. ^ TABLE OF CONTENTS. ^ ||jf|j Preface . 11 yj—B fe Abbeys, Pri~ ories . . 101 Articles 103 Baptism 103 Bastard 104 Bible, Scripture . . . 105 Bishops before the Par- liament 109 Bishops in the Parlia- ment Ill Bishops out of the Par- liament 117 Books, Authors . . . 122 Canon Law .... 124 Ceremony 124 Chancellor . , . . 125 Changing Sides . . . 125 Charity 127 Christmas 127 Christians 128 Church 129 Church of Rome ... 130 Churches 131 City 132 Clergy 133 Commission, High . . 134 Commons, House of . 135 Confession .... 136 Competency . . . 137 Conjunction, Great . 137 Conscience . . . . 137 Consecrated Places . 139 Contracts .... . 140 Council .... 141 Convocation . . . . 141 Creed . 142 Damnation . . . 143 Devils . . . , . . 143 Denial, Self . . . . 146 Duel . 146 Epitaph .... 148 Equity . 148 Evil Speaking . . 149 Excommunication . . 151 Faith and Works . 155 Fasting Days . . . 155 Fathers and Sons . 156 Fines . 156 Free-will .... . 157 Friars . 157 8 CONTENTS. Friends 158 Genealogy of Christ . 158 Gentlemen . . . . 159 Gold 160 Hall 161 Hell 161 Holy Days .... 163 Humility 163 Idolatry 164 Jews 164 Invincible Ignorance . 164 Images 165 Imperial Constitutions . 166 Imprisonment . . • 166 Incendiaries . . . . 167 Independency . . . 167 Indifferent Things . . 168 Interest, Public ... 168 Invention, Human . . 169 Judgments . . . . 169 Judge 170 Juggling 171 Jurisdiction . . . . 171 Jus Divinum .... 172 King 172 King of England . . 174 King, The . . . . 176 Knights Service . . . 178 Land 178 Language 179 Law 180 Law of Nature . . . 182 Learning 183 Lecturers 184 Libels 185 Liturgy 185 Lords in the Parliament 186 Lords before the Parlia- ment ...... 187 Marriage Marriage of Cousin-Ger- mans . . . Measure of Things Men, Difference of Minister Divine Money . . • Moral Honesty Mortgage . Number Oaths . . Oracles Opinion Parity . . Parliament Parson . . Patience . Peace . . Penance . People . . Pleasure . Philosophy Poetry Pope . . Popery . . Power, State Prayer . . Preaching . Predestination Preferment Praemunire Prerogative Presbytery Priests of Rome Prophecies Proverbs . Question . Reason . . Retaliation Page 188 CONTENTS. Reverence 239 .Residency, Non . . . 240 Religion 240 Sabbath 245 Sacrament .... 246 Salvation 246 State 247 Superstition .... 247 Subsidies 248 Simony 248 Ship-Money .... 249 Synod Assembly . . 249 Thanksgiving . . . 252 Tithes 252 Trade 254 Tradition 254 Transubstantiation . . 255 Page Traitor 255 Trinity 256 Truth 256 Trial 257 University .... 258 Vows 259 Usury 259 Uses, Pious .... 260 War 261 Witches 264 Wife 265 Wisdom 266 Wit 266 Women 267 Year 268 Zealots 269 BIOGKAPHICAL PEEFACE. ^OTHINGr can be more interesting than this little book, containing a lively picture of the opinions and conversation of one of the most eminent scholars and most dis- tinguished patriots England has produced ; living at a period the most eventful of our history. There are few volumes of its size so pregnant with sense, combined with the most profound learning; it is impossible to open it without finding some important fact or discus- sion, something practically useful and applicable to the business of life. It may be said of it, as of that exqui- site little manual, Bacon's Essays, after the twentieth perusal one seldom fails to remark in it something over- looked before. Such were my feelings and expressions upwards of thirty years since, in giving to the world an edition of Selden's Table- Talk, which has long been numbered in the list of scarce books, and that opinion time has fully confirmed. It was with infinite satisfaction therefore I found that one whose opinion may be safely taken as the highest authority, had as fully appreciated its worth. 12 BIOGRAPHICAL Coleridge thus emphatically expresses himself: " There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." And in a note on the article Parliament, he writes : " Excellent ! ! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom."* Its merits had not escaped the notice of Johnson, though in politics opposed to much that it inculcates, for in reply to an observation of Boswell, in praise of the French Ana, he said : " A few of them are good, but we have one book of that kind better than any of them— Selden's Table-talk."t The collector and recorder of these Aurea Dicta, the Eeverend Richard Milward, was for many years Sel- den's Amanuensis ; he had graduated at Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, and subsequently became Rector of Little Braxted, in Essex, upon the presentation of its then patron, the Earl of Pembroke. He was also in- stalled a Canon of Windsor, in 1666, and died in 1680. From the dedication to Selden's Executors, it will be obvious that Milward intended it for publication ; but it did not issue from the press until nine years after his death. Among the Harleian MSS. in the British Mu- seum (1315, pi. 42. 6.) is a written copy of this work, * Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. ii. pp. 361-2. t BoswelPs Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, p. 321. It appears that it was once intended to translate it into French, and publish it under the title of Seldeniana. See Melanges de Litte'rature, par Vigneul Marville (i. e. Noel d'Argonne) tome i. p. 48. PREFACE. 13 on which is the following note by Lord Oxford : " This book was given in 168 — by Charles Earl of Dorset to a Bookseller in Fleet Street, in order to have it printed, but the bookseller delaying to have it done, Mr. Thomas Rymer sold a copy he procured to Mr. Churchill,* who printed it." The authors of a literary journal gave at the timef an opinion against the authority of the book, on the ground that it contained many things unworthy of a man of Selden's erudition, and at variance with his principles and practice. Dr. Wilkins, the editor of his works, has adopted this opinion, but we may fairly sus- pect that his own political bias may have influenced this decision. The compilation has such a complete and un- affected air of genuineness, that we can have no hesita- tion in giving credit to the assertion of Milward, who says that " It was faithfully committed to writing, from time to time, during the long period of twenty years, in which he enjoyed the opportunity of daily hearing his (Selden's) discourse, and of recording the excellent things that fell from him." He appeals to the execu- tors and friends of Selden, for the fact that such was the manner of his patron's conversation, and says that they will quickly perceive them to be his by the familiar illustrations wherewith they are set off, and in which way they know he was so happy. This dedicatory' ap- * No edition that I have seen has the name of Churchill as publisher. That which has always been considered the first, is in small 4to. 60 pages, and professes to be " Printed for E. Smith, in the year MDCLXXXIX." t The Leipsic " Acts of the Learned." 14 BIOGRAPHICAL peal to the most intimate friends of Selden, is surely a sufficient testimonial to the veracity of his assertion, and to the genuine authority of the work. It was possibly thought that the familiar and some- times homely manner in which many of the subjects discussed are illustrated, was not such as might have been expected from a profound scholar; but Selden, with all his learning, was a man of the world, familiar with the ordinary scenes of common life, and knew how to bring abstruse subjects home to the business and bosoms of men of ordinary capacity, in a manner at once perspicuous and agreeable. " He was a person (says his friend Lord Clarendon) whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any ex- pressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of such stupendous learning in all kinds, and in all lan- guages, 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 were 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 communicatiug all he knew, exceeded that breed- ing. His style in all his writings seems harsh and sometimes obscure,* which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, but to a little undervaluing of style, and too much pro- pensity to the language of antiquity ; but in his con- * Aubrey says; "in his younger years he affected obscurity of style, which, after, he quite left off, and wrote perspicuously." PREFACE. 15 versation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and of pre- senting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been hioivn. Mr. Hyde was wont to say that he valued himself upon nothing more than upon having had Mr. Selden's acquaintance from the time he was very young. If he had some infirmities with other men, they were weighed down with wonderful and pro- digious excellencies in the other scale."* It has heen justly observed that it affords testimony in favour of both, that after their separation in the public path of politics, their friendship remained unaltered, and that Hyde on every occasion stood forth in defence of Sel- den's conscientious conduct. Selden was born at Salvington, a hamlet in the parish of West Tarring, on the coast of Sussex, not far from Worthing. The cottage in which he first saw the light was then known as Lacies, and is attached to a farm of about 80 acres. When visited in the year 1834, no relic of Selden remained but an inscription on the in- side of the lintel of the entrance doorway, consisting of the following Latin distich, said to have been composed by him when only 10 years old : Gratvs Honeste mih* no clavoait inito sedeb' FvR ABEAS : NO SV FACTA SOLVTA TIBI.f * Lord Clarendon's Life by himself, fol. ed. p. 16. f i. e. Honest friend, welcome to me I will not be closed, enter and be seated. Thief! begone, I am not open to thee. Johnson's Memoirs of Selden. This inscription reminds us of the story told by Pasquier in 16 BIOGRAPHICAL Aubrey, who has left some gossiping materials for a life of Selden, says that his father was " a yeomanry man of about 407. per annum/' that he played well on the violin, in which he took delight ; and at Christmas time, to please himself and his neighbours, would play to them as they danced. In the parish register of West Tarring, is this entry: " 1584, John, the Sonne of John Selden, the Minstrell, was baptized the 20th day of December." So that there is some reason to conclude that his father occasionally exercised his musical talent professionally. Indeed Aubrey tells us that " My old Lady Cotton (wife to Sir Eobert Cotton) was one time at Sir Thomas Alford's in Sussex, at dinner in Christ- mas time, and Mr. J. Selden (then a young student) sate at the lower end of the table, who was looked upon then to be of parts extraordinary, and somebody asking who he was, 'twas replied, — his son that is playing on the violin in the hall." Wood says that it was his father's musical talent that gained him his wife, who was the daughter and heiress of Thomas Baker of Eushington, and descended from a knightly family of that name in Kent ; her fortune was his Recherches, upon the authority of Alciat. A priest named Martin, being made Abbot of Asello, found inscribed over the gate, PORTA PATENS ESTO NVLLI CLAVDARIS HONESTO. Being annoyed by the influx of visitors it occasioned, he re- moved the point from the end of the line and placed it after nvlli, and in consequence of the joke was deprived of his Abbey : upon which some one wrote over the gate, PRO SOLO PVNCTO CARVIT MARTINVS ASELLO. And as the word asello presented an equivocal sense, it gave rise to the proverb, " Faute d'un point Martin perdit son ane." PREFACE. 17 probably small. Selden's sister seems to have married humbly; her husband appears to have exercised the profession of a musician at Chichester, and being an in- valid with a large family, had a pension of about 251. per annum, Selden being one of the contributors to his necessities. Selden received the first rudiments of Education at the free-school of Chichester, under Hugh Barker, after- wards a distinguished civilian ; and that he was an apt scholar appears from his early proficiency, for he was admitted a student of Hart Hall,* Oxford, when only fourteen years old. Wood tells us that he was indebted to Dr. Juxon for his exhibition ; and that he was a great favourite with Mr. Barker, who recommended him to his brother Anthony, a fellow of New College, who with John Young, another fellow of the same college, as- sisted him in his studies. He remained at Oxford about four years, and in 1602 he repaired to London, and entered himself at Clifford's Inn: here he commenced his study of the law; and in May, 1604, he removed to the Inner Temple ; his chamber was in an upper story, in Paper Buildings, having the advantage of a small gallery to walk in, and looking toward the garden. His early proficiency appears to have recommended * Hart Hall, afterwards Hertford College; by the liberality of Dr. Newton, it was in 1740 converted into a College, receiving a charter of incorporation, but the funds proving insufficient for its maintenance, at the death of Dr. Hodgson the principal, in 1805, it became extinct, and the site is now occupied by Mag- /dalene College. 18 BIOGRAPHICAL him to the notice of Sir Kobert Cotton, for whom he is said to have copied records, and to whom he became closely attached ; to this early intercourse most proba- bly may be attributed his predilection for antiquarian pursuits. It was at this period of his life that, from being de^ voted to similar studies, he formed acquaintance, which afterwards ripened into friendship, with some of his eminent cotemporaries, among whom may be named Henry Kolle, afterwards Lord Chief Justice ; Sir Ed- ward Littleton, afterwards Lord Keeper ; Sir Edward Herbert, subsequently Attorney General ; and Sir Tho- mas Gardiner, who became Recorder of London. " It was the constant and almost daily course (says Wood) of those great traders in learning, to bring in their ac- quests as it were in a common stock, by natural com- munication, whereby each of them, in a great measure, became the participant and common possessor of each other's learning and knowledge." He also formed in- timate friendships with two of the most distinguished men of his time, Camden, and Ben Jonson, and pur- sued his studies in conjunction with one less known, Mr. Edward Heyward, of Reepham in Norfolk. The vir- tue and learning of this his " beloved friend and cham- ber-fellow" he speaks of in high terms. He became so sedulous a student, and his proficiency was so well known that he was soon in extensive prac- tice as a chamber council and conveyancer; but he does not seem to have appeared frequently at the bar. His devotion to his profession did not prevent him from pursuing his literary occupations with assiduity, and at PREFACE. 19 the early age of twenty-two he had completed his Dis- sertation on the Civil Government of Britain before the Norman Conquest, which, imperfect as it may now be thought, was still an astonishing performance for the age at which it was composed.* In 1610 we find him pursuing the same course of study, the fruits of which were given to the world under the titles of " Englands Epinomis" and " Jani An- glorum fades altera "f the first in English, the latter in Latin, illustrative of the state and progress of Eng- * It was not however published until 1615, when it was printed at Frankfort under the title of Analecta Anglo -Brittan- nicwn. The preface is dated 1607, and it is dedicated to Sir Robert Cotton. t The first edition of the Jani Anglorum, is a very small 12mo. apparently privately printed for the Author, and is very rarely met with. The Title : Jani Anglorum Facies altera Memoria nempe a primula Hen- rici II. adusque abitionem quod occurrit Prophanum Anglo - Britanniae Jus resipiens succureto SirjyrjiJiaTiKojg connexum filo. Inlustriss Comiti Sarisburiae dest. d. d. Opera Joannis selden Saluintonji e Societate Inter Tempi. Londinensis. Equibus Head of Janus. Londini. Impens. Auctor. Typis T. S. procur. CIO. ID. C X. I. Helme A copy was sold in the sale of T. Rawlinson's Library for 7s. 6d. Teste the celebrated collector. — J. West. 20 BIOGRAPHICAL lisli law, from the earliest times to tlie end of the reign of Henry the Second. In the same year he published his Essay on " The Duel, or Single Combat," in which he confines his at- tention chiefly to the forms and ceremonies attending judicial combats since the Norman Conquest. In 1613 he furnished the English notes to the first eighteen songs of Drayton's Polyolbion : the prodigious number of the references in these notes manifest his learning and assiduity. His intimacy with Drayton and Browne, as well as Jonson, perhaps arose from those social meetings at the Mermaid* Tavern, in Fri- * Selden's intimacy with Jonson, Drayton, and Browne, might give us reason to suppose that in his earlier years poetry had some share of his attention, but he does not appear to have been a very successful votary of the Muses, and but few of his attempts in verse have been preserved : the reader may not be displeased to have a specimen, in his complimentary tributes to Donne and Browne. The following lines were addressed to Drayton, and prefixed to his poems in 1610 : Michael! I must admire thee, (but to praise were vain What ev'ry tasting-palate so approves) Thy Martial Pyrrhic, and thy Epic strain Digesting Wars with heart-uniting Loves. The two first Authors of what is compos'd In this round system all ; its ancient lore All Arts in Discords and Concents are clos'd ; When souls unwing'd Adrasta's laws restore To th' Earth, for reparation of their flights, Scholars the first, Musicians, Lovers make, The next rank destinate to Mars his Knights, (The following rabble meaner titles take,) I see thy temples crown'd with Phoebus' rites : PREFACE. 21 day Street, where, in 1603, a club had been established by Sir Walter Ealeigh, at which those interesting "wit- Thy Bays to th' eye with Lilly mix'd and Rose, As to the care a Diapason close. John Selden. These verses are followed by panegyrical lines by Edward Heyward " To his friend the Author." There are verses in Greek, Latin, and English, by Selden, pre- fixed to Browne's Britannia's Pastorals (the first part in sm. folio was printed, I believe, in 1613, the second Edit. insm.4to. in 1625). It is remarkable that Selden's verses are also here followed by some by Edward Heyward, and indeed, almost all the commen- datory verses prefixed are by Members of the Inner and Middle Temple. Browne was himself of the Inner Temple^ In Bucolica G. Broun. Quod, per secessus Rustici otia, Licuit ad Amic. and Bon. Liter, amantiss. Anacreonticum KaXKog gov KvSepeia, &c. 16 lines. Ad Amoris Numina Quin vostrum Paphie, Anteros, Erosque, &c. 40 lines. By the Same. So much a Stranger my Severer Muse Is not to Love-strains, or a Sheepwards Reed, But that She knows some writes of Phoebus' dues, Of Pan, of Pallas, and her Sisters meed. Read and commend She durst these tun'd essaies Of Him that loves her (She hath ever found Her Studies as one circle) Next She prays His Readers be with Rose and Myrtle crown'd I No Willow touch them ! As his Bales* are free From wrong of Bolts, so may their Chaplets be ! J. Selden, Juris G. * Boies (faire Readers) being the materials of Poets garlands, (as Myrtle and Roses arefor enjoying Lovers, and the fruitless, 22 BIOGRAPHICAL combats" between Shakespeare and Jonson took place, thus alluded to bj Beaumont in his letter to Jonson : What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! Heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. His intense application appears to have very mate- rially injured his health, for in the dedication of his " Titles of Honor," published in 1614, to his friend Mr. Edward Heyward, he says, " Some years since it was finished, wanting only in some parts my last hand ; which was then prevented by my dangerous and tedious sicknesse ;" from this attack he attributes his recovery to the skill and care of Dr. Eobert Floyd (or Fludd), the celebrated Kosicrusian philosopher, who is said to have insured the efficacy of his nostrums by the mysti- cal incantations he muttered over his patients. He- turning to his studies with fresh zest and renewed vigour, he says, " Thus I employed the breathing times which from the so different studies of my profession, were allowed me. ISTor hatli the proverbial assertion that the Lady Common Law must lye alone, ever wrought with me." Selden prefixed to this book some Greek verses ad- dressed to " That singular Glory of our Nation and Light of Britaine, M. Camden Clarenceux," and the highly complimentary epistle by Ben Jonson which is Willow for them which your unconstancie, too oft, makes most unhappy) are supposed not subject to any hurt of Jupiter s Thun- derbolts, as other trees are. PREFA OK 23 subjoined to this preface.* In the year 1617 he con- tributed the marginal notes to Purchas's Pilgrimage, and a short paper, " Of the Jews sometime living in England/' and the same year produced his celebrated work, " De Diis Syris ;" the Prolegomena treats of the Geography of Syria, of the Hebrew Language, and the * In the preface to the first edition we have the following interesting notice of his intimacy with Ben Jonson : " When I was to use [a passage out of Euripides his Orestes] not having at hand the Scholiast, out of whom I hoped some aid, I went, for this purpose, to see it in the well furnished librarie of my beloved friend that singular Poet M. Ben Jonson, whose special worth in literature, accurate judgement, and performance, known only to that Few which are truly able to know him, hath had from me, ever since I began to learn, an increasing admiration." The motto to this edition was from Lucilius ; Persium non euro legere : Lcelium Decimum volo. It is also furnished with a list of the Authors cited, and excellent Indexes, an advantage which the Second edition published in folio in 1631 does not possess. To this Second edition, which is so much enlarged as to con- stitute it almost a new work, another dedication is prefixed, but still to his " most beloved friend Edward Heyward," now styled " Of Cardeston in Norfolk, Esquire." The commendatory verses of Ben Jonson were also retained. In a copy in my possession, which appears to have belonged to Sir Thomas Cotton, the fol- lowing manuscript verses are on a blank leaf facing the title, and are again repeated, in the same handwriting, after the verses of Ben Jonson. They will serve to show in what very high esteem Selden was held by his cotemporaries, though they have no other merit : Selden the greate ! there hardly is a name More loudely sounded by the trumpe of Fame. Th' annals of learning's Commonwealth doe tell Of no Prince there, whose worth doth more excell. W. M. The price of this folio appears to have been xvi. Sh. bound, 24 BIOGRAPHICAL origin and progress of Polytheism, and the two Syntag- mata embrace the history of the Syrian deities. He tells us that previously to the year 1618, pursuing an uncontrolled habit of study, full of ambition and hope, he determined to write, among other works, a History of Tithes, a Diatribe on the Birthday of Christ, and upon the Dominion of the Sea. The History of Tithes was printed in 1618, being duly licensed for the press; but even previous to its publication, prejudice seems to have been raised against it, and it no sooner appeared than it excited the displeasure of the court, and the bench of Bishops, with the honourable excep- tion of the excellent and pious Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester. " As soon as it was printed and public," says Selden, " divers were ready to publish that it was written to prove that Tithes were not Jure divino ; some that it was written to prove, nay, that it had proved, that no tithes at all were due ; others that I had concluded that, questionless, laymen might, with good conscience, de- tain impropriated churches; others that it was expressly against the tithes of London." The work however was written with a far different intention. The fact is that it was a purely Historical Inquiry, and he says, " I doubted not but that it would have been acceptable to every ingenuous Christian, and especially to the clergy, to whose disputations and determinations I resolved to leave the point of the divine right of tithes, and keep myself to the historical part." In this expectation he was bitterly deceived, it brought forth a host of answers and animadversions, the most marked of which were PREFACE. 25 those of Dr. Tillesley, Archdeacon of Kochester, and Dr. Montague, afterwards Bishop of Norwich. It had been so misrepresented to the King, that Selden was summoned to appear before him with his work ; he re- paired to Theobalds, where the King then was, accom- panied by his friends Ben Jonson and Edward Hey- ward, u being," as he says, " entirely a stranger to the court, and known personally there to a very few." The . King admitted him to a conference, and descanted sometimes learnedly, sometimes humorously, and at other times angrily upon various passages of his work; but dwelt particularly on the apostolic appointment of the anniversary of Christ's Nativity, saying that he sus- pected Selden agreed with those contentious Scots, who refused to observe any particular day; and upon Selden observing that this was so far from his opinion that he thought the 25th of December might by calculation be proved to be the proper day, he was commanded to write an essay on the subject, which injunction he after- wards complied with. He had another conference with the King at Whitehall, and thought from his reception that the matter would rest there, but he was soon after summoned before the Privy Council, and before the High Commission Court, and was obliged to sign a de- claration that he was in error in offering any argument against the right of maintenance Jure divino of the ministers of the gospel. His work was suppressed, and the King said to him : " If you or your friends write any thing against Dr. Montague's confutation I will throw you into prison." He tells us that the de- claration he signed was drawn up through the favour 26 BIOGRAPHICAL of some lords of the High Commission, that it was true he was sorry for having published it, because it had given offence, but that there was not the less truth in it because he was sorry for publishing it.* He had spoken in this work of the unlimited liberty and confident daring of those who had interpreted the passage of Revelation which assigns 666 as the number of the beast, and praised the judgment and modesty of Calvin, who had declared that he could not understand that obscure book; and as it happened that the pedantic James had himself attempted to expoimd the mystic meaning, it is obvious that this tended to aggravate his anger. Selden was called upon to explain what he meant by this observation, and in doing so he made some compliments to the King winch have been consi- * It will be seen by referring to the article Tithes in the following volume, that forty years afterwards Selden had the satisfaction of knowing that the clergy sought and found their best defence in his persecuted volume. In 1653 the House of Commons in consequence of petitions presented to them insti- tuted an inquiry about the abolition of Tithes; the Kentish petition desiring that u that Jewish and Antichristian bondage and burden on the estates and consciences of the godly might cease." And Dr. Langbaine, in a letter to Selden, thus expresses himself : " Upon occasion of the business of Tithes now under consideration, some, whom it more nearly concerns have been pleased to enquire of me what might be said as to the civil rights to them, to whom I was not able to give any better direction than by sending them to your History. Happily it may seem strange to them, yet I am not out of hopes, but that work, (like Pelius' Hasta,) which was looked upon as a piece that struck deepest against the divine, will afford the strongest arguments for the civil right : and if that be made the issue, I do not despair of the cause." PREFACE. 27 dered as derogatory of his better judgment, and un- worthy of him. In the struggle between James and the House of Commons, they had addressed to him a petition of griev- ances, in which their fear of the Papists and complaints of extravagance were the chief features ; when it was sent, together with a remonstrance, by twelve members of the House, the King refused to receive the petition, and returned a harsh answer to the remonstrance. The House in consequence resolved not to grant him any supplies until their complaints were attended to, and the King adjourned and finally dissolved the parlia- ment. Before the adjournment the House entered a protest on their Journals, previously consulting Selden, who, though not a member, was introduced and spoke with true patriotic feeling on the subject ; and certainly advised, if he did not draw up, the protestation, which the enraged and baffled King afterwards tore with his own hand from the Journals of the House. In the same tyrannic spirit the impotent monarch wreaked his vengeance upon those who were considered to have been the chief movers, and, upon warrants is- sued by the Privy Council, Sir Edward Coke, and Sir Kobert Philips were committed to the Tower ; and the Earl of Southampton, Sir Edward Sandys, Mr. Pym, Mr. Mallory, and Selden, to other places of confine- ment. The warrant for Selden's imprisonment directed his committal to the Tower, and prohibited his having communication with anybody but those who had the charge of his person ; but he was retained in the cus- tody of the Sheriff (Eobert Ducie), who lodged him in 28 BIOGRAPHICAL d indul- his own house, and treated him liberally and gently; to the restraint from intercourse with his friends the prohibition of the free use of his books was added, but the Sheriff indulged him with the use of two works, one of them the MS. of Eadmer's History, which he afterwards published. His confinement was however of little more than a month's duration. Hackett has printed a letter of Lord Keeper Williams to Buckingham, in favour of the liberation of Lord Southampton and Selden, and this application prevailed, or the court, though willing, found that it had no power to punish ; and after an examina- tion before the Privy Council, where Selden seems to have been again protected by Bishop Andrewes, he was liberated on the 18th of July. In 1621 the House of Peers honoured him with their request that he would compose a work on their Privi- leges, to which he appears sedulously to have applied himself; the result of his researches was probably com- municated to the House long before, but the work it- self, " The Privileges of the Baronage of England" was not published until 1642. In 1623 he published his edition of Eadmer's His- torian Novorum, sive sui Seculi, libri sex* the notes * Sir Henry Spelman is busie about the impression of his Glossary, and Mr. Selden of his Eadmerus, which will be finished within three or four days ; together with his notes, and the Laws of the Conqueror ; the comparing whereof with the copy of Crow- land, was the cause of this long stay ; for they could not get the book hither, though they had many promises, but were fain to send one to Crowland to compare things. Sir H. Bourgchier to Usher, April 16, 1622. PREFACE. 29 to which contain much curious legal and historical matter. James had in vain endeavoured to replenish his ex- chequer by having recourse to what were then strangely miscalled Benevolences, hut this species of extortion was not found effective, and he was, at the commencement of the year 1 624, constrained again to summon a par- liament, in which Selden sat as one of the representatives for Lancaster. Dr. Aikin thinks it most probable that " he owed his election for this borough to his reputation as an able supporter of popular rights, when members were chosen rather for their public principles than for private connections." Selden, though he does not appear to have taken much part in the debates of this session, was an active and valuable member of the celebrated Election Com- mittee, of which Sergeant Glanville published the Re- port, and among its other members were Sir Edward Coke, Noy, Pym, and Einch. The reader need not be reminded that to this committee the nation owes one of the strongest bulwarks of its liberties in the establish- ment of the independence of the House of Commons, in the right of jurisdiction over the election of its mem- bers : it also established that the right of election is in those who possess property within the precincts of Boroughs, and not founded upon the royal grant. Selden's time was now so fully occupied, that he re- fused to take upon him the duties of Reader of Lyon's Inn, to which he had been nominated by the benchers of the Inner Temple, and was in consequence fined in the sum of twenty pounds, and disabled from being 30 BIOGRAPHICAL called to the bench or to he Keader of the Inner Temple, hut the latter part of the order was rescinded in 1632 when he became a bencher of that Society.* * The following letter to Archbishop Usher will show how ardently he pursued his literary researches : To the Most Reverend James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh. My Lord, It was most glad news to me to hear of your so forward recovery, and I shall pray for the addition of strength to it, so that you may the easier go on still in the advancement of that commonwealth of learning wherein you so guide us. I humbly thank your Lordship for your instructions touching the Samaritan Bible, and the books. I have returned the Saxon Annals agaiD, as you desired, with this suit, that if you have more of them (for these are very slight ones) and the old Book of Ely, Historia Joruallensis, the Saxon Evangelist, the Book of Worcester, the Book of Mailross, or any of them, you will be pleased to send me them all, or as many as you have of them by you, and what else you have of the History of Scotland and Ireland, and they shall be returned at your pleasure. If you have a Saxon Bede, I beseech you let that be one also. If I have anything here of the rest, or ought else that your Lordship requires for any present use, I shall most readily send them to you, and shall ever be Your Lordship's most affectionate Servant, J. Selden. Sept. 14, 1625, Wrest. There is a hope (as Sir Robert Cotton tells me) that a very ancient Greek MS. copy of the Council of Nice, the first of them of that name, is to be had somewhere in Huntingdonshire ; I thought it was a piece of news that would be acceptable to your Lordship : he is in chace for it. The Archbishop had written on this letter ; Sept. 19. Sent him upon this; Annales Latini Saxonici, the Book of Mailros, Forduni Scotichronic. Fragment. Scotic. Annal. ad PREFACE. 31 In the first parliament that was called at the com- mencement of the reign of Charles the First, Selden sat as one of the representatives of Great Bedwin, and in the second parliament which the King was constrained by his necessities to call, Selden took an active part in the proceedings for the impeachment of the favourite Buckingham, which the King defeated by dissolving the Parliament. In 1627 we find him pleading for the discharge from prison of Sir Edward Hampden, one of those patriotic men who had resisted the illegal mode to which the King had resorted for raising supplies. His argument was able and forcible, and though the judges then de- cided against it, later decisions have shown that it was equally correct. In the Parliament which assembled in March 1628 he appears to have been again returned for Lancaster, and various committees were appointed to enquire into the public grievances ; of one of these, whose business was to enquire into the proceedings adopted respecting the writs of Habeas Corpus moved for in the case of those who had resisted the unconstitutional measure of forced loans under the name of Benevolences, Selden made the report. He also took a distinguished part in the debates on the subject, and established incontro- vertibly the illegality of committals without the cause of imprisonment being expressed ; the raising money by finemlvonis Carnot. Fragment. Annalium Abb. B. Mariae Virginia Dublin. Annales Hibernias Thomse Case. The Book of Hoath. Pembrig's Annals MS. 32 BIOGRAPHICAL impositions without the consent of the Parliament ; and established indisputably the right of Habeas Corpus in every case of imprisonment.* Four resolutions of the House were passed embodying these opinions ; a conference with the Lords was held, which terminated in the production of the memorable Petition of Eight, in framing which Selden took an active part. His speech upon this occasion is a masterly and un- answerable effusion. He had consulted and copied with his own hand all the records which bore upon the ques- tion, with unexampled diligence, and with that confi- dence which can only be inspired by a consciousness of being in the right. He defied the Attorney General to controvert any one of his positions. He laid before the Lords the copies of the records he had made, and they ordered them to be compared with the originals ; in the course of this comparison some of them were found deficient or destroyed, and there was an imbecile at- tempt of the court party through the Earl of Suffolk to implicate Selden ; but that Lord afterwards denied that he had used the criminatory expressions which several members had heard him utter; the committee, not- withstanding this denial, requested the Lords to visit * The speech may be found in the Parliamentary History, vol. vii. p. 415. See also Rushworth's Collections, vol. i. p. 530, and Selden's Works, vol. iii. p. 1958. It has also been given by Mr. Johnson in his " Memoirs of Selden, and notices of the political contests during his time," Lond. 1835, a work to which, together with Dr. Aikin's Life of Selden, I have frequently been indebted for the materials of this sketch. PREFACE. 33 the Earl with such punishment as he deserved for hav- ing brought a most unjust and scandalous charge against Selden. Two remonstrances were also prepared and presented, one of them against the Duke of Buckingham, as the principal cause of the evils complained of, with a re- quest that he might he removed from authority, from attendance upon the King, and that judgment should be made against him upon his impeachment in the last parliament. The other declared that the impost of ton- nage and poundage was no prerogative of the Crown, but was always granted to the King by Parliament. In the discussion and preparation of these, Selden took a prominent part. The King received them with marked impatience, and after the bill of Subsidies was passed he dissolved the Parliament. Selden had been some time previously appointed solicitor and steward to the Earl of Kent, and he now retired to that nobleman's seat, Wrest, in Bedfordshire, where he quietly pursued his literary occupations, which appear to have been at all times to him more congenial than the strife of poli- tics, in which he mixed rather out of a sense of his duty to his country, than from any predilection for a public life. The fruits of his retirement were two treatises " Of the Original of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Tes-, taments," and " Of the Disposition or Administration of Intestates Goods," which may have been suggested to him by discussions in Parliament on the King's right to the property of bastards who die intestate. Upon the arrival of the Arundelian Marbles in this country, Selden's friend, Sir Kobert Cotton, requested 34 BIOGRAPHICAL him to examine them, and he entered upon the task with all the enthusiasm of a consummate antiquary; being in the course of his investigations assisted by two eminent scholars, Patrick Young, and Richard James.* He now gave to the world the fruit of his labours under the title of " Marmora Arundeliana, sive Saxa Grseca Incisa." The work was dedicated to his companion in his enquiries, Patrick Young, and the preface makes * [Richard James.] Of this very learned and ingenious man, all that is known will be found appended to the publication of his " Iter Lancastrense," a poem with notes, &c, by the Rev. T. Corser, printed for the Chetham Society in 1845. He was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and if, as I feel con- vinced, he was the writer of the noble verses, " On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems," signed J. M. S. which were first printed in the second folio edition of 1632, he well deserves to be enshrined in our memories. He lived in habits of intimacy with Sir Robert Cotton, Selden and Ben Jonson, and the fol- lowing verses prefixed to a sermon on Psalm xxxvii. 25, may serve as a specimen of his poetical talent, and of his affectionate regard for Selden : The Author's Preface to his Book. Go little book and kindly say Peace and content of night and day Unto my noble Selden. — Greet His gentle hands, his knees, his feet, In such fair manner, as not he Deem any feignedness in me. Say that thy master oft doth bless For his kind love God's holiness. And lest thou hindrance be to aught That busies his heroic thought ; Say not much more, nor wish reply ; But like the silly larke in sky, When ended is his cheerful lay, Warble Adieu ! and fall away. PREFACE. 35 grateful mention of the advantage he had enjoyed in compiling the work, in the quiet retirement of Wrest,* by the favour of the Earl and Countess of Kent. Though, as may well be supposed, not free from faults, rather attributable to the defective state of Epigraphic Science at that time, than to any want of skill in the enquirer, this work is another honourable testimonial of the com- prehensive learning and active industry of this extraor- dinary man. The Parliament re-assembled on the 20th of January, 1629, and the conduct of the Court since the dissolu- tion had been such as to add to the dissatisfaction of the Commons. Laud, who had been accounted a schis- matic and inclined to arbitrary measures, was made Bishop of London, and became the organ of the Court. Montague was made Bishop of Chichester, and Went- * Otia quibus haec fere prsestitimus imprimis nobis fecit summa Faventia et Benignitas Amplissimi Herois Henrici Comitis Cantii et vere Nobilissiruae Heroinae Elisabethce conjugis ejus. Tranquility enim secessus, quo Wrestce, quae eorum villa est in agro Bedford - iensi, turn restate superiori turn festo Christi natalitio fruebar (liberalissimo scilicet, pro insigni eorum erga me immerentem et perpetuse bonitate, ibi hospitio exceptus) opportimissime indulsit, ut urbanis interturbationibus liber, opus incaaptum commodissime absolverem." Lady Kent, who was one of the three daughters and coheiresses of Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, seems to have been an especial favourer of learning and literature, for we are told that Butler, the author of Hudibras, was among those to whom while living she extended her favours ; and it was at her house, his biographer tells us, " he had not only the opportunity to consult all manner of books, but to converse also with that great living library of learning the great Mr. Selden." May we not conjecture that Butler owed this favour to Selden himself? 36 BIOGRAPHICAL worth had been seduced to abandon the popular cause and raised to the Peerage. Added to these acts of irritation, the tonnage and poundage had been levied without the consent of the Parliament, and the goods of Mr. Polls, one of the members, had been seized for resisting the payment of this illegal imposition. Selden took a very active part in the enquiries which were instituted; he had hitherto expressed himself leni- ently about the court measures, but his patriotic spirit was now excited, and he indignantly exclaimed, when a plea of mistake in the case of Mr. Polls was urged : " This is not to be reckoned an error, but is question- less done purposely to affront us, and of this our own lenity is the cause." And when it was suggested that the advisers of the King were most in fault, he said : " If there be any near the King that misinterpret our actions, let the curse light on them, and not on us. I believe it is high time to right ourselves, and until we vindicate ourselves in this it will be in vain for us to sit here." The violation of the petition of right had shown that the King was not to be trusted, that he had now no regard to the observance of the laws, and the Commons continued to urge strongly their complaints of religious and political grievances ; during this session the court party were frequently the aggressors ; and at length an attempt was made to control the freedom of the House of Commons, by commanding the Speaker to adjourn it. Sir John Finch, the Speaker, was a mere tool of the court party, and his conduct on this occasion was at once erroneous and pusillanimous; the tumult in the PREFACE. 37 House was extreme, the Speaker was forcibly detained in the chair until three protestations were read, declar- ing that whoever caused an innovation of religion, ad- vised the imposition of tonnage and poundage without the assent of Parliament, or whoever voluntarily paid it, if levied without such sanction, would be a capital enemy of his country, and a betrayer of its liberty. The House then adjourned. The King hearing of these proceedings, sent a messenger to command the Ser- geant to bring away the mace ; the House of course would not allow it. He then sent a summons to them by the Usher of the Black Bod, but he was denied ad- mittance. At last he sent a guard to force the door, but the House had risen before it arrived. Eight days after, March 10th, 1629, he dissolved the Parliament, addressing only the Lords, and in alluding to the Commons, he said, among them were " some vipers and evil affected persons, who must look for their reward." Nine of the members of the House, who had been most active on this occasion, were summoned to appear before the Privy Council ; Selden was among the num- ber ; the seven who appeared were committed to the Tower. The studies of Sir John Eliot, of Denzil Hol- lis, and of Selden, were sealed up ; and the other two members were soon after apprehended and committed to the King's Bench Prison. Nothing can exceed the folly and illegality of the whole of these proceedings, but the baffled despotism pursued its course with the utmost severity ; Selden and the other prisoners were not only restricted from intercourse with their friends, 38 BIOGRAPHICAL but even denied the use of books and writing materials, for nearly three months. At length Selden obtained permission to use such books as he could obtain from his friends or the booksellers, and he procured the Bible, the two Talmuds, some later Talmudists and Lucian. He says, " also I extorted by entreaty from the Go- vernor (Sir Allan Apsley) the use of pens, ink and paper ; but of paper only nineteen sheets which were at hand were allowed, each of which were to be signed with the initials of the Governor, that it might be as- certained easily how much and what I wrote ; nor did I dare to use any other. On these, during my prison leisure, I copied many extracts from the above-named books, which extracts I have now in my possession, thus signed and bound together." It is evident that the court party found that they were in the wrong, and not likely to obtain their object by such measures, and agents were employed to endea- vour to prevail upon the prisoners to sue for acquittal ; without effect.* The judges had informed the King that as the offences charged against them were not ca- pital, they ought to be admitted to bail on giving se- curity for their good behaviour, and they gave their judgment accordingly on the first day of Michaelmas term. Selden, for himself and for his fellow prisoners, replied that they demanded to be bailed in point of right, and that they could not assent to the finding of sureties for good behaviour without compromising the * One of the agents sent to the prisoners in the Tower upon this occasion was Dr. Mosely. See § 4 in the article Clergy in the Table-talk. PREFACE. 39 privileges of Parliament. He subsequently observed that the judges were themselves conscious that the pri- soners had done nothing that required them to enter into these recognizances, that it would have been con- duct unworthy of themselves to have complied, and that they were determined that the just liberty of the Eng- lish people should not be infringed by their acquies- . cenee. They were consequently remanded to prison, and Selden, Hollis, Valentine, and Eliot were proceeded against by information in the Court of King's Bench ; they excepted to the jurisdiction of the Court, as the offences were alleged to have been committed in Par- liament. This plea was overruled, and judgment was finally given, " That they should be imprisoned, and not delivered until they had found security for their good behaviour, and made a submission and acknow- ledgment of their offences." The conduct of Selden and his fellow sufferer, Sir John Eliot,* on this occasion was that of heroic martyrs * Sir John Eliot, not less distinguished for resplendent talents than patriotic ardour, had been previously imprisoned in the Tower for the part he took in the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628. The condition of his liberation was now to be a fine of 2000/., and though "warned that the con- finement was killing him, he suffered and died with magnanimity. He thought, and wrote, and wept with anxiety for the welfare of his orphan boys, but he resolved to leave them his example, as well as his precepts to excite them to live worthily." The noble house of St. Germains may well be proud of such an illus- trious ancestor, and Gibbon (who was related to it) in his own figurative language, might have exhorted the Eliots to consider the conduct of Sir John as " the brightest jewel of their coronet." 40 BIOGRAPHICAL to the sacred cause of liberty; a host of friends, among whom were Henry, afterwards Earl of Bath, Robert, Earl of Essex, Sir Kobert Cotton and his son Thomas, were ready to be Selden's sureties, and urged him to comply, but these entreaties, and the threats of inter- minable imprisonment, with which he was menaced even by the Chief Justice, were unavailing ; and, though four of the prisoners had compromised with the oppressors, he adhered firmly to his purpose. While he was yet in prison, a further persecution was contrived in the shape of an information in the Star Chamber, against him and his friend Sir Robert Cotton, and Gilbert Barrell, for intending to raise sedi- tious rumours about the King and his Government, by framing, contriving and writing " a false, seditious and pestilent discourse." This discourse was a jeu d'esprit, written by Sir Robert Dudley (the well known author of the Arcano del Mare). The manuscript of which being in the library of Sir Robert Cotton, and copies being traced to the possession of Selden and Barrell, they, as well as the Earls of Bedford, Somerset, and Clare, were implicated, until it was clearly proved in court to have been written by Dudley. The title was, " A proposition for his Majesty's Service, to bridle the impertinency of Parliament," and it was evidently in- tended as a satire upon the spirit of the Stuart govern- ment by recommending the most absurd system of de- spotic misrule.* * There is a copy among the Harleian MSS. to which are ap- pended some particulars of the prosecution, and a further account may be found in Sir Simon D'Ewes's Journal, and in the Gentle- PREFACE. 41 Notwithstanding the failure to prove the chief charge, instead of honestly acquitting the defendants, the Lord Keeper Coventry told the court that out of the King's grace, and his joy at the birth of a son, he would not proceed to demand sentence, but would pardon them. A base charge was however trumped up against Sir Eobert Cotton, that he had records and evidences in his library belonging to the King, and Commissioners were appointed to search his library, and withdraw from it all such. This was a death blow to that excellent person ; he is said to have declined in health from that day, and to have frequently declared that they had broken his heart by locking up his library from him without rendering any reason. He died in 1631. The court, probably weary of a fruitless contest with men who were determined not to surrender their rights, at length found it expedient to relax their angry sever- ity; those who were confined in the Tower were released from close confinement, and allowed such liberty as could be enjoyed within the walls, and were permitted to have free communication with their friends ; they were how^- ever made to pay for this indulgence, their diet, which had been hitherto at the expense of the state, being stopped. Selden and Mr. Strode a short time afterward ob- tained their removal by habeas corpus to the Marshal- sea, and though Selden was detained there until May, 1630, he was allowed to go without the walls as often. man's Magazine, vol. xxxvii. p. 335. It is printed in the first volume of Rushworth, 42 BIOGRAPHICAL as he wished ; and the plague soon after raging in the neighbourhood of that prison, Selden obtained permis- sion to be removed to the Gatehouse at Westminster, and at length was allowed to visit the Earl of Kent, at Wrest, where he soon recovered his health and spirits. His retirement was not however long undisturbed ; at Michaelmas term the judges complained to the Lord Treasurer of his removal without their concurrence, and he was consequently remanded to his previous place of imprisonment ; but in May, 1631, his legal services being required in some law- suits between the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, Kent and Shrewsbury, the two first named, by their influence, obtained his liberation, when he was only required to give bail for his appear- ance, and finally in 1634, upon his petition, he was discharged. Besides the conduct of these suits which related to the succession to some estates and the baronies of Grey and Euthyn, Selden was retained as counsel for Lord Reay in his charge of treason against David Eamsay, which afterwards gave rise to the curious proceedings in the Earl Marshal's Court for a trial by single com- bat ; but when the day was appointed the King forbade the encounter.* * I have a curious cotemporary MS. account of these pro- ceedings which bears the following inscription : " The manner of the proceeding between Donald L. Reay & David Ramsey, Esqr. Their coming to & carriage at their Tryall beginning upon Munday, Novemb. 28. 1631, Before Robt. Earle of Lindsay, L. Constable, & Thomas Earle of Arundell & Surrey, L. Marshall of England, Philip Earle of Pembroke & Mont- gomery L. Chamberlaine of His Majestie's Household, Edward PREFACE. 43 While confined in the Marshalsea, Selden employed his time in composing his treatise, " De Successionibus in Bona Defuncti ad Leges Ebrseorum," which was first printed in 1634, and an enlarged edition was pub- lished in 1636, when an essay on the ecclesiastical polity of the Hebrews, entitled " De Successionibus in Pontificatum Ebrseoruin," was added, which appears to have been written in his retirement at Wrest, in the summer of 1634. Both works were again printed, with additions, atLeyden, in 1638. Indeed almost all Selden's learned disquisitions were immediately re- printed on the Continent, the editions being sometimes superintended by himself, and sometimes by distin- guished continental scholars. These works were dedi- cated to Archbishop Laud, as a token of gratitude for the assistance he had afforded Selden in obtaining ma- terials for their composition. The passion for those singular pageants termed Masques, which had distinguished the Court of James, and which had made Wilson describe it as " a con- tinued Maskarado," prevailed no less in that of Charles ; these the puritan party considered as " sinful and ut- terly unlawful to Christians," as Prynne expresses it in his Histriomastix, a large volume levelled against these courtly amusements, in common with all theatrical I E. of Dorset L. Chamberlaine of the Qu. James Earl of Carlisle I E. of Montgrave, Earle of Morten, Yiscount Wimbledon, Viscount Wentworth, Viscount Falkeland, and Sir Henry Martin Knight. In the painted chamber neere to the upper house of Parliamt." 'To which is appended an interesting account of " The waie of Duels before the King." 44 BIOGRAPHICAL exhibitions, and it was probably to disclaim any parti- cipation in these puritanic views that the four Inns of Court united in exhibiting a masque before the King and Queen, in 1633, the poetry of which was by Ben Jonson, the scenic decorations by Inigo Jones, and Selden assisted Lord Bacon in settling the dresses and devices. "Whitelocke had the arrangement of the music, and in his memorials, he has left us an amusing record of its conduct, in which he complacently ob- serves, " It was so performed, that it excelled any pre- viously heard in England. The dances, figures, proper- ties, voices, instruments, songs, airs, composures and actions, passed without any failure; the scenes were most curious and costly." But sic transit, " this earthly pomp and glory, if not vanity, was soon passed and gone as if it had never been." In the year 1B09, Grotius published his " Mare Li- berum," maintaining that the sea is a territory open and free to the use of all nations, but obviously intended as a defence of the maritime rights of the Dutch. This incited Selden to the composition of an answer, which he entitled "Mare Clausum," the intention of which may be gathered from its enlarged title thus inter- preted : " The Closed Sea ; or Two Books concerning the Dominion of the Sea. In the first it is demon- strated that the sea, by the law of nature and of na- tions, is not common to mankind, but is capable of private dominion, or property, equally with the land. In the second, it is maintained that the King of Great Britain is Lord of the circumfluent sea, as an insepa- rable and perpetual appendage of the British Empire." PREFACE. 45 In the summer of 1618, pursuant to the royal com- mand, Selden prepared it for the press, and it was laid before the King, who referred it to Sir Henry Martin, Judge of the Admiralty Court, by whom it was ap- proved. Buckingham sent for Selden, and was about to write the Imprimatur, when suddenly laying down the pen, he said, " The King shall do this with his own hand in honour of the work," and forthwith brought Selden to the royal presence ; the Monarch was about to sign, but suddenly remarked : " I recollect some- thing is said here concerning the North Sea which may displease my brother of Denmark, whom I would not now offend, because I owe him a large sum of money, and intend shortly to borrow a larger." Selden was accordingly ordered to alter this passage, but on re- turning with his manuscript, found it so difficult to obtain an audience that he withdrew. The work was laid aside until the year 1635, when the Dutch having monopolised the Northern Fishery, and their right to take herrings on our shores being disputed, the work of Grotius and some other publications issued from the Elzevir press in defence of their claim. Selden's work was mentioned to King Charles, and he commanded its publication after a revisal by the author, and a pre- vious examination by the King and some of his minis- ters. The following minute of Privy Council will show I how satisfactory and important the work was considered: " His Majesty, this day in council, taking into consi- deration a book lately published by John Selden, Esq. i entitled ' Mare Clausum, seu Dominio Maris,' written at the King's command, which he hath done with great 46 BIOGRAPHICAL industry, learning, and judgment, and hath asserted the right of the Crown of England to the dominion of the British Seas ; the King requires one of the said hooks to he kept in the Council chest, another in the Court of Exchequer, and a third in the Court of Ad- miralty, as faithful and strong evidence to the dominion of the British Seas." The Mare Clausum was translated into English by Marchmont Needham, and published in 1652, with an appendix of additional documents by President Brad- shaw, and an improved version by J. H. was again printed in 1663. We have but little recorded of Selden's occupations from 1635 to 1640 ; these years were most probably occupied by literary and forensic employments, of which, researches into legal antiquities formed at least a part, for his treatise " De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta disciplinam Ebraeorum" was published in the latter year. The series of arbitrary and oppressive acts of mis- government which mark this period, may be found recorded in the pages of Clarendon, of Whitelocke, of Rushworth, and Eranklyn, the facts being the same though viewed in different lights according to the pre- judices of the writer. The oppressions of the Council Board and of the Star Chamber ; the iniquitous mock trials of Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, and the still more iniquitous punishments with which they were visited : the persecution of Bishop Williams, who had been Lord Keeper, for daring to oppose the plans of Laud and Buckingham ; but above all, the active en- PBEFA CE. 47 deavours to subjugate the religious opinions of the people, and the illegal attempts at raising supplies, are some of the distinguishing features of these times, when arbitrary attempts were made to govern without a par- liament. Baffled in all his endeavours to replenish his ex- chequer, the King was at length constrained to sum- mon a parliament, which met in April, 1640 ; but of this Selden was not a member, and indeed it was dis- solved at the end of three weeks, though represented by Clarendon as " exceedingly disposed to please the King and do him service." And the same historian expresses his opinion of the evil consequences of these frequent and abrupt dissolutions, as measures unrea- sonable, unskilful, and precipitate. The King and his people parting at these seasons with no other respect and charity one towards the other, than persons who never meant to meet but in their own defence ; and he laments the traitorous councils that fomented this mu- tual mistrust. He tells us that within an hour after the dissolution, he met Oliver St. John, who, though usually taciturn and melancholy, was now smiling and communicative, saying that " he foresaw that the pro- . gress of events was all well ; that affairs must be worse before they were better ; that the parliament just ter- minated would never have done what was necessary." The same arbitrary and illegal course continued, ship-money was levied with severity, forced loans ex- ' iacted, proposals were made to debase the currency, and the Government even had recourse to the swindling practice of purchasing goods on credit and selling them 48 BIOGRAPHICAL at a loss for ready money. The war which had been recommenced to coerce the Scottish people did not pros- per, the King's army was more disposed to join the Scots than to draw their swords in his service, and defeat was the consequence. Thus circumstanced, the King was constrained to summon another parliament, which met on the 3rd of November ; of which it has been said, " that many thought it would never have a beginning, and after- ward that it would never have ended." The memo- rable acts of this Long Parliament, many of which entitle it to the gratitude of the country, will be familiar to every reader of our history. Selden's high reputation at this period is evinced by his being unanimously chosen as representative for the University of Oxford, and no stronger proof can be given that he was regarded by the King's party as not unfriendly to the cause of Monarchy. Indeed the moderate course he pursued had been so far mistaken, that Laud had declared that he would bring him over : Noy and Wentworth had been successfully tampered with, and it was presumed that one who had been their companion was not made of sterner stuff. On the first day of the meeting of this Parliament, Selden was nominated one of the committee to attend to the petitions against the Earl Marshal's Court, which had been promoted by Hyde, and which terminated in its abolishment. He was also appointed one of the committee of twenty-four, appointed to draw up a declaration or re- monstrance on the state of the nation, and this paper PREFACE. 49 which contained a full and energetic exposure of griev- ances, gave occasion to Hyde to announce his desertion to the Court party, by publishing a reply to it ; and henceforth Selden was separated from his friend in the public path of politics, though, to the credit of both, their friendship remained unaltered, and Hyde on all occasions stood forth in defence of Selden' s conscientious conduct. It appears that Selden was included by the House in the list of those who were designed to be Strafford's accusers, and his name occurs in all the committees appointed to search for precedents, and other prelimi- nary arrangements, but he was not one of those ap- pointed to conduct the prosecution; from which cir- cumstance it has been presumed that, in his judgment, the evidence against this unfortunate nobleman was never satisfactory. Franklyn expressly says that Lord Digby and Selden were convinced by the Earl's de- fence, and left the prosecution when the Bill of Attainder was introduced. They were in the minority of 59 who voted against it, and were honoured by the rabble with the epithets of Straffordians and betrayers of their country. Selden's name is found in the lists of various com- mittees at this time, and especially on those appointed to examine into the illegal proceedings in the exchequer respecting ship-money ; and upon the treaty with the Scotch at Eipon ; and on the appointment of a Custos Begni during the King's absence in Scotland. But his most prominent position was the part he took when the state of the Established Church was 50 BIOGRAPHICAL brought before the House. In the declaration of grievances, those relating to religion and ecclesiastical affairs were chief features, and now met with earnest attention. The clergy, as Selden himself remarks, were never more learned ; no man taxed them with ignorance, hut they had worse faults. They were too inattentive to their religious duties, and interfered too much with political affairs. During the suspension of parliaments, a convocation of the clergy had drawn up new canons and ordinances, and the House now appointed a committee, of which Selden was a memher, to enquire into these matters. Clarendon justly ohserves that " The convocation made canons, which it thought it might do ; and gave sub- sidies out of parliament, and enjoined oaths, which certainly it might not do : in a word did many things which in the best of times might have been questioned, and therefore were sure to be questioned in the worst, and drew the same prejudice upon the whole body of the clergy, to which before only some few clergymen were exposed." While some from political, and others from theolo- gical motives were bent upon overthrowing the Church Establishment, Selden pursued that temperate course which shows that he was friendly to its doctrines and discipline, and only an enemy to the abuse of ecclesi- astical power in whatever hands it may be placed. The members of the Convocation, and especially the prelates, were justly alarmed at the proposed enquiry, and a letter from Laud to Selden on this occasion, written in an humble and imploratory strain, evinces PREFACE. 51 the terror excited from the consciousness of having ex- ercised with little moderation the powers with which an arbitrary Government had invested them. Upon the presentation of a remonstrance to Parlia- ment from certain sectarian ministers respecting church government, Rushworth has preserved to us a curious specimen of the kind of logomachy* which sometimes took place. Selden had protested against the discus- sion of religious topics in the House, and the debate proceeded upon the right of bishops to suspend the inferior clergy from the performance of their ministerial duties. In opposition to this Sir Harbottle Grimstone employed the following logic : " That Bishops are Jure divino is a question ; that Archbishops are not Jure divino is out of question. Now, that Bishops who are questioned whether Jure divino, or Archbishops, who out of question are not Jure divino, should suspend Ministers that are Jure divino, I leave to be consi- dered." To which Selden replied with great pleasantry and dialectic skill : " That the convocation is Jure divino is a question ; that parliaments are not Jure divino is out * Upon one occasion an Alderman (probably Pennington) said, " Mr. Speaker, there are so many clamours against such and such of the Prelates, that we shall never be quiet till we have no more Bishops." Upon this Selden rose and desired the House to observe, " what grievous complaints there were for high misde- meanours, against such and such of the Aldermen ; and therefore, by a parity of reason, it is my humble motion that we have no more Aldermen." L'Estrange's Reflections upon Poggius's Fable of a Priest and Epiphany, part i. 364. 52 BIOGRAPHICAL of question; that religion is Jure divino there is no question. Now, Sir, that the convocation, which is questionable whether Jure divino, and parliaments, which out of question are not Jure divino, should med- dle with religion, which, questionless is Jure divino, I leave to your consideration !" Sir Harbottle, pursuing his argument, observed, " that Archbishops are not Bishops." To which Selden rejoined, u that is no otherwise true than that judges are no lawyers, and aldermen no citizens." Dr. Aikin has observed, that " Selden well knew there was a standing committee of religion in parlia- ment, and that the ecclesiastical discipline and govern- ment, if not the doctrines of the Church, were regarded by a large party as proper subjects of parliamentary discussion, and that therefore this was mere dialectical fencing." A declaration against Episcopacy was read in the House on the 31st January, 1641, and though Selden used all his learning and reasoning to defeat it, his opposition was vain, for the Bishops were deprived of their seats in parliament, and the clergy proscribed from holding any civil office, early in the following month. The abolition of Episcopacy followed, which was finally voted in September, 1642, as Selden had foretold. Though now so actively engaged in the great poli- tical struggle, Selden seems to have still found time for his favourite literary pursuits, and one of his most elaborate works was published in 1640. This was the treatise, " De Jure JNaturali et Gentium juxta discipli- PREFACE. 53 nam Ebrseorum." The design is supposed to have been suggested by the celebrated work of Grotius, " Be Jure Belli et Pacis," but its subject and method are totally different, and its motto, from Lucretius : " Loca nullius ante trita solo, Sfc" claims for its subject the merit of entire novelty. It is without a dedication, a circum- stance which indicates the dubious complexion of the time of its appearance, but the preface presents an analysis of the work, which the variety of its matter, and intricacy of its arrangement rendered highly neces- sary. "It was Selden's professed object to exhibit Jewish law as laid down by the Jewish writers them-^ selves, he was therefore constrained in some measure to follow their method, and it cannot be denied that he has made his work a valuable repertory of all that his- tory or tradition has preserved concerning the Hebrew institutions, before and after the Mosaic dispensation. In that view it has been much commended, both at home and abroad, and it made a large addition to the reputation he already possessed for indefatigable in- dustry and profound erudition. An abridgment was published by Buddeus, at Halle, in 1695."* Milton has incidentally given his opinion of this work and its author, in his " Areopagitica," addressed to the Parliament, which it may not be uninteresting to annex. " Bad meals will scarce breed good nourish- ment in the healthiest concoction : but herein the dif- ference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to * Aikin's Life of Selden, p. 111. 54 BIOGRAPHICAL confute, to forewarn, to illustrate, whereof what hetter witness can ye expect I should produce than one of your own now sitting in parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden, whose volume of natural and national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons, and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attain- ment of what is truest." The allusion is to the first chapter of Selden's work, where he has thought it ne- cessary to accumulate a mass of authority in justifica- tion of publishing to the world a variety of different and contradictory opinions. Milton has also mentioned Selden's work with high eulogy in his " Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," chap. 22. Selden's name appears among those members of the House of Commons, who signed a protestation in May, 1641, that they would maintain the protestant religion according to the doctrine of the Church of England, and would defend the person and authority of the King, the privileges of parliament and the rights of the subject. In this protestation almost the whole House concurred, and it was probably only intended to obviate any charge of unconstitutional intentions.* The reader need not now be told that Selden was in politics ever inclined to moderation, and that leagued with a few true lovers of their country, not less deserv- ing of, though less known to fame than those who figure Aikin, p. 113. PREFACE. 55 prominently in its annals, he pursued a temperate and thoughtful course, as a legislator and a patriot. It was at the lodgings of Pym and of Selden that the leaders of the moderate party met to arrange the course to be pursued in Parliament, as the more violent opposers of the Government met in a similar manner at the houses of Cromwell, Haselrigge, and Oliver St. John. With these moderate views, Selden was enabled sometimes to restrain the violence occasionally offered to the legal course of justice, and when it was once pro- posed that the pay of some officers suspected of plotting against the Parliament should cease,* he reminded the House that as there was no judgment or charge passed against them, they could not have incurred a forfeiture. The advantage which the King's affairs would have gained from the influence of the party to which Selden belonged, was defeated by the ill-advised impeachments of the five members, for alleged offences committed by them in their places as members of Parliament, and by the subsequent attempt to seize them, which must be familiar to the reader of our annals. By this flagrant breach of the privilege of Parliament, and the violent and illegal procedure which marked it, a spirit was roused which gave an ascendancy to the more violent opposition- ists. A committee was appointed to sit within the pre- cincts of London protected by a guard of citizens, to decide upon the remonstrances and reports of sub-com- * An account of this transaction may be found in a letter of Secretary Nicholas to Charles I. printed in Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. v. pp. 11-12, and in the Pari. Hist. ix. 531. Johnson's Mem. of Selden, p. 268. 56 BIOGRAPHICAL mittees ; to one of which Selden was nominated, to whom was deputed the examination of the violation of the privileges and the framing a petition to the King. A proclamation directing the apprehension of the five members was drawn up by order of Charles, which the Lord Keeper Lyttleton refused to seal ; it was however placed upon Whitehall Grate, but was suppressed by order of Parliament in a few days. Charles had now removed to York, and from thence, Lord Clarendon relates, " sent an order to the Lord Falkland, to require the seal from the Lord Keeper, though he was not resolved to what hand to commit it." The Lord Chief Justice Banks and Selden were mentioned by him to Culpepper and Hyde, whose opinion he re- quired. Banks was not thought equal to the charge in times of such turbulence, and " they did not doubt Mr. Selden's affection to the King, but they knew him so well that they concluded he would absolutely refuse the place if it was offered to him. He was in years, and of tender constitution ; he had long enjoyed his ease, which he loved ; was rich, and would not have made a journey to York, or have lain out of his own bed for any prefer- ment, which he had never affected." * * The following letter given from the Harding MSS. in the Biogr. Brittan. fully confirms Lord Clarendon's opinion. Selden was always opposed to the King's friends being absent from Par- liament, v. Table Talk, the King, § 8 : Mr. Selden to the Marquis of Hertford. My Lord, I received from his most excellent Majesty a command for my waiting on him at York, and he is most graciously pleased to say PREFACE. 57 The Parliament seem to have obtained information of this overture, for on the 4th of February, a peremptory order was issued for Mr. Selden and others to attend within three days at farthest, and to continue their service at the House.* Dr. Aikin has justly observed " that if principle can be inferred from actions, it could scarcely be expected that Selden was prepared to quit the parliamen- tary party, in whose measures he had for the most part concurred, and join the royalists, whom he had opposed." And in the struggle which ensued between the King and the Parliament respecting the Militia, and the Commis- sion of Array, the part he took makes it' evident that his principles were far from wavering, that I should make as much haste as my health will permit. I have been for many weeks, my Lord, very ill, and am still so infirm that I have not so much as any hope of being able to travel, much less such a journey. Yet, if that were all, I would willingly venture any loss of myself rather than not perform my duty to his Majesty. But if I were able to come, I call God to witness, I have no apprehension of any possibility of doing his Majesty service there. On the other side, it is most probable, or rather apparent that a member of the House of Commons, and of my condition, by coming thither, might thereby soon be a cause of some very sensible disturbance ; by this name I call whatsoever will at this time (as this would) doubtless occasion some further or other difference betwixt his Majesty and that House. My legal and humble affections to his Majesty and his service are, and shall be, as great and as hearty as any man's, and therefore, when I am able I shall really express them. But I beseech your Lordship be pleased, upon what I have represented, to preserve me from his Majesty's displeasure, which I hope too from his most excellent goodness towards me. Your Lordship's great and continued favours to me embolden me to make this suit, which granted will be a singular happiness to Your Lordship's, &c. * Journal of the H. of C. ii. 955. 58 BIOGRAPHICAL Lord Clarendon's account of his conduct on this occa- sion will make this evident ; he says, " Mr. Selden had in the debate upon the Commission of Array in the House of Commons, declared himself very positively and with much sharpness against it, as a thing expressly without any authority of law, the statute upon which it was grounded being, as he said, repealed; and discoursed very much on the ill consequences which might result from submitting to it. He answered the arguments which had been used to support it ; and easily prevailed with the House not to like a proceeding which they knew was in- tended to do them hurt, and to lessen their authority. But his authority and reputation prevailed much farther than the House, and begat a prejudice against it in many well affected men without doors. When the King was informed of it, he was much troubled, having looked upon Mr. Selden as well disposed to his service ; and the Lord Falkland, with his Majesty's leave, writ a friendly letter to Mr. Selden, to know the reason why in such a conjunc- ture he would oppose the submission to the Commission of Array, which nobody could deny to have its original from law, and which many learned men still believed to be very legal, to make way for the establishment of an ordinance which had no manner of pretence to right ? He answered this letter very frankly, as a man who be- lieved himself in the right upon the Commission of Array, and that the arguments he had used against it could not be answered ; summing up those arguments in as few words as they could be comprehended in. But there he did as frankly inveigh against the Ordinance for the Mili- tia, which he said ' was without a shadow of law or pre- PREFACE. 59 tence of precedent, and most destructive to the govern- ment of the kingdom : ' and he did acknowledge, ' that he had been the more inclined to make that discourse in the House against the Commission, that he might with the more freedom argue against the Ordinance : and was most confident that he should likewise overthrow the Ordinance, which he confessed, could he less supported ; and he did believe it would be much better if both were rejected, than if either of them should stand and remain uncontrouled.' But his confidence deceived him ; and he quickly found that they who suffered themselves to be en- tirely governed by his reason, when those conclusions resulted from it which contributed to their own designs, would not be at all guided by it, or submit to it, when it persuaded that which contradicted and would disappoint those designs. And so, upon the day appointed for the debate of their ordinance, when he applied all his facul- ties to the convincing them of the illegality and raon- strousness of it, by arguments at least as clear and de- monstrable as his former had been, they made no im- pression upon them, but were easily answered by those who with most passion insisted upon their own sense."* Whitelocke says "that Selden and divers other gentle- men of great parts and interest, accepted commissions of lieutenancy, and continued their service in Parliament.' 9 If Selden did accept a deputy lieutenancy, he was certainly not personally active in the office, for other occupations detained him in London. He was one of a committee formed on the 23rd of May, for raising volunteers for an * Clarendon's Hist. v. i. p. 517, fol. ed. 60 BIOGRAPHICAL expedition to Ireland, and on June 2nd, in a committee to frame an ordinance for augmenting the navy. He had strenuously opposed an appeal to arms, and all measures which tended to it, but when from the conduct of the King it became inevitable, there was no inconsistency in aiding the exertions of the party he had conscien- tiously espoused. The controversy which had arisen about the com- parative merits and claims of episcopal and presbyterian government in the Church, and which had been agitated by Petau and Saumaise and other learned continental writers, in England interested all, where episcopalian and presbyterian were almost other names for royalists and parliamentarian, and in his researches into anti- quity, Selden had been naturally led to this subject of dispute. A celebrated passage in Jerome mentions that in the Church of Alexandria, from its first founda- tion to nearly the close of the second century, the pres- byters always elected a bishop among themselves by their own authority. Of this fact a remarkable confir- mation exists in the account of the antiquities of the Alexandrian Church, contained in the Annals of the patriarch Eutychius, or Said Ibn Batrick, who flourished in the earlier part of the xth century. Of these Annals, which were written in the Arabic language, and had not been translated, Selden procured two MS. copies from which he now published an extract.* The part relat- * The title runs thus : Eutychii iEgyptii, Patriarch® ortho- doxorum Alexandrini, Scriptoris, ut in Oriente admodum vetusti et illustris, ita in Occidente turn paucissimis visi, turn perraro PREFACE. 61 ing to the controversy is a statement that the evange- list Mark, having converted and baptized one Hannanius, a shoemaker of Alexandria, constituted him patriarch of that city, and appointed eleven other persons to be pres- byters, with the injunction that when the patriarchate should become vacant, they should choose one of their number, and consecrate him patriarch by the imposition of their hands, at the same time electing a person to fill his place in the presbytery : so that there should always be 12 presbyters, the patriarch being reckoned as one ; and that this mode continued in practice to the time of the Patriarch Alexander, who directed that thenceforth on the decease of a patriarch, a new one should be ordained by an assembly of bishops.* The publication of this piece involved Selden in hos- tilities with the zealous advocates of Episcopacy, both Protestant and Eoman Catholic ; but the English epis- copalian party do not then appear to have entered into the controversy, they had too much already upon their hands in contending with their more formidable adver- sary the parliament, f auditi, Ecclesiae suss origines. Ex ejusdem Arabico nunc primum Typis edidit ac Versione et commentario auxit Joannes Seldenus, The whole Annals of Eutychius were subsequently translated by Dr. Pococke, at Selden's instance : and he provided funds for the publication ; but they did not appear until after his death in 1658. * Aikin's Life of Selden, p. 123, et seq. f It was the cause of truth rather than of presbyterianism which incited Selden to this publication, for in many parts of his other works he expressly favours episcopacy. And it is remark- able enough that Pococke did not much affect the task of trans- 62 BIOGRAPHICAL The calm and dispassionate moderation of Selden and the resistance he occasionally offered to violent measures, caused some of the popular leaders to hold him in sus- picion. When the plot for introducing the royal forces into London, and disarming the Militia was discovered, and Waller, the poet, (a principal conspirator,) was examined before the House, he was asked whether Selden, Whitelocke and others named were acquainted with the design. To which he replied, " that they were not, but that he did come one evening to Selden's study, where Wkitelocke and Pierpoint then were with Selden, on purpose to impart it to them all ; and speaking of such a thing in general terms, these gentlemen did so inveigh against any such thing as treachery and base- ness, and that which might be the occasion of shedding lation, being an Episcopalian. The authority of Eutychius has been since much invalidated by Morinus, Renaudot, Hammond, Walton, and Pearson. See Twell's Life of Pococke, p. 216-17. Ed. 1816. Selden probably caused it to be published, because it favoured his own opinion that the government of the Church, as much as the government of the rest of the state, is subject to the will of the legislature. See the article u Bishops out of Par- liament" in the Table Talk. Provost Baillie and Baxter represent Selden as the head of the Erastians, i. e. of those who consider the Church to be part of the civil polity of a state : they were so named after Thomas Erastus, a Swiss physician, who was for restraining the ecclesiastical power from all temporal jurisdiction. The title of his work, which is exceedingly rare, is " Explicatio Gravissimre Qua?stionisutmm Excommunicato, quatenus Religi- onem intelligentes et amplexantes, a Sacramentorum usu, propter admissum facinus arcet ; mandato nitatur Divino, an excogitata sit ab hominibus." 4to. Pesclavii, 1589. Selden has manifested in several places of the Table Talk, and elsewhere, his acquaint- ance with this volume. PREFACE. 63 much blood, that he durst not for the respect he had for Selden and the rest, communicate any of the par- ticulars to them, but was almost disheartened himself to proceed in it." * In June, 1643, an ordinance was made for assembling a synod of divinesf and laymen at Henry VII. chapel in Westminster " to settle the government and liturgy of the Church of England." Among the lay members were Selden and Whitelocke, and we are told by the latter that " Selden spoke admirably and confuted them in their own learning, and sometimes when they had cited a text of scripture to prove their assertion, he would tell them ' 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 or Hebrew signifies thus and thus/ and so would silence them." Baillie, Principal of the University of Glasgow, one * Whitelocke's Mem. p. 66. f The Assembly of Divines consisted of 10 peers, 20 members of the House of Commons, about 20 episcopal divines, and 100 other persons, most of which were presbj'terians, a few indepen- dents, and some to represent the Kirk of Scotland, Few of the episcopal divines ever attended, and those who did soon left them. Clarendon says, " Except these few episcopal divines the rest were all declared enemies to the Church of England ; some of them infamous in their lives and conversation ; most of them of very mean parts in learning, if not of scandalous ignorance, and of no other reputation- than of malice to the Church of Eng- land." Baxter, on the contrary, says, They were men of eminent learning, godliness, ministerial abilities, and fidelity, and that as far as he was able to judge, the Christian world since the days of the Apostles, had never a synod of more excellent divines, than this synod and the synod of Dort. 64 BIOGRAPHICAL of the Scotch deputies to this assembly, has graphically described it, and tells us that " those who speak harangue long and learnedly. I do marvel at the very accurate replies that many of them usually make."* Sermons, prayer and fasting were part of their ordinary discipline, and the same writer gives us the account of a day which he designates " spending from nine to five very gra- ciously." — " After Dr. Twisse, (the prolocutor) had be- gun with a short prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large two hours. After, Mr. Arrowsmith preached an hour, then a psalm ; thereafter Mr, Vines prayed nearly two hours, and Mr. Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. Sea- man prayed near two hours, then a psalm ; after, Mr. Henderson preached, and Dr. Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing." But their patient perseverance in devotion did not unfit them for convivial enjoyment when it offered. At an entertainment given by the Corporation of London, to the two Houses of Parliament and the assembly, at Taylor's Hall, in January, 1644, Baillie informs us " the feast was very great, valued at 4000Z. sterling, yet we had no desert, nor music, but drums and trum- pets. All was concluded with a psalm, whereof Dr. Burgess read the line ! There was no excess in any we heard of. The Speaker of the House of Commons drank to the Lords in the name of all the Commons of England. The Lords stood up every one with his glass, for they represent none but themselves, and drank to the Commons." * Baillie's Letters and Journals, i. 369. PRE FA CE. 65 In such fantastic forms did the prevalent religious enthusiasm manifest itself, and some it rendered insane ; many were doubtless sincere well-meaning men, but the garb of fanaticism was assumed by many profligate worthless wretches. The title of puritan is said to have been sarcastically given in allusion to the superlative innocency and spirituality which the chief of them pro- fessed, but it was first applied about the year 1559 to those who sought to purify the worship and discipline of the Church from what they conceived to be relics of Papistry. It was the fashion of the time to wear the hair in flowing locks, but the puritans " cut their hair so close that it would scarce cover their ears ; many cut it quite close round their heads with so many little peaks that it was something ridiculous to behold," and this acquired them the name of Eoundheads. Mrs. Hutchinson says K that though her husband acted with the Puritan party, they would not allow him to be re- ligious, because his hair was not in their cut." * Selden is reported to have said " he trusted he was not either mad enough or foolish enough to deserve the name of Puritan." He was certainly no Mend to the synod. f * Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson, p. 100. f Sir John Birkenhead in his "Assembly Man" says, "What opinion the learned Mr. Selden had of them, appears from the following account : The House of Parliament once made a ques- tion, whether they had best admit Archbishop Usher to the As- sembly of divines ? He said they had as good enquire, whether they had best admit Inigo Jones, the King's Architect, to the company of mouse-trap makers :" and again, " Mr. Selden visits the Assembly, as Persians used, to see wild asses fight : when the Commons have tired him with their new law, these brethren E 66 BIOGRAPHICAL The jure divino question lasted 30 days, the Erastians did not except against a presbyterial government as a political institution proper to be established by the civil magistrate, but they were decidedly against the claim of a clivhu right. Selden with the rest was of this mind, apprehending that presbytery would prove as arbitrary and tyrannical as prelacy if it came in with a divine claim. Among the few episcopalians nominated members of the assembly was Selden's early friend the learned and liberal Archbishop Usher ; their intimacy commenced in the year 1609, when Usher, then Professor of Divinity at Trinity College, Dublin, was in London purchasing books for its library. Usher not only declined to take part in the proceedings of the assembly, as it was con- stituted, but maintained by all means in his power the reasonableness of the established form of Church Go- vernment. Having preached against the authority and purpose of the synod, he drew down upon himself the refresh him with their mad gospel : They lately were gravelled betwixt Jerusalem and Jericho, they knew not the distance between those two places ; one cried 20 miles, another ten. It was concluded seven for this reason, that fish was brought from Jericho to Jerusalem-market : Mr. Selden smiled and said, per- haps the fish was salt fish, and so stopped their mouths." Cleveland, in a poem entitled " The mixt Assembly," thus alludes to Selden's superiority over those with whom he had to contend in this Synod : Thus every Ghibelline has got his Guelf : But Selden he's a Galliard by himself; And well may be ; there's more Divines in him, Than in all this their Jewish Sanhedrim. PREFACE. 67 displeasure of the Parliament, an ordinance was made for the confiscation of his library, then in Chelsea Col- lege, and it would have been sold and dispersed had not Selden obtained permission for Dr. Featly, a member of the synod, to purchase it as if for his own use for a trifling sum. In June, 1646, he performed another act of kindness to his venerable friend, who was called be- fore a board of examiners at Westminster, and required to take the negative oath which was imposed upon all who had been adherents of the King. Usher desired time to consider of it, and being dismissed for that time, he was spared the necessity of a second appearance, by the exertions of Selden and his other parliamentary friends, who obtained permission for him to retire into the country. By a vote of the House, November 8, 1643, Selden was appointed Keeper of the Records in the Tower ; an office for which he was peculiarly fitted, and which pro- bably furnished him with an excuse for gradually with- drawing from the political vortex, where he found him- self almost alone in his position as a moderator. Yet upon important occasions he was still to be found at his post as long as he thought he could be useful. We are not informed how long he retained the office of Keeper of the Eecords, but it was probably resigned on the passing of the Self-denying Ordinance in 1645. In February, 1645-6, he subscribed the solemn league and covenant ; he had used his best endeavours to preserve the monarchical form of government, and a moderate episcopacy, but it was now evident that the cause of both was lost, and the train of events which 68 BIOGRAPHICAL had precipitated the fall of both, had probably shown him that further resistance was vain. The attainder and trial of Archbishop Laud now took place, and Selden appears to have taken no part in that transaction ; yet, when the parliamentary Commission- ers had seized upon the Archbishop's Endowment of the Arabick Professorship at Oxford, he exerted himself to obtain its restitution, which he ultimately effected about the middle of 1647. In 1644 he printed his chronological work, " De Anno Civili Yeteris Ecclesise, seu KepublicaB Judaicse, Dissertatio," in which are discussed all the points rela- tive to the Jewish Calendar, derived from the Talmud- ists or traditional writers of the Jewish Church, and displaying the author's usual profundity of erudition. The preface points out the importance of the enquiry to the right understanding of the scriptures and the necessity of resorting to these sources of elucidation. In April, 1645, a committee of six Lords and twelve Commoners being appointed to conduct the business of the Admiralty, Selden was nominated one of the com- missioners ; but before they entered upon the duties of then office, the plan was altered, probably in conse- quence of the passing of the Self-denying Ordinance, and three commissioners selected from the whole num- ber were invested with the power. Selden was not one of the three named. In May of this year, the House of Commons entered an order on their journals " for Mr. Selden to bring in an Ordinance for regulating the Herald's office, and the Heraldry of the Kingdom," and upon a debate on an PREFACE. 69 ordinance for discharging the wardship of the heirs of Sir Christopher Wray, who had died in the service of the Parliament, the abuses and oppressions incident to wardships were so forcibly pointed out by Selden, May- nard, St. John, Whitelocke, and other lawyers, that it gave rise to an order for the abolition of the Court of Wards and its feudal appendages. The vote was passed by the Commons, sanctioned by the Lords, and ordered to be printed in the course of one day. Upon the death of Dr. Eden, master of Trinity Hall, in Cambridge, in August, 1645, Selden was unanim- ously chosen to succeed him, with such universal appro- bation as added much to the honour conferred by the choice. Selden declined the charge as he had all other honourable charges that sought his acceptance. He was now in years, was rich, he loved his literary leisure, and he was connected with the sister university ; these may be conceived sufficient motives for the refusal of an hon- our which few men would have declined. But though he declined this intimate connection with the University of Cambridge, he was ever ready to do it similar ser- vices to those he had rendered to Oxford. Dr. Ban- croft had left his library to his successors in the See of Canterbury on condition that his successor should give security that he would leave it entire and without dimi- nution to the next Archbishop in succession ; but in case of refusal to give such security, he bequeathed it to Chelsea College, then building, if that building should be finished within six years after his decease. If this did not occur, his library was to go to the University of Cambridge. The order of Bishops being abolished, and 70 BIOGRAPHICAL Chelsea College abandoned, Selden suggested to the University that their right to the hooks had arisen on the contingent remainder. It consequently petitioned the Upper House, and Selden pleaded for them so suc- cessfully that the University obtained an order not only for Dr. Bancroft's books, but for those of Ins successor, Archbishop Abbot. They were however re-claimed for Lambeth by Archbishop Juxon, after the restoration, still Selden's interference had prevented their disper- sion, and preserved them for their original destination. D'Israeli has remarked that the republicans of Eng- land, like those of France in the next century, were in- fected with a hatred of literature and the arts \ he asserts that the burning of the Records in the Tower was cer- tainly proposed ; and that a speech of Selden's put a stop to these incendiaries.* The same fanatic spirit placed the Universities in danger of abolition, or at any rate of spoliation and re- striction. Bradshaw proposed an immediate visitation for this purpose, and Selden successfully objected to the injustice of such a proceeding, before the University had provided itself with legal assistance ; and in order to be of more effectual use, he obtained in 1647 the appointment of one of the Parliamentary Visitors of the University of Oxford. A letter from Dr. Gerard Langbaine, provost of Queen's College, expresses the warmest gratitude of the University for this interposition in its favour. u We are all abundantly satisfied in your unwearied care and * Curiosities of Literature, 2nd series, iii. 446. PREFACE. 71 passionate endeavours for our preservation. "We know and confess, Si Pergama dextra Defendi poterant, etiam hac defensa fuissent. Of this we are confident, that (next under God's) it must be imputed to your extraordinary providence that we have stood thus long : you have been the only belli mora, and Quicquid apud nostrae cessatum est moenia Trojae, Hectoris, I cannot add iEneseque, for you had no second, manu victoria Graium Hsesit- By your good acts, and prudent manage, our six-months hath been spun unto two years, and it hath been thus far verified upon us, by your means, nee ca/pti potuere capi"* In 1646, Selden gave to the world one of the most curious and interesting of his works, entitled, "Uxor Ebraica ; seu de JSTuptiis et Divortiis ex Jure Civili, id est, Divino et Talmudico, veterum Ebraeorum, Libri tres." Having in his former work on Jewish natural and international law, treated of everything relating to the Hebrew matrimonial regulations that came under those two heads, in this work he completed his subject, adding all that relates to it from what he terms their civil law, * Leland's Collectanea, by Hearne,v. 282. Three other letters, written in Latin to him in the name of his Alma mater, are pre- served by Dr. Wilkins, and also two letters from the University of Cambridge, thanking him for his services. 12 BIOGRAPHICAL that is, the matrimonial rites and ceremonies, customs and institutions proper to their nation, and derived from the Levitical law, or from the ancient ordinances of their rulers. He adds what he calls the stupendous doctrines of the Karaites respecting- incest ; and inci- dental notices of the modes of contracting and dissolv- ing marriages among Pagans, Mahomedans, and Chris- tians in the East and West, which have been either derived from Jewish customs or appear to resemble them.* In 1647, he published from a MS. in the Cotton library, the valuable old law treatise entitled " Eleta," so named from being compiled by its anonymous author while confined in the Fleet prison, most probably in the reign of Edward I. It is divided into six books ; the first treating of pleas of the crown; the second gives a full and curious account of the royal household, &c. illustrative of the history of those times, and the re- maining books contain the practice of the courts of ju- dicature, the forms of writs, explanations of law-terms and the like. Selden's preface contains many curious particulars relating to the early writers on the laws of England, Bracton, Britton, Fleta, and Thornton, and of the use which was made of the Imperial and Justinian Codes in England. A vote passed the House of Commons in 1646-7, awarding to Selden, and several others of his political associates during the reign of arbitrary power, the sum * Aikin's Life of Selden, 138. PREFACE. 73 of five thousand pounds each "for their sufferings for opposing the illegalities of that time." Wood reports that some say Selden refused this grant, and said that he could not out of conscience take it ; but Walker in his History of Independency, says that Selden received half the money voted to him ; and on the Journals of the House there are two entries ordering payment of the moieties on the 11th of May, and 11th of Novem- ber, 1647. Selden, in a pecuniary point of view, cer- tainly did not want this recompense, and probably did not receive the second payment, for as Wood's author- ity observes, " his mind was as great as his learning, full of generosity, and harbouring nothing that seemed One of the last acts of Selden's political life was connected with the last effort to effect a reconciliation between the King and the Parliament, in which he had doubtless taken an active and earnest part. On the 11th of December, Selden went up with a message to the Lords from the Commons, desiring their consent to four bills; concerning the management of the army and navy ; for justifying the proceedings of parliament in the late war; concerning the peerage ; and the adjourn- ment of both houses ; which were to be presented to his majesty for his assent. And when the Scotch Com- missioners desired that these bills might be communi- cated to them, Selden again appeared at the bar of the House of Lords with two resolutions, vindicating, from such interference, the independence of Parliament. But now perceiving that all was hopeless, that a military despotism and the King's ruin were inevitable, 74 BIOGRAPHICAL he however unwilling, withdrew to those studies which had ever occupied all the leisure he could command ; yet in 1649, still solicitous for the interests of learning, i a vote being passed for the preservation of the hooks I and medals in the palace of St. James's, he persuaded , his friend Vhitelocke to accept the office, in order to ♦ prevent their being pillaged or dispersed. It is said that when the Eikon Basilike appeared, its influence in winning favour to the royal cause was so much feared, that an answer to it was deemed highly essential, and that Cromwell, more than once, instigated him both personally, and by his friends, to undertake the task, which he unhesitatingly declined ; and it was even- tually replied to by Milton in his " Iconoclastes," his republican principles making him not averse to it. In 1650, he sent to the press the first part of a work which he had written above twelve years before, but kept by him to correct and enlarge. This was his ample treatise " De Synedriis et Prefecturis Juridicis Veterum Ebrseoruni." It was intended to comprise everything recorded relating to the Sanhedrim or Ju- ridical Courts of the Jews both before and after the promulgation of the Mosaic law, with collateral notices of similar institutions in modem times and countries. In this first part he considers largely the subject of ex- communication, or the penal interdiction by ecclesiasti- cal authority of participation in sacred rites, a power to the assumption of which he had already shown himself a decided adversary. His preface almost entirely relates to this subject ; a peculiarly interesting one at the time, and the following PREFACE, 75 passage is remarkable. Speaking of the divine right of excommunication claimed by different churches, he says, " Tins claim has not a few assertors, as well Ko- manists as Nonromanist Episcopalians, and Presbyter- ians, which latter insist upon it much more positively, and carry it much farther in their own favour ; for after having, in their manner, inveighed against this power in papal and episcopal hands, they have, as it were, cut it into shreds, and portioned it out among themselves, with a vast accession from that authority, which they so confidently attribute to their own order." The first book brings the subject down to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. It was followed three years afterward by a second book, comprising the judicial history of the Jews to the destruction of the Temple. A third, which proposed to treat of the great Sanhedrim was left incomplete, and was not printed till after his death.* In 1652, he contributed a preface to the collection of ten monkish historians known as the Scrijptores post Bedam ; he was not the editor, but communicated some collations of MSS. from the Cotton library, and occa- sionally looked over the proof sheets. In his preface he endeavours to prove that the history of Simeon Dunel- mensis was really composed by Turgot, Prior of the Monastery of Durham, and Bishop of St. Andrew's; Simeon's claim has been however reasserted by Thomas Eudd, Keeper of the Durham Library. Selden inci- dentally gives some account of the Keledie or Culdees * Aikin's Life of Selden, pp. 146-7-8. 76 BIOGRAPHICAL of Scotland, who long afforded an example of presby- terial ordination, without the intervention of a bishop. The last of his writings was a defence of himself, re- specting the composition of the " Mare Clausum," against Theodore Graswinckei, a Dutch Jurist, who in an an- swer to Burgus on the Dominion of the Genoese Sea, had mentioned Selden and his motives for composing the Mare Clausum in terms highly offensive to our illus- trious countryman. It is dated from his house in "White- friars, May 1, 1653, and is chiefly valuable for the par- ticulars it affords of some of the events of his life, especially relating to his different imprisonments. The motto indicates the keen feelings from which it sprang: " Contumeliam nee fortis potest, nee ingenuus pati." The infirmities of age now began to gain ground upon him, and he became sensible that his end was ap- proaching; on the 10th of November, 1654, he ad- dressed the following short note to his friend Whitelocke, then Keeper of the Great Seal : My Lord, I am a most humble suitor to your Lordship that you would be pleased that I might have your presence for a little time to-morrow, or next day. Thus much wearies the most weak hand and body of Your Lordship's most humble servant, J. Selden. Xov. 10, 1654, Whitefryars. These were probably the last lines he wrote. White- PREFACE. 77 locke " went to him and was advised with about set- tling his estate and altering his will, and to be one of his executors ; but his weakness so increased, that his intentions were prevented." He died on the last day of November, 1654; within 16 days of the completion of his 70th year. According to Aubrey the disease which terminated his existence was dropsy. Death seems to have approached him without its terrors,* for his life had been well spent, and he had virtuously and conscientiously aimed at the welfare of his country, and the promulgation of truth. A short time before his death, it is related, he sent one afternoon for his friends Archbishop Usher, and Dr. Langbaine, and upon that occasion uttered these memo- rable words : " That he had surveyed most parts of the learning that was among the sons of men ; that he had his study full of books and papers of most subjects in the world ; yet at that time he could not recollect any passage out of those infinite books and manuscripts he was master of, wherein he could rest his soul, save out of the Holy Scriptures ; wherein the most remarkable passage that lay most upon his spirit was Titus ii. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15."f The import of these verses is obe- * Aubrey tells us that he had his funeral scutcheons prepared some months before he died. f I have quoted this anecdote from Bishop Lloyd's " Fair Warnings to a Careless World," 1682, p. 140. It is repeated in a work attributed to George, Earl of Berkley, entitled " Historical Applications, and occasional meditations upon several subjects ;" the first edition of which was printed in 1670. But we learn from the preface to Lloyd's book, that part of it was printed in 1655, both at London and York, and that the edition of 1682 was en- 78 BIOGRAPHICAL dience to the commands of God, and faith in the re- deeming sacrifice of our Saviour. Truths which Selden therefore regarded as the essence of the Christian reve- lation ; these had probably been the rule and guide of his life ; content with the religion of the Bible, and dis- gusted with the fanatic spirit of sectarian bigotry, con- tentious about unessential points of doctrine, and hurl- ing damnation upon those who differed from them in the most immaterial particulars. larged and published at a pious person's (Dr. T.'s) earnest request. In the margin of " Fair Warnings" we have the following note : " From Doctor Usher's mouth, whom he desired to preach at his funeral, and to give him the sacraments; at the celebration whereof a great scholar, as it is commonly reported, coming in, stared, saying, c I thought Selden had more learning, judgment, and spirit, than to stoop to obsolete forms.' " It is prefaced too, thus : " Master Selden who had comprehended all the learning and knowledge that is either among the Jews, Heathens, or Chris- tians ; and suspected by many of too little regard for religion, one afternoon before he died, &c." Later editions of the "Fair Warnings" were given, probably by a bookseller's fraud, under the name of Dr. Woodward. A gossiping story is told by Au- brey, that " when Selden was near death ; the Minister (Mr. Johnson) was coming to assoile him : Mr. Hobbes happened to be there ; say'd he, ' What, will you that have wrote like a man, now die like a woman? ' So the minister was not let in." This silly story has probably the same vague origin as that of Lloyd, in which the great scholar is perhaps meant to designate Hobbes. That Selden was a believer in Christianity cannot be doubted ; Baxter, his cotemporary, whose veracity cannot be doubted, says, "The Hobbians and other infidels would have persuaded the world that Selden was of their mind, but Sir Matthew Hale, his intimate friend and executor, assured me that Selden was an earnest professor of the Christian faith, and so angry an adver- sary to Hobbes, that he hath rated him out of the room." — Baxter s Diary, by Silvester, pt. 3, p. 48. PREFACE. 79 He had himself prepared an epitaph in Latin, which is interesting as it records his estimate of his own cha- racter ; Dr. Aikin has given us the following version of it : after mentioning his admission to the Society of the Inner Temple, it proceeds thus : " He applied himself to the studies of the place neither remissly nor unsuc- cessfully; hut indulging his natural disposition, and little fitted for the hustle of courts, he betook himself to other studies as an enquirer. He was happy in friend- ships with some of the best, most learned, and illustrious of each order; but not without the heavy enmity of some intemperate adversaries of truth and genuine liberty ; under which he severely but manfully suffered. He served as burgess in several parliaments, both in those which had a King, and which had none."* Aubrey thus records the last honours paid to his mortal remains : " On Thursday the 14th day of Deer, he was magnificently buryed in the Temple Church. His Executors invited all the parliament men, all the benchers, and great officers. All the Judges had mourning, as also an abundance of persons of quality. His grave was about 10 foot deepe or better ; walled up a good way with bricks, of which also the bottome was paved, but the sides at the bottome for about two foot high were of black polished marble, wherein his coffin (covered with black bayes) lyeth, and upon that ! wall of marble was presently let downe a huge black * Marchmont Needham, making mention of this epitaph in his ' Mercurius Politicus, says, " it was well he did it, for no man else could do it for him." 80 BIOGRAPHICAL marble stone of great thicknesse, with this inscription : Hie jacet Corpus Johamiis Seldeni qui obiit 30 die Xovembris, 1654. Over this was turned an arch of brick, (for the house would not lose then ground,) and upon that was throwne the earth, &c. and on the surface lieth another faire grave stone of black marble with this inscription : I. Seldenvs I. C. heic situs est. There is a coate of arms on the flat marble, but it is indeed that of his mother, for he had none of his owne, though he so well deserved it. ? Tis strange (me thinke) that he would not have one." A mural monument to his memory was subsequently placed in the circular part of the Church. His friend Archbishop Usher, at the request of his executors, preached his funeral sermon, and among the eulogies which according to custom it contained, he said, " that he looked upon the deceased as so great a scholar, that himselfe was scarce worthy to carry his books after him." The Master of the Temple (Richard Johnson) read the burial service according to the form of the New Directory, and added at the close, " if learning could have kept a man alive, this our brother had not died." In person Selden was tall, being in height about six feet, his face was thin and oval, and the whole head not very large. His nose was long, and inclining to one side. His eyes were grey, and full and prominent. He kept a plentiful table, which was never without the society of learned guests. Though himself tern- PREFACE. 81 perate in eating and drinking, he was accustomed to say jocularly, " I will keep myself warm and moist as long as I live, for I shall he cold and dry when I am dead."* His intimate friend Whitelocke says, " His mind was as great as his learning : he was as hospitable and generous as any man, and as good company to those whom he liked." Dr. Wilkins tells us that he could occasionally assume an ungracious austerity of countenance and manners, and this, as Dr. Aikin justly observes, " is not extraordinary and may be easily par- doned, for the persecutions he had undergone, and the weighty concerns in which he was engaged, joined to a naturally serious disposition, would be likely to produce that effect. In a period of civil discord, levity ought to give more offence to a thinking man than severity ; and it is a mark rather of an unfeeling than of a kind disposition, to appear easy and cheerful while friends and country are exposed to the most lamentable dis- tress.'^ His generosity was not confined to his convivial hours. Meric Casaubon was relieved by him with a considerable sum in time of need. He subscribed largely to the publication of Walton's Polyglot. He was the patron of Kelly when pursuing his antiquarian travels, and of Ashmole and Farington the antiqua- rians. He had detected the merits of Hale while yet a stripling, and continued, though much his senior, his unwavering friend .J * Aubrey. f Aikin's Life of Selden, p. 161. J Johnson's Memoirs of Selden, p. 353. 82 BIOGRAPHICAL It could not be expected that, immersed as he was in business and serious studies, he should always be ready to receive visitors. When called upon by strangers, Aubrey says, "he had a slight stuff or silk kind of false carpet to cast over the table where he read and his papers lay, so that he needed not to displace his books or papers." And we are told by Colomies, that when Isaac Vossius was sometime ascending his stair- case to pay him a visit, when he was engaged in some deep research, Selden would call out to him from the top that he was not at leisure for conversation. After the death of the Earl of Kent in 1639, Selden appears to have been domesticated with his widow both at Wrest in Bedfordshire, and White Friars in London. Elizabeth, Countess dowager of Kent, was daughter and coheir of Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and was eminent for her piety and virtue. Aubrey tells us that Selden "was married to the Countess, but never owned the marriage till after her death, upon some law account. He never kept any servant peculiar, but my lady's were all at his command ; he lived with her in iEdibus Car- meliticis (White Friars), which was, before the con- flagration, a noble dwelling." The same gossiping authority tells us, " he would write sometimes, when notions came into his head, to preserve them, under his barber's hands. When he died his barber said, he had a great mind to know his will, for, said he, ' I never knew a wise man make a wise will.' " When Lady Kent died, in 1651, she appointed Selden her executor, bequeathed to him the Friary House in PREFACE. 83 White Friars, and it is thought that he derived from her the chief part of the considerable property he possessed, which at his death was estimated at 40,000Z. He told his intimate friend, Sir Bennet Hoskyns, that " he had no body to make his heir, except it were a milkmaid, and that such people did not know what to do with a great estate."* We consequently find that he bequeathed to each of his nieces and nephews one hundred pounds, and to various other persons small legacies as tokens of his regard, and the remainder of his fortune to his four executors. These were Lord Chief Justice Hale, Chief Justice Vaughan, Rowland Jukes, and Edward Hey- wood, Esquires. He left the plate and a diamond hat- band, which had belonged to the Earls of Kent, to Mr. Grey Longueville, as a heirloom, he being nephew to the last Earl. It had been his original intention to leave his library to the University of Oxford, but having taken umbrage at being required to give security for the safe return of a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, of which he de- sired the loan, he expunged the bequest,f and left the * Aubrey ; who adds as a memorandum : " Bishop Grostest of Lincoln, told his brother, who asked him to make him a great man ; * Brother,' said he, ' if your plough is broken, I'll pay the mending of it ; or if an ox is dead, I'll pay for another ; but a ploughman I found you, and a ploughman I'll leave you." f It must be confessed that he seems to have taken offence unreasonably, for it appears that the University had made a special regulation in his favour, that he might have any three books from the library at a time, upon giving a bond that they should be returned within a year. 84 BIOGRAPHICAL whole, with the exception of some Arabic works on medicine given to the College of Physicians, to the dis- posal of his executors. He desired them " rather to part the books among themselves, or otherwise dispose of them, for some public use, than put them to any common sale," and suggested " some convenient li- brary, public, or of some college in one of the Univer- sities." His executors considering themselves "as the execu- tors not of his anger but his will," after selecting some of the books, and offering them to the benchers of the Inner Temple, as the foundation of a law library, pre- sented the remainder together with his museum to the University of Oxford, according to their original desti- nation. And as the benchers of the Inner Temple de- layed to provide a place of deposit for the books, the whole collection, comprising more than 8000 volumes, were conveyed to Oxford, one of the terms of the gift being that they should be for ever kept together, and in a distinct body, with the title of, Mr. Selden's Library. The Books arrived in September, 1659, and are pre- served in a separate apartment of the Bodleian Library. In opening some of them, several pairs of spectacles were found, which Selden must have put in and forgot- ten where he had placed them. The marbles had arrived in the previous June, and were finally arranged in one of the schools. An in- scription in front of the Divinity school, testified the gratitude of the academical body for these donations. One of his biographers has very truly said, " There can scarcely be a less disputable mark of integrity and PREFACE. 85 worthiness in an individual than his succeeding in se- curing the ' golden opinions' of parties opposed to each other in contending for the same object, and concern- ing which object that individual is known by them to differ from them both. Now of all contentions, history affords uniform testimony that none are so jealous and implacable as those in which are involved the religious opinions and the temporal pre-eminence of the dis- putants. Mingling in such contentions, Selden passed his life a prominent actor in them all, and yet so mo- derate, consistent, and talented was his course, that although occasionally supporting and opposing each, the extremes of the conflicting parties looked up to him and sought the aid of his abilities."* His literary merit was liberally acknowledged by those continental scholars best able to appreciate it; Grotius, Salmasius Bochart, G. Vossius, Gronovius and Daniel Heinsius are a few among the distinguished list of his encomiasts, and though his works are probably little read at the present day, because the additions he made to the stock of learning have been made available by more modern writers and compilers, he must ever be accounted one of the chief literary ornaments of this country, nor has perhaps Europe produced a scholar of more profound and varied erudition. f His parliamentary character has been thus ably * Johnson's Memoirs of Selden, p. 342. f " John Selden wrote the History of Friar Bacon in Latin, and communicating it to Sir Kenelm Digby to have it printed at Paris, he embezzled or lost it." So Mr. Joyner, Antony a Wood additions to his Athen. Oxon. MS. 86 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. sketched by an anonymous writer.* " Selden was a member of the long parliament, and took an active and useful part in many important discussions and transac- tions. He appears to hare been regarded somewhat in the light of a valuable piece of national property, like a museum, or great public library, resorted to, as a mat- ter of course, and a matter of right, in all the numer- ous cases in which assistance was wanted from any part of the whole compass of legal and historical learning. He appeared in the national council not so much the representative of the contemporary inhabitants of a par- ticular city, as of all the people of all past ages ; con- cerning whom, and whose institutions, he was deemed to know whatever was to be known, and to be able to furnish whatever, within so vast a retrospect, was of a nature to give light and authority in the decision of questions arising in a doubtful and hazardous state of the national affairs." But, as Mr. Seward says, u after all, the most en- dearing part of Selden's character is elegantly touched by himself in the choice of his motto :" IlfjOt ttclvtoq rrjv eXevOepiav Liberty above all things. * It appeared in some periodical to which I have lost the re- ference. The following Commendatory Verses are subjoined, not so much for their merit as to afford confirmatory evidence of the high Esteem in which Selden was held hy his Cotemporaries. BEN JONSOST To his Honor'd Friend Mr. John Selden, Health. KNOW to whom I write : Here I am sure, Though I be short, I cannot be obscure. Less shall I for the art or dressing care Since, naked, best Truth and the Graces are. Your Booke, my Selden, I have read, and much Was trusted, that you thought my judgment such To ask it : though, in most of works, it be A penance, — where a man may not be free, — Rather than Office. When it doth, or may Chance, that the Friend's affection proves allay Unto the censure. Yours all need doth fly Of this so vicious humanity : Than which, there is not unto Studio a more Pernicious Enemy. We see, before A many' of Books, even good judgments wound Themselves, through favouring that, is there not found ; But I to yours, far from this fault, shall do ; Not fly the crime, but the suspicion too : COMMENDATORY Though I confess (as every muse hath err'd, And mine not least) I have too oft preferr'd Men past their terms ; and prais'd some names too much, But 'twas with purpose to have made them such. Since, being deceiv'd, I turn a sharper eye Upon myself, and ask to whom, and why, And what I write ? and vex it many days Before men get a verse, much less a praise ; So that my reader is assured, I now Mean what I speak, and still will keep that vow. Stand forth my object, then. You that have been Ever at home, yet have all countries seen ; And like a compass, keeping one foot still Upon your centre, do your circle fill Of general knowledge ; watch'd men, manners too, Heard what times past have said, seen what ours do ! Which grace shall I make love to first ? your skill Or faith in things ? or is't your wealth and will T' inform and teach ? or your unwearied pain Of gathering? bounty in pouring out again? What fables have you vex'd, what truth redeem'd, Antiquities search'd, opinions disesteem'd, Impostures branded, and authorities urg'd ! What blots and errors have you watched and purg'd Records and Authors of! how rectified Times, manners, customs ! innovations spied ! Sought out the fountains, sources, creeks, paths, ways, And noted the beginnings and decays ! Where is that nominal mark, or real rite, Form, act, or ensign, that hath 'scaped your sight ? How are traditions there examin'd ! how Conjectures retriev'd! and a story now And then of times (besides the bare conduct Of what it tells us) weav'd in to instruct ! I wonder'd at the richness, but am lost, To see the workmanship so exceed the cost ! To mark the excellent seasoning of your style And manly elocution ! not one while VERSES. With horror rough, then rioting with wit ; But to the subject still the colours fit, In sharpness of all search, wisdom choice, Newness of sense, antiquity of voice ! I yield, I yield. The matter of your praise Flows in upon me, and I cannot raise A bank against it ; nothing but the round Large clasp of Nature such a wit can bound. Monarch in letters ! 'mongst the Titles shown Of others honors, thus enjoy thy own. I first salute thee so ; and gratulate With that thy style, thy keeping of thy state ; In offering this thy work to no great name, That would perhaps, have prais'd and thank'd the same, But nought beyond. He, thou hast given it to, Thy learned chamber-fellow, knows to do It true respects : he will not only love, Embrace, and cherish ; but he can approve And estimate thy pains, as having wrought In the same mines of knowledge, and thence bought Humanity enough to be a friend, And strength to be a champion, and defend Thy gift 'gainst envy. how I do count Among my comings in, and see it mount, The gain of two such friendships ! Hey ward and Selden ! two names that so much understand ! On whom I could take up, and ne'er abuse The credit, that would furnish a tenth muse ! But here's no time nor place my wealth to tell, You both are modest. So am I. Farewell. 90 COMMENDATORY On the Death of the Learned Mr. JOHN SELDENT. gO fell the sacred Sybill, when of old Inspir'd with more than mortal breast could hold, The gazing multitude stood doubtful by Whether to call it Death or Extasie : She silent lies, and now the Nations find No Oracles but the Leaves she left behind. Monarch of Time and Arts, who travell'dst o'er New worlds of knowledge, undescried before, And hast on everlasting columns writ. The utmost bounds of Learning and of Wit. Had'st thou been more like us, or we like thee, We might add something to thy memory. Now thy own Tongues must speak thee, and thy praise Be from those Monuments thyself did'st raise ; And all those Titles* thou did'st once display, Must yield thee Titles greater far than they. Time which had wings till now, and was not known To have a Being but by being gone, You did arrest his motion, and have lent A way to make him fixed and permanent ; Whilst by your labours Ages past appear, And all at once we view a Plato's year. Actions and Fables were retriev'd by you, All that was done, and what was not done too. Which in your breast did comprehended lye As in the bosom of Eternity ; * Titles of Honour. VERSES. 91 You purg'd Records and Authors* from their rust, And sifted Pearls out of Rabbinick dust. By you the Syrian Godsf do live and grow To be Immortal, since you made them so. Inscriptions, Medals, StatuesJ look fresh still, Taking new brass and marble from your quill ; Which so unravels time, that now we do Live our own Age, and our Forefathers' too, And thus enlarg'd, by your discoveries, can Make that an ell, which Nature made a span. If then we judge, that to preserve the State Of things, is every moment to create, The World's thus half your creature, whilst it stands Rescued to memory by your learned Hands. And unto you, now fearless of decay, Times past owe more than Times to come can pay. How might you claim your Country's just applause, When you stood square and upright as your cause In doubtful times, nor ever would forego Fair Truth and Right, whose bounds you best did know. You in the Tower did stand another Tower, Firm to yourself and us, whilst jealous power Your very soul imprison'd, that no thought By books might enter, nor by pen get out ; And stripp'd of all besides, left you confined To the one volume of your own vast Mind ; There Virtue and strict Honor past the guard, Your only friends that could not be debarr'd ; And dwelt in your retirement ; arm'd with these You stood forth more than Admiral of our Seas ; Your Hands enclosed the Wat'ry Plains,§ and thus Was no less Fence to them, than they to us ; * Eadmerus. Fleta. t De Diis Syris. % Marmora Arundeliana. § Mare Clausum. 92 COMMENDATORY Teaching our Ships to conquer, while each fight Is but a Comment on those books you write. No foul disgraces, nor the worst of things Made you like him (whose Anger Homer sings) Slack in your Country's Quarrel, who adore, Their Champion now, their Martyr heretofore : Still with yourself contending, whether you Could bravelier suffer, or could bravelier do. We ask not now for Ancestors, nor care Tho' Selden do no kindred boast, nor Heir, Such worth best stands alone, and joys to be To th' self at once both Founder and Posterity. As when old Xilus who with bounteous flows Waters an hundred Nations as he goes, Scattering rich Harvests keep his Sacred Head Amongst the Clouds still undiscovered. Be it now thy Oxford's Pride, that having gone Through East and West, no Art, nor Tongue unknown ; Laden with Spoils thou hang'st thy Arras up here, But set'st thy great Example every where. Thus when thy Monument shall itself lie dead, And thy own Epitaph* no more be read, When all thy Statues shall be worn out so, That even Selden should not Selden know ; Ages to come shall in thy Virtue share : He that dies well makes all the world his Heir. R. Bathurst, T. Co. Oxon. Decembr. 19, 54. Dryden's Miscellanies, Part iii. 44. * His Epitaph, made by himself, in the Temple Church. VERSES. 93 to the profoundly learned and unparalleled Antiquary, JOHN SELDEST, ESQUIKE. HOU living Library, the admiration Of this our Borean Clime, who know'st each Nation Their Customs trivial, or authentically All which thou hast narrated with such skill, That more than Camden's all admire thy Quill, Scaliger's but a Pupil unto thee, (The very Basis of Antiquitie) Sufficient characters to expresse all things Thou hast, nor need'st thou Metaphorick wings : For all the Earth is thine, a Caspian sea Thou art, and all Brookes sally into thee, But like the Ocean, thou giv'st back far more To those clear springs, than thou receiv'st before. From thee true living Wisdome doth proceed, Thou hast the art of Eloquence indeed. What bold presumption it is then in me To dedicate my Epigrams to thee, Yet so I dare to do, that all may know I wish the censure of the rigid'st brow. Epigrams, Theological, Philosophical, and Romantick, &c. by S. Shepard, Lond. Pr. by G. D. for Thomas Bucknell at the Signe of the Golden Lion in Duck Lane. P. 170. The following verses by Dr. Gerard Langbaine are placed under Selden's portrait. Talem se ore tulit, quern gens non barbara qusevis Quantovis pretio mallet habere suum. Qualis ab ingenio, vel quantus ab arte, loquentur Dique ipsi et lapides, si taceant homines. TO THE HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE HALES, ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE COMMON PLEAS. AND TO THE MUCH HONOURED Edward Heywood, John Yaugkhan, and EoWLAND JeWKS, ESQS.* Most worthy Gentlemen, *ERE you not Executors to that Person, who (while he hVd) was the Glory of the Nation, yet I am Confident anything of his would find Acceptance with you ; and truly the * Mil ward, or the transcriber, has made strange work with the names prefixed to this Dedication. " Mr. Justice Hales" is, of course, Sir Matthew Hale ; and as he ceased to be one of the judges of the Common Pleas on the death of Cromwell in 1658, the Table Talk must, therefore, have been prepared for publica- tion soon after Selden's death, although it remained in MS. until 1699, nine years after that of the compiler. " Heywood," should be Heyward, Selden's early friend. " Vaughan" was afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. 98 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. Sense aud Xotion here is wholly his, and most of the Words. I had the opportunity to hear his Discourse twenty Years together ; and lest all those Excellent things that usually fell from him might he lost, some of them from time to time I faithfully committed to Writing, which here digested into this Method,I humhly present to your Hands. You will quickly perceive them to he his by the familiar Illustrations wherewith they are set off, and in which way you know he was so happy, that, with a marvellous delight to those that heard him, he would presently convey the highest Points of Religion, and the most important Affairs of State, to an ordinary apprehension. In reading be pleased to distinguish Times, and in your Fancy carry along with you, the When and the Why many of these things were spoken ; this will give them the more Life, and the smarter Relish. ? Tis possible the Entertainment you find in them, may render you the more inclinable to pardon the Presumption of Your most Obliged and most Humble Servant Rl. MlLWAKD. TAB LE-T ALK. Table -Talk : BEING THE DISCOURSES OF yohn Selden^ Efq. Being His Senfe of various Matters of Weight and high Confequence ; relating efpecially to RELIGION and STATE. Diftingue Tempora. LONDON: Printed for E. Smith, in the Year M DC LXXXIX. THE DISCOURSES OF JOHN SELDEN, ESQ. Abbeys , Priories, 8$c. HE unwillingness of the Monks to part with their Land, will fall out to be just nothing, because they are yielded up to the King by a Supreme Hand, (viz.) a Parliament. If a King conquer another Country, the People are loath to lose their Lands; yet no Divine will deny but the King may give them to whom he please. If a Parliament make a Law concerning Leather, or any other Commodity, you and I, for Ex- ample are Parliament-Men ; perhaps in respect to our own private Interests, we are against it ; yet the major part conclude it; we are then involved, and the Law is good. 2. When the Pounders of Abbeys laid a Curse upon those that should take away those Lands, I would fain know what Power they had to curse me. 'Tis not the Curses that come from the Poor, or from any Body, 102 DISCOURSES, OR that hurt rae, because they come from them, but because I do something ill against them that deserves God should curse me for it. On the other side, 'tis not a Man's blessing me that makes me blessed ; he only declares me to be so ; and if I do well I shall be blessed, whether any bless me or not. 3. At the time of Dissolution, they were tender in taking from the Abbots and Priors their Lands and their Houses, till they surrounded them (as most of them did). Indeed the Prior of St. John's* Sir Ri- chard Weston, being a stout Man, got into France, and stood out a whole Year, at last submitted, and the King took in that Priory also, to which the Temple belonged, and many other Houses in England. They did not then cry no Abbots, no Priors, as we do now, No Bishops, no Bishops. 4. Henry the Fifth put away the Friars, Aliens, and seized to himself 100,000?. a Year; and there- fore they were not the Protestants only that took away Church Lands. 5. In Queen Elizabeth's time, when all the Abbies were pulled down, all good Works defaced, then the * St. John's of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell, founded 1 100, endowed with the revenues of the English Knights Templars, 1323. The Prior ranked as first Baron of England. The last Prior, Sir R. Weston, retired on a pension of 1000/. a year, but died of a broken heart on Ascension day, 1540; the day the Priory was sup- pressed. The Church and the House remained entire during Henry the Eighth's reign ; he kept his hunting tents and toils in them. But in Edward the Sixth's time the Church was blown up with gunpowder, by order of Somerset, and the stones carried to build his house in the Strand. TABLE-TALK. 103 Preachers must cry up Justification by Faith, not by good Works. Articles. | HE nine and thirty Articles are much another thing in Latin, (in which tongue they were made) than they are translated into English. They were made at three several Convocations, and confirmed by Act of Parliament six or seven times after. There is a Secret concerning them : Of late Ministers have subscribed to all of them ; but by Act of Parliament that confirmed them, they ought only to subscribe to those Articles which contain matter of Faith, and the Doctrine of the Sacraments, as appears by the first Subscriptions.* But Bishop Bancroft (in the Convo- cation held in King James's days) he began it, that Ministers should subscribe to three things, to the King's Supremacy, to the Common Prayer, and to the Thirty- nine Articles. Many of them do not contain matter of Faith. Is it matter of Faith how the Church should be governed ? Whether Infants should be baptized ? Whether we have any Property in our Goods ? 6fc. Baptism. iWAS a good way to persuade Men to be christened, to tell them that they had a Foulness about them, viz. Original Sin, that could not be washed away but by Baptism. * See Blackburne's Confessional, page 5, and 368, and Lamb's Historical Account of the Thirty-nine Articles. Camb. 1829, 4to. page 32. 104 DISCOURSES, OR 2. The Baptising of Children with us, does only prepare a Child against he comes to be a Man, to un- derstand what Christianity means. In the Church of Rome, it has this Effect, it frees Children from Hell. They say they go into Limbus Infantum. It succeeds Circumcision, and we are sure the Child understood nothing of that at eight Days old; why then may not we as reasonably baptise a Child at that Age ? In England of late years I ever thought the Parson bap- tised his own Fingers rather than the Child. 3. In the Primitive Times they had God-fathers to see the Children brought up in the Christian Keligion, because many times, when the Father was a Christian, the Mother was not, and sometimes, when the Mother was a Christian, the Father was not; and therefore they made choice of two or more that were Christians to see their Children brought up in that Faith. Bastard. |IS said the xxni. of Deuteron. 2. [A Bas- tard shall not enter into the Congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth Generation.'] Non ingredietur in Ecclesiam Domini, he shall not enter into the Church. The meaning of the Phrase is, he shall not marry a Jewish Woman. But upon this grossly mistaken, a Bastard at this Day in the Church of Rome, without a Dispensation, cannot take Orders : the thing haply well enough where 'tis so settled ; but that 'tis upon a Mistake, (the Place having no reference to the Church,) appears plainly by what follows at the third Verse : \_An Ammonite or Moabite shall not TABLE-TALK, 105 enter into the Congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth Generation.'] Xow you know with the Jews an Ammonite or a Moabite could never he a Priest, because their Priests were horn so, not made. Bible, Scripture. I IS a great Question how we know Scripture to be Scripture, whether by the Church, or by Man's private Spirit. Let me ask you how I know any thing ? how I know this Carpet to be green ? First, because somebody told me it was green ; that you call the Church in your Way. Then after I have been told it is green, when I see that Colour again, I know it to be green ; my own eyes tell me it is green ; that you call the private Spirit. 2. The English Translation of the Bible is the best Translation in the World, and renders the Sense of the Original best, taking in for the English Translation, the Bishops' Bible* as well as King James's. The * 1. The Bishops' Bible, begun soon after Elizabeth's accession to the throne, by Archbishop Parker and eight Bishops, besides others. It was published in 1568 with a preface by Parker. 2. King James's. Begun in 1607, published in 1611 : 47 of the most learned men in the nation employed on it. There is no book so translated, i.e. so peculiarly translated, considering the purpose it was meant for — General reading. Many impressions of English Bibles printed at Amsterdam, and more at Edinburgh, in Scotland, were daily brought over hither and sold here. Little their volumes, and low their prices, as being of bad paper, worse print, little margin, yet greater than the care of the corrector — many abominable errata being passed therein. Take one instance for all. Jerem. iv. 17: 106 DISCOURSES, OR Translation in King James's time took an excellent way. That Part of the Bible was given to him who was most excellent in such a Tongue, (as the Apocrypha to Andrew Downs) ; and then they met together, and one read the Translation, the rest holding in their Hands some Bible, either of the learned Tongues, or French, Spanish, Italian, etc. if they found any Fault, they spoke, if not he read on. 3. There is no Book so translated as the Bible for the purpose. If I translate a French Book into English, I turn it into English Phrase, not into French English. \_Il fait froicT] I say 'tis cold, not, it makes cold; but the Bible is rather translated into English Words than into English Phrase. The Hebraisms are kept, and the Phrase of that Language is kept : As for Example, [He uncovered her Shame] which is well enough, so long as Scholars have to do with it ; but when it comes among the Common People, Lord, what Gear do theyy make of it ! 4. Scrutamini Scripturas. These two Words have undone the World. Because Christ spake it to his Disciples, therefore we must all, Men, Women and Children, read and interpret the Scripture. 5. Henry the Eighth made a Law, that all Men might read the Scripture, except Servants ; but no Woman, except Ladies and Gentlewomen, who had Leisure and speaking of the whole commonwealth of Judah, instead of " Be- cause she hath been rebellious against me, saith the Lord," it is printed (Edinb. 1637.) "Because she hath beenreligious against TABLE-TALK. 107 might ask somebody the Meaning. The Law was re- pealed in Edward the Sixth's Days. 6. Lay-men have best interpreted the hard places in the Bible, such as Johannes Picus, Scaliger, Grotius, JSalmasius, Heinsius, (fee. 7. If you ask which of Erasmus, Beza, or Grotius did best upon the Xew Testament, 'tis an idle Question : For they all did well in their Way. Erasmus broke down the first Brick, Beza added many things, and Grrotius added much to him ; in whom we have either something new, or something heightened that was said before, and so 'twas necessary to have them all three. 8. The Text serves only to guess by; we must satisfy ourselves fully out of the Authors that lived about those times. 9. In interpreting the Scripture, many do as if a Man should see one have ten Pounds, which he reckoned by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 : meaning four was but four Units, and five iive Units, $°c. and that he had in all but ten Pounds : the other that sees him, takes not the Figures together as he doth, but picks here and there, and thereupon reports, that he hath five Pounds in one Bag, and six Pounds in another Bag, and nine Pounds in another Bag, fyc, when as in truth he hath but ten Pounds in all. So we pick out a Text, here and there, to make it serve our turn ; whereas if we take it alto- gether, and considered what went before and what fol- lowed after, we should find it meant no such tiling. 10. Make no more Allegories in Scripture than needs must. The Fathers were too frequent in them ; they, indeed, before they fully understood the literal Sense, 108 DISCOURSES, OB looked out for an Allegory. The Folly whereof you may conceive thus : Here at the first sight appears to me in my Window a Glass and a Book ; I take it for granted 'tis a 'Glass and a Book ; thereupon, I go about to tell you what they signify : afterwards upon nearer view, they prove no such thing ; one is a Box made like a Book, the other is a Picture made like a Glass : where's now my Allegory ? 11. When Men meddle with the literal Text, the Question is, where they should stop. In this Case, a Man must venture his Discretion, and do his best to satisfy himself and others in those Places where he doubts ; for although we call the Scripture the Word of God (as it is), yet it was writ by a Man, a mercenary Man, whose Copy, either might be false, or he might make it false. For Example, here were a thousand Bibles printed in England with the Text thus, [Thou shalt commit Adultery] the Word [not] left out :* might not this Text be mended? 12. The Scripture may have more Senses besides the Literal, because God understands all things at once; * Archbishop Usher on his way to preach at St. Paul's Cross, entered a bookseller's shop and purchased a London edition of the Bible, in which, to his astonishment and dismay, he found the text he had selected was omitted. This was the occasion of the first complaint on the subject, and inducing further attention, the King's printers, in 1632, were justly fined 3000/. for omitting the word " not " in the seventh commandment. During the reign of the Parliament a large impression of the Bible was suppressed on account of its errors and corruptions, many of which were the results of design as well as of negligence. The errors in two of the editions actually amounted respectively to 3600 and 6000. Johnson's Memoirs of Selden. TABLE-TALK. 109 but a Man's Writing has but one true Sense, which is that which the Author meant when he writ it. 13. When you meet with several Beadings of the Text, take heed you admit nothing against the Tenets of your Church ; but do as if you were going over a Bridge ; be sure you hold fast by the Kail, and then you may dance here and there as you please ; be sure you keep to what is settled, and then you may flourish upon your various Lections. 14. The Apocrypha is bound with the Bibles of all Churches that have been hitherto. Why should we leave it out ? The Church of Rome has her Apocry- pha (viz.) Susanna and Bell and the Dragon, which she does not esteem equally with the rest of those Books that we call Apocrypha* Bishops before the Parliament. BISHOP as a Bishop, had never any Ec- clesiastical Jurisdiction ; for as soon as he was Electus Conjirmatus, that is, after the three Proclamations in Bow- Church, he might exercise Jurisdiction before he was consecrated ; yet f till then he was no Bishop, neither could he give Orders. Be- * Apocrypha which is extant in Greek only, except the 4th book of Esdras in Latin : The Apocrypha was one great stumbling-block to the Pres- byterians. They looked upon its introduction into the Liturgy to be papistical. ■f Original Edition, not. 110 DISCOURSES, OR sides, Suffragans were Bishops, and they never claimed any Jurisdiction. 2. Anciently the Noblemen lay within the City for Safety and Security. The Bishops' Houses were by the Water side, because they were held sacred Persons which nobody would hurt. 3. There was some sense for Commendams at first : when there was a Living void, and never a Clerk to serve it, the Bishops were to keep it till they found a fit Man ; but now 'tis a Trick for the Bishop to keep it for himself. 4. For a Bishop to preach, 'tis to do other Folks' Office, as if the Steward of the House should execute the Porter's or the Cook's Place. 'Tis his Business to see that they and all other about the House perform their Duties. 5. That which is thought to have done the Bishops hurt, is their going about to bring Men to a blind Obe- dience, imposing things upon them [though perhaps small and well enough], without preparing them, and insinuating into their Reasons and Fancies. Every Man loves to know his Commander. I wear those Gloves ; but perhaps if an Alderman should command me, I should think much to do it : What has he to do with me ? Or if he has, peradventure I do not know it. This jumping upon things at first Dash will destroy all. To keep up Friendship, there must be little Addresses and Applications ; whereas Bluntness spoils it quickly : To keep up the Hierarchy, there must be little Appli- cations made to Men, they must be brought on by little and little. So in the Primitive Times the Power was TABLE-TALK. Ill gained, and so it must be continued. Scaliger said of Erasmus ; Si minor esse voluerit*' major fuisset. So we may say of the Bishops, Si minores esse voluerint, major es fuissent. 6. The Bishops were too hasty, else with a discreet slowness they might have had what they aimed at. The old Story of the Fellow, that told the Gentleman, he might get to such a Place if he did not ride too fast, would have fitted their turn. 7. For a Bishop to cite an old Canon to strengthen his new Articles, is as if a Lawyer should plead an old Statute that has been repealed God knows how long. Bishops in the Parliament. |ISH0PS have the same Eight to sit in Par- liament as the best Earls and Barons ;f that is, those that were made by Writ. If you ask one of them [Arundel, Oxford, Northumberland^ * Original Edition, Voluit, f A resolution had passed the House of Commons in 1640, and a Bill was founded upon it, declaring that no Bishop or other Clergyman ought to be a privy counsellor, in the commission of the peace, or to have any judicial power in a civil court, it being a hindrance to his spiritual functions and injurious to the Com- monwealth. This was probably in imitation of the resolution of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, who, in their Act of Sessions, 17th August, 1639, had propounded that " The civil power and places of Kirkmen, their Sitting in Session, Councell, and Exchecquer, their Riding, Sitting, and voting in Parliament, and their sitting in the Bench as Justices of Peace, are incom- patible with their Spiritual Sanction, lifting them up above their 112 DISCOURSES, OR why they sit in the House, they can only say, their Father sate there before them, and their Grandfather before him, Sfc. And so say the Bishops ; he that was a Bishop of this Place before me sate in the House, and he that was a Bishop before him, Sfc. Indeed your later Earls and Barons have it expressed in their Patents, that they shall be called to the Parliament • Objection, but the Lords sit there by Blood, the Bishops not. Answer, ? Tis true, they sit not there both the same way, yet that takes not away the Bishops' Bight. If I am a Parson of a Parish, I have as much Bight to my Glebe and Tithe, as you have to your Land which your Ancestors have had in that Parish Eight Hundred Years. 2. The Bishops were not Barons, because they had Baronies annexed to their Bishoprics ; for few of them Brethren in worldly pomp, and do tend to the hinderance of the Ministrie." The King insisted upon their right from custom, which he was bound to maintain as one of the fundamental institutions of the kingdom, and we see that with this opinion Selden con- curred. Mr. Bagshaw who was reader of the Middle Temple, lecturing during the Lent vacation of 1640 upon the statute of the 25th, Edward III. inferred from its enactments, that Bishops, as spiri- tual lords, have no right to sit in Parliament. It is true he was silenced by the Government ; but the support which he met with, and the very fact of his lecturing on the topic before such an audience, is testimony of that opinion not being unpalatable or unfavoured. — Johnson's Memoirs of Selden. Six Bishoprics were created by King Henry VIII. ; Bristol, Gloucester, Peterborough, Chester, Oxford and Westminster; but the last had only one Bishop, after whom it was again annexed to the see of London. TABLE-TALK, 113 had so, unless the old ones, Canterbury , Winchester, Durham, etc. ; the new erected we are sure had none, as Gloucester, Peterborough, etc. ; besides few of the Temporal Lords had any Baronies. But they are Barons, because they are called by Writ to the Parlia- ment, and Bishops were in the Parliament ever since there was any mention, or sign of a Parliament in Eng- land, 3. Bishops may be judged by the Peers, though in time of Popery it never happened, because they pre- tended they were not obnoxious to a Secular Court; but their way was to cry, Ego sum Frater Domini Papce, I am Brother to my Lord the Pope, and there- fore take not myself to be judged by you : in this Case they impanelled a Middlesex Jury, and dispatched the Business. 4. Whether may Bishops be present in Cases of Blood ? Answ, That they had a Bight to give Votes appears by this, always when they did go out, they left a Proxy; and in the time of the Abbots, one Man had 10, 20 or 30 Voices. In Richard the Second's time, there was a Protestation against the Canons, by which they were forbidden to be present in case of Blood.* * In Kichard the Second's time there was a protestation against the Canons. They were forbidden by Canon Law only, and unless the King's most royal assent might be had unto them, &c. Canons f 07" Blood, i.e. forbidding the Bishops to vote in cases of blood. Canons of irregul, of Blood, i.e. against their voting in cases of blood, &c. H 1U DISCOURSES, OR The Statute of 25th of Henry the Eighth may go a great way in this Business. The Clergy were forbid- den to use or cite any Canon, tyc. ; but in the latter end of the Statute, there was a Clause, that such Canons that were in usage in this Kingdom, should be in force till the thirty- two Commissioners appointed should make others, provided they were not contrary to the King's Supremacy. JSTow the Question will be, whether these Canons for Blood were in use in this Kingdom or no ? The contrary whereof may appear by many Precedents in Richard III. and Henry VII. and the beginning of Henry VIII. in which time there were more attainted than since, or scarce before. The Canons of Irregu- larity of Blood were never receiv'd in England, but upon pleasure. If a Lay-Lord was attainted, the Bishops assented to his Condemning, and were always present at the passing of the Bill of Attainder : But if a Spiritual Lord, they went out, as if they car'd not whose Head was cut off, so none of their own. In those Days, the Bishops being of great Houses, were often entangled with the Lords in Matters of Treason. But when d'ye hear of a Bishop a Traitor now ? 5. You would not have Bishops meddle with Tem- poral Affairs. Think who you are that say it. If a Papist, they do in your Church ; if an English Pro- testant, they do among you ; if a Presbyterian, where you have no Bishops, you mean your Presbyterian Lay- Elders should meddle with Temporal Affairs as well as Spiritual. Besides, all Jurisdiction is Temporal ; and in no Church but they have some Jurisdiction or other. The Question then will be reduced to Magis TABLE-TALK. 115 and Minus ; They meddle more in one Church than in another. 6. Objection. Bishops give not their Votes by Blood in Parliament, but by an Office annexed to them, which being taken away they cease to vote ; therefore there is not the same reason for them as for Temporal Lords. Answ. We do not pretend they have that Power the same way ; but they have a Eight : He that has an Office in Westminster- Hall for his Life, the Office is as much his as his land is his that hath Land by In- heritance. 7. Whether had the inferior Clergy ever any thing to do in the Parliament ? Answ. No ; no otherwise than thus : There were certain of the Clergy that used to assemble near the Parliament, with whom the Bishops, upon occasion might consult (but there were none of the Convocation, as 'twas afterwards settled,) viz. the Dean, the Arch-Deacon, one for the Chapter, and two for the Diocese, but it happened by continuance of time (to save Charges and Trouble) their Voices, and the Consent of the whole Clergy, were involved in the Bishops ; and at this Day, the Bishops' Writs run, to bring all these to the Parliament; but the Bishops themselves stand for all. 8. Bishops were formerly one of these two Condi- tions ; either Men bred Canonists and Civilians, sent up and down Ambassadors to Rome and other Parts, and so by their Merit came to that Greatness ; or else great Noblemen's Sons, Brothers, and Nephews, and so born to govern the State : Now they are of a low Condition, their Education nothing of that way: he gets a Living, 116 DISCOURSES, OB and then a greater Living, and then a greater than that, and so comes to govern. 9. Bishops are now unfit to Govern, because of their Learning : they are bred up in another Law; they run to the Text for something done amongst the Jews that nothing concerns England ; 'tis just as if a Man would have a Kettle, and he would not go to our Brazier to have it made, as they make Kettles, but he would have it made as Hiram made his Brass-work, who wrought in Solomon's Temple. 10. To take away Bishops' Votes, is but the begin- ning to take them away; for then they can be no longer useful to the King or State. 'Tis but like the little Wimble, to let in the greater Auger. Objection. But they are but for their Life, and that makes them always go for the King as he will have them. Answer. This is against a double Charity ; for you must always sup- pose a bad King and bad Bishops. Then again, whe- ther will a Man be sooner content himself should be made a Slave, or his Son after him ? When we talk of our Children we mean ourselves. Besides, they that have Posterity are more obliged to the King than they that are only for themselves, in all the reason in the World. 11. How shall the Clergy be in the Parliament, if the Bishops are taken away ? Answer. By the Laity ; because the Bishops, in whom the rest of the Clergy are included, assent* to the taking away their own Votes, by being involv'd in the major Part of the House. This follows naturally. * Original Edition, are sent. TABLE-TALK. 117 12. The Bishops being put out of the House, whom will they lay the fault upon now ? When the Dog is beat out of the Boom, where will they lay the stink ? Bishops out of the Parliament. ^N" the beginning Bishops and Presbyters were alike, like the Gentlemen in the Coun- try, whereof one is made Deputy-Lieutenant, and another Justice of Peace ; so one is made a Bishop, another a Dean ; and that kind of Government by Arch- bishops and Bishops no doubt came in, in imitation of the Temporal Government, not Jure Divino. In time of the 'Roman Empire, where they had a Legatus, there they placed an Archbishop ; where they had a Rector, there a Bishop, that every one might be instructed in Christianity, which now they had received into the Empire. 2. They that speak ingenuously of Bishops and Presbyters, say, that a Bishop is a great Presbyter, and, during the time of his being Bishop, above a Pres- byter ; as your President of the College of Physicians, is above the rest, yet he himself is no more than a Doctor of Physic. 3. The Words [Bishop and Presbyter] are promis- cuously used; that is confessed by all;* and though * Wyckliffe in his Trialogus says : — " I boldly affirm, that in the time of Paul presbyter and bishop were names of the same office. This appears from the first chapter of the Epistle to Titus, and confirmed by that profound theologian Jerome." — See Dr, Vaughan's Life of Wyckliffe, vol. ii. p. 275. 118 DISCOURSES, OB the "Word [Bishop] be in Timothy and Titus, jet that will not prove the Bishops ought to have a Jurisdiction over the Presbyter, though Timothy or Titus had by the Order that was given them. Somebody must take care of the rest ; and that Jurisdiction was but to Ex- communicate, and that was but to tell them they should come no more into their Company. Or grant they did make Canons one for another, before they came to be in the State, does it follow they must do so when the State has received them into it ? What if Timothy had power in Ephesus, and Titus in Crete, over the Pres- byters ? Does it follow therefore the Bishops must have the same in England? Must we be governed like Ephe- sus and Crete ? 4. However some of the Bishops pretend to be Jure Divino, yet the Practice of the Kingdom had ever been otherwise ; for whatever Bishops do otherwise than the Law permits, Westminster Hall can control, or send them to absolve, Sfc. 5. He that goes about to prove Bishops Jure Di- vino;* does as a Man that having a Sword, shall strike it against an Anvil : if he strike it awhile there, he may peradventure loosen it, tho' it be never so well riveted, * Who would not have laughed to hear a Presbyterian ob- serve, from the first chapter of Genesis, first verse, that whilst Moses relates what God made, he speaks nothing of Bishops ; by which it was evident that Bishops were not of divine institution. A conceit as ridiculous as that of a Priest, who finding Maria spoken of, signifying Seas, did brag that he had found the Virgin Mary named in the Old Testament. Religio Stoici, 12°, Edinb. 1663, p. 77. TABLE-TALK. 119 'twill serve to strike another Sword, or cut Flesh, hut not against an Anvil. 6. If you should say you hold your Land hy Moses! or God's Law, and would try it hy that, you may per- haps lose, but hy the Law of the Kingdom you are sure of it. So may the Bishops hy this Plea of Jure Divino lose all. The Pope had as good a Title by the Law of England as could be had, had he not left that, and claimed by Power from God. 7. There is no Government enjoin'd* by Example, but by Precept; it does not follow we must have Bishops still, because we have had them so long. They are equally mad who say Bishops are so Jure Divino that they must be continued, and they who say they are so Antichristian that they must be put away. All is as the State pleases. 8. To have no Ministers, but Presbyters, 'tis as if in the Temporal State they should have no Officers but Constables. Bishops do best stand with Monarchy ; that as amongst the Laity, you have Dukes, Lords, Lieu- tenants, Judges, Sfc, to send down the King's Pleasure to his Subjects, so you have Bishops to govern the in- ferior Clergy. These upon occasion may address them- selves to the King, otherwise every Parson f of the Parish must come, and run up to the Court. 9. The Protestants have no Bishops in France, be- cause they live in a Catholic Country, and they will * There is no Government enjoined, &c, i. e. by example of other Governments but by that which is judged best for our own. f Orig. Edit. Person, the old. orthography of Parson. 120 DISCOURSES, OR not have Catholic Bishops ; therefore they must govern themselves as well as they may. 10. What is that to the purpose, to what End were Bishops' Lands given to them at first?* You must look to the Law and Custom of the Place. What is that to any Temporal Lord's Estate, how Lands were first divided, or how in William the Conqueror's Days ? And if Men at first were juggled out of their Estates, yet they are rightly their Successors. If my Father cheat a Man, and he consent to it, the Inheritance is rightly mine. 11. If there he no Bishops, there must be something else which has the Power of Bishops, though it be in many ; and then had you not as good keep them ?f If you will have no Half- Crowns, but only single Pence, yet Thirty single Pence are half a Crown ; and then had you not as good keep both ? But the Bishops have done ill. 'Twas the Men, not the Function : As if you should say, you would have no more Half- Crowns, be- cause they were stolen, when the Truth is, they were not stolen because they were Half- Crowns, but because they were Money, and light in a Thief s hand. 12. They that would pull down the Bishops and erect * Bishops' Lands. Ordered by the Parliament to be sold for the use of the Commonwealth, Nov. 16, 1646. f Dr. Aikin has observed that Selden steered a middle course, as one who was an enemy to the usurpations of Ecclesiastical power, yet was friendly to the discipline of the Church of England. He certainly strove in the House of Commons to prevent the abolition of Episcopacy. It is evident that he disliked the Pres- byterians, but it would be difficult to say what church would have had his entire approbation. TABLE-TALK. 121 a new way of Government, do as he that pulls down an old House, and builds another in another Fashion. There's a great deal of do, and a great deal of trouble : the old rubbish must be carried away, and new mate- rials must be brought: Workmen must be provided, and perhaps the old one would have serv'd as well. 13. If the Parliament and Presbyterian Party should dispute, who should be Judge? Indeed in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth, there was such a dif- ference, between the Protestants and Papists, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Chancellor,* was appointed to be Judge ; but the Conclusion was, the stronger Party carried it: For so Religion was brought into thesef Kingdoms, so it has been continued, and so it may be cast out, when the State pleases. 14. 'Twill be great Discouragement to Scholars, that Bishops should be put down : for now the Father can say to his Son, and the Tutor to his Pupil, Study hard, and you shall have Vocem et Sedem in Parliamento ; then it must be, Study hard, and you shall have a hundred a year, if you please your Parish. Objection. But they that enter into the Ministry for Preferment, are like Judas that look'd after the Bag. Answer. It may be so, if they turn Scholars at Judas 9 s Age ; but what Arguments will they use to persuade them to fol- low their Books while they are young ? * Sir Nicholas Bacon was never Chancellor. He was Keeper of the Great Seal. f The word these is omitted in Orig. Ed. 122 DISCOURSES, OB Books, Authors. I HE giving a Bookseller his Price for his Boohs has this Advantage ; he that will do so, shall have the refusal of whatsoever comes to his hand, and so by that means get many things, which otherwise he never should have seen. So 'tis in giving a Bawd her Price. 2. In buying Books or other Commodities, 'tis not always the best way to bid half so much as the seller asks : witness the Country fellow that went to buy two [shove-] groat Shillings,* they ask'd him three Shil- lings, and he bade them Eighteen pence. 3. They counted the Price of the Books {Acts xix. 19.) and found Fifty Thousand Pieces of Silver ; that is so many Sestertii, or so many Three -half-pence of our Money, about Three Hundred pound Sterling. 4. Popish Books teach and inform ; what we know we know much out of them. The Fathers, Church * The word shove is wanting in the Original Edition, but one MS. copy has it shore, an evident mistake. The broad, flat, thin shillings of Edward VI. were anciently much in request for the game of shove-groat or shuffle board. They were placed on the edge of the table or board projecting over it, and struck with the palm of the hand to certain chalk marks pro- gressively numbered. The game was originally played with sil- ver groats, then nearly as large as modern shillings. The reader will recollect Falstaff's " Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove- groat Shilling" Master Slender's Edward shovel boards cost him " two shillings and two-pence a piece." See Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. ii. p. 454, and Nares's Glossary in v. u Shove- groat." TABLE-TALK. 123 Story, School-men, all may pass for Popish Books ; and if you take away them, what Learning will you leave ? Besides who must be Judge? The Customer or the Waiter? If he disallows a Book, it must not he brought into the Kingdom ;* then Lord have mercy upon all Scholars. These Puritan Preachers, if they have any things good, they have it out of Popish Books, tho' they will not acknowledge it, for fear of displeasing the People. He is a poor Divine that cannot sever the good from the bad. 5. 'Tis good to have Translations, because they serve as a Comment, so far as the Judgement of the Man goes. 6. In answering a Book, 'tis best to be short ; other- wise he that I write against will suspect I intend to weary him, not to satisfy him. Besides in being long I shall give my Adversary a huge advantage ; some- where or other he will pick a hole. 7. In quoting of Books, quote such Authors as are usually read ; others you may read for your own Satis- faction, but not name them.f * Customer, i. e. The officer of the Customs. The importa- tion of Popish Books was contraband ; it was one of the charges against Laud that he had suffered the customs to let pass many Popish Books. f We are told in the Walpoliana that Bentley would not even allow that a book was worthy to be read that could not be quoted. " Having found his son reading a novel, he said, Why read a book that you cannot quote ? " Selden's own conduct was at vari- ance with his dictum, for in his own works he freely quotes from all sources, many of them the most recondite, and certainly not such as " are usually read." 124 DISCOURSES, OR 8. Quoting of Authors is most for matter of Fact, and then I cite* them as I would produce a Witness ; sometimes for a free Expression ; and then I give the Author his due, and gain myself praise by reading him. 9. To quote a Modern Dutchman, where I may use a Classic Author, is as if I were to justify my Reputa- tion, and I neglect all Persons of Note and Quality that know me, and bring the Testimonial of the Scullion in the Kitchen. Canon Law. YF I would study the Canon Law as it is used in England, I must study the Heads here in use, then go to the Practisers in those Courts where that Law is practised, and know their Customs. So for all the Study in the World. Ceremony. ;EEEMONY keeps up all things : 'Tis like a Penny- Glass to a rich Spirit, or some ex- cellent Water ; without it the Water were spilt, the Spirit lost. 2. Of all people Ladies have no reason to cry down Ceremony, for they take themselves slighted without it. And were they not used with Ceremony, with Compli- ments and Addresses, with Legs and Kissing of Hands, * The first and second editions have write. Evidently an error. TABLE-TALK. 125 the j were the pitifullest Creatures in the World. But yet methinks to kiss their Hands after their Lips, as some do, is like little Boys, that after they eat the Apple, fall to the Paring out of a Love they have to the Apple. Chancellor. I HE Bishop is not to sit with a Chancellor in his Court, (as being a thing either beneath him or beside him,) no more than the King is to sit in the King's-Bench when he has made a Lord- Chief- Justice. 2. The Chancellor govern'd in the Church, who was a Lay-man:* and therefore 'tis false which they charge the Bishops with, that they challenge sole Jurisdiction ; for the Bishop can no more put out the Chancellor than the Chancellor the Bishop. They were many of them made Chancellors for their Lives ; and he is the fittest Man to govern, because Divinity so overwhelms the rest. Changing Sides. i IS the Trial of a Man to see if he will change his side ; and if he be so weak as to change once, he will change again. Your Country Fellows have a way to try if a Man be weak in the * The Chancellors of Dioceses are still several of the"m laymen, generally civilians. It is probable that, as Dr. Irving suggests, we should read they " were many of them made chancellors for their knowledge of the laws." 126 DISCOURSES, OB Hams, by coming behind him and giving him a Blow unawares ; if he bend once, he will bend again. 2. The Lords that fall from the King after they have got Estates by base Flattery at Court, and now pretend Conscience,- do as a Vintner, that when he first sets up, you i may bring your Wench to his House, and do your things there ; but when he grows Eich, he turns conscientious, and will sell no Wine upon the Sabbath-clay. 3. Colonel Goring* serving first the one side and then the other, did like a good Miller that knows how to grind which way soever the Wind sits. 4. After Luther had made a Combustion in Ger- many about Religion, he was sent to by the Pope, to be taken off, and offer'd any Preferment in the Church, that he would make choice of : Luther answered, if he had offer'd half as much at first, he would have accepted it; but now he had gone so far, he could not come back. In Truth he had made himself a greater thing than they could make him ; the German Princes courted him, he was become the Author of a Sect ever after to be called Lutherans. So have our Preachers done that are against the Bishops ; they have made themselves greater with the people than they can be made the other way ; and therefore there is the less probabilityt in bringing them off. * Col. Goring. He was first sworn to the King's secret orders ; confessed to the House ; was entrusted by them with Portsmouth, which he surrendered to Charles in 1642, &c. " He would (says Clarendon) without hesitation have broken any trust or done any act of treachery, to have satisfied any ordinary pas- sion or appetite." t The Original Edition misprints this, " charity probably." TABLE-TALK, 127 Charity* HABIT Y to Strangers is enjoin'd in the Text. By Strangers is there understood those that are not of our own Kin, Stran- gers to your Blood ; not those you cannot tell whence they come ; that is, be charitable to your Neighbours whom you know to be honest poor People. Christmas. iHBISTMAS succeeds the Saturnalia, the same time, the same number of Holy-days ; then the Master waited upon the Servant like the Lord of Misrule. 2. Our Meats and our Sports, much of them, have Belation to Church-works. The Coffin of our Christ- mas-Pies, in shape long, is in Imitation of the Cratch ; our choosing Kings and Queens on Twelfth-Night, hath reference to the three Kings. So likewise our eating of Fritters, whipping of Tops, roasting of Her- rings, Jack of Lents,f fyc, they were all in Imitation of Church-works, Emblems of Martyrdom. Our Tan- sies at Easter have reference to the bitter Herbs; though, * The word Charity, placed as above noted in the text of the Original Edition, should have been the head title of this Article, which is erroneously blended with the preceding, to which it has no relation. f Jack o' Lents, i. e. Puppets to be pelted at like shrove-cocks in Lent. 128 DISCOURSES, OB at the same time 'twas always the Fashion for a Man to have a Gammon of Bacon to show himself to be no Jew. Christians. lN the High- Church of Jerusalem, the Chris- tians were hut another Sect of Jews, that did believe the Messias was come. To be called, was nothing else, but to become a Christian, to have the Xame of a Christian, it being their own Lan- guage ; for amongst the Jews, when they made a Doc- tor of Law, 'twas said he was called. 2. The Turks tell their People of a Heaven where there is sensible Pleasure, but of a Hell where they shall suffer they don't know what. The Christians quite invert this Order ; they tell us of a Hell where we shall feel sensible Pain, but of a Heaven where we shall enjoy we can't tell what. 3. Why did the Heathens object to the Christians, that they worship an Ass's Head ?* You must know, that to a Heathen, a Jew and a Christian were all one ;f that they regarded him not, so he was not one of them. Xow that of the Ass's Head might proceed from such a * V. Minucius Felix in Octavio, cap. 28, (ubi hagc Caecilii verba laudatur : Audire te dicis caput asini rem nobis esse di- vinam ? Quis tarn stultus, ut hac colat ? quis stultior, ut hoc credat. Conf. Martialis, II. 95 ; Tacitus, Hist. lib. v. § 4.), and Ruperti's Commentary, where the subject is discussed and refer- ences given to everything bearing on the subject. f This opinion is founded on the passage in Suetonius. Claudius,