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THOMAS FULLER

(1608-1661)

HE fragrance which surrounds the writings of Thomas Fuller seems blended of his wit, his quaint worldliness, his sweet and happy spirit. The after-glow of the dazzling day of Shakespeare and his brotherhood rests upon the pages of this divine. In Fuller the world-spirit of the Elizabethan dramatists becomes urbanity, the mellow humor of the dweller in the town. Too well satisfied with the kindly comforts of life to agonize over humanity and the eternal problems of existence, Fuller, although a Church of England clergyman, was no less a cavalier

at heart than the most jaunty follower of King Charles. He had not the intensity of nature which characterizes the theologian by the grace of God. His Holy and Profane State,' his 'Good Thoughts in Bad Times,' and 'Good Thoughts in Worse Times,' evidence a comfortable and reasonable reliance on the Unseen; but they will not be read for their spiritual insight so much as for their well-seasoned and delightful English. That quaint and fragrant style of his lends charm even to those passages in which his thought is commonplace.

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THOMAS FULLER

It is in Thomas Fuller the historian and biographer, that posterity recognizes a man of marked intellectual power. His scholarship is exhibited in such a work as the Church History of Britain'; his peculiar faculty for happy description in the 'Worthies of England.' Fuller was fitted by temperament and training to be a recorder of his own country and countrymen. His life was spent upon his island; his love was fastened upon its places and its people. Born the same year as Milton, 1608, the son of a clergyman of the same name as his own, he was from boyhood both a scholar and an observer of men and things. His education at Cambridge fostered his love of books.

His subsequent incumbency of various comfortable livings afforded him opportunities for close acquaintance with the English world of his day, and especially with its "gentry." By birth, education, and inclination, Fuller was an aristocrat. During the civil war he took the side of King Charles, to whose stately life and mournful death he has devoted the last volume of his great work, the History of

the Church of Britain.' Under the Protectorate, the genial priest and man of the world found himself in an alien atmosphere. Like many others in Anglican orders, he was "silenced" by the sour Puritan authorities, but was permitted to preach again in London by the grace of Cromwell. He was subsequently appointed chaplain to Charles II., but did not live long after the Restoration, dying of a fever in 1661.

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An early instance of modern scholarship is found in the histories written by Thomas Fuller. Being by nature an antiquarian, he was not inclined to find his material at second hand. He went back always to the earliest sources for his historical data. It is this fact which gives their permanent value to the 'History of the Church of Britain' and to the History of the Holy War.' These works bear witness to wide and patient research, to a thorough sifting of material. The antiquarian spirit displayed in them loses some of its scholarly dignity, and takes on the social humor of the gossip, in the 'Worthies of England.' Fuller's other writings may be of more intrinsic value, but it is through the Worthies' that he is remembered and loved. The book is rich in charm. It is as quaint as an ancient flower garden, where blooms of every sort grow in lavish tangle. He considers the counties of England, one by one, telling of their physical characteristics, of their legends, of their proverbs, of the princely children born in them, of the other "Worthies" - scholars, soldiers, and saints — who have shed lustre upon them. Fuller gathered his material for this variegated record from every quarter of his beloved little island. As a chaplain in the Cavalier army, he had many opportunities of visiting places and studying their people. As an incumbent of country parishes, he would listen to the ramblings of the old women of the hamlets, for the sake of discovering in their talk some tradition of the country-side, or some quaint bit of folk-lore. He writes of the strange, gay, sad lives of princely families as familiarly as he writes of the villagers and townsfolk. Sometimes an exquisite tenderness lies like light upon his record, as in this, of the little Princess Anne, daughter to Charles I. :—

SHE was a very pregnant lady above her years, and died in her infancy, when not fully four years old. Being minded by those about her to call upon God even when the pangs of death were upon her, "I am not able," saith she, "to say my long prayer" (meaning the Lord's Prayer), "but I will say my short one, Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, lest I sleep the sleep of death.>>> This done, the little lamb gave up the ghost.

Because of passages like these, Thomas Fuller will always be numbered among those writers who, irrespective of their rank in the world of letters, awaken a deep and lasting affection in the hearts of their readers.

THE KING'S CHILDREN

From The Worthies of England ›

ATHERINE, fourth daughter to Charles the First and Queen

KMary, was born at Whitehall (the Queen mother then being

at St. James), and survived not above half an hour after her baptizing; so that it is charity to mention her, whose memory is likely to be lost, so short her continuance in this life, the rather because her name is not entered, as it ought, into the register of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields; as indeed none of the King's children, save Prince Charles, though they were born in that parish. And hereupon a story depends.

I am credibly informed that at the birth of every child of kings born at Whitehall or St. James's, full five pounds were ever faithfully paid to some unfaithful receivers thereof, to record the names of such children in the register of St. Martin's. But the money being embezzled (we know by some, God knows by whom), no memorial is entered of them. Sad that bounty should betray any to baseness, and that which was intended to make them the more solemnly remembered should occasion that they should be more silently forgotten! Say not, "Let the children of mean persons be written down in registers: kings' children. are registers to themselves; " or, "All England is a register to them;" for sure I am, this common confidence hath been the cause that we have been so often at a loss about the nativities and other properties of those of royal extraction.

M

A LEARNED LADY

From The Worthies of England'

ARGARET MORE.-Excuse me, reader, for placing a lady among men and learned statesmen. The reason is because of her unfeigned affection to her father, from whom she would not willingly be parted (and from me shall not be), either living or dead.

She was born in Bucklersburie in London at her father's house therein, and attained to that skill in all learning and languages that she became the miracle of her age. Foreigners

took such notice thereof that Erasmus hath dedicated some epistles unto her. No woman that could speak so well did speak so little; whose secrecy was such, that her father intrusted her with his most important affairs.

Such was her skill in the Fathers that she corrected a depraved place in Cyprian; for where it was corruptly written. "Nisi vos sinceritas" she amended it "Nervos sinceritas." Yea, she translated Eusebius out of Greek; but it was never printed, because J. Christopherson had done it so exactly before.

She was married to William Roper of Eltham in Kent, Esquire, one of a bountiful heart and plentiful estate. When her father's head was set up on London Bridge, it being suspected it would be cast into the Thames to make room for divers others (then suffering for denying the King's supremacy), she bought the head and kept it for a relic (which some called affection, others religion, others superstition in her), for which she was questioned before the Council, and for some short time imprisoned until she had buried it; and how long she herself survived afterwards is to me unknown.

IT

HENRY DE ESSEX, STANDARD-BEARER TO HENRY II.

From The Worthies of England'

T HAPPENED in the reign of this King, there was a fierce battle fought in Flintshire in Coleshall, between the English and Welsh, wherein this Henry de Essex, animum et signum simul abjecit,-betwixt traitor and coward,-cast away both his courage and banner together, occasioning a great overthrow of English. But he that had the baseness to do, had the boldness to deny, the doing of so foul a fact, until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon his large inheritance was confiscated to the King, and he himself, partly thrust, partly going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl, under which, between shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his life.

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