Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

granges (anciently paying tithes like the lands of other laymen) should hereafter be free from the same; but this exemption was afterwards, by pope Adrian the Fourth, about the year 1150, justly limitted and restrained; religious orders being enjoined the payment of tithes, of whatsoever increase they had in their own occupation (save of new improvements by culture of pasture of their cattle, and of garden fruits). Only three orders, namely, the Cestertians, Templers, and Knights Hospitallers, (otherwise called St. John's of Jerusalem) were exempted from the general payment of all tithes whatsoever.

4. And why Cestertians rather than any other order? Give me leave to conjecture three reasons thereof. 1. Adrian the Fourth, our none countryman, was at first a Benedictine monk of St. Albans, and these Cestertians were only Benedictines refined. 2. They were the Benjamins, one of the youngest remarkable orders of that age, and therefore made darlings (not to say wantons) by the holy father the pope. 3. It is suspicious, that by bribery in the court of Rome they might obtain this privilege so beneficial unto them. For I find that king Richard I. disposed his daughter Avarice to be married to the Cestertian order, as the most grasping and griping of all others.

I leave it others to render reasons why Templers and Hospitallers, being mere laymen, and divers times.

of late adjudged in the court of Aides in Paris, “Ne part of the clergy should have this privilege, to be exempted from tithes." But we remember they were sword-men, and that aweth all into obedience, &c. &c.

The above extract, though it contains some curious information, is not, perhaps, a very striking specimen of Fuller's very singular style of writing. But it is difficult, out of voluminous works, always to please one's self.

6. The year after his death, or in 1662, was published his “ History of the Worthies of England." He had this work in hand during seventeen years. It possesses no very high character for authenticity; yet it deserves to be consulted, since it contains many lives not to be found elsewhere prior to the author's time. It besides proposes to give an account of the native commodities, manufacturės, buildings, proverbs, &c. of all the counties of England and Wales, as well as their great men in church and state. According to bishop Nicholson, the best things in it are, "The cata

logues of the sheriffs, and the lists of the gentry, as they were returned from the several counties, twelve only excepted, in the twelfth year of Henry VI.; (and that) his chief author is Bale for the lives of his eminent writers; and those of his greatest heroes are commonly mis-shapen scraps mixed with tattle and lies."

R. Turner opadys, who laboured to revive the everlasting fame of Paracelsus, says that, "His sleeping ashes have been ignominiously unraked out of their silent grave by one whose scribbling pen was Fuller of scandals than modesty; his head seemed owl-like, Fuller of folly than wit, and his words Fuller of falsehood than truth; else certainly he would not have fallen so foul upon the dead whom he never knew; and if he had, was not capable of mak ing him an answer, but dwarf-like, tramples on a dead giant." [Preface to Paracelsus of Chemical Transmutation, &c.]

Besides these works, he published sermons, and various other tracts, which it is unnecessary to particularise. His compositions abound in the quaintest wit, in puns and quibbles; as if his design had been to give to the

history of the church in particular, in some places, the ridiculous air of fable and ro

mance.

[ocr errors]

Fuller was a most singular and surprising character. His memory was tenacious and extraordinary. He could repeat five hundred unconnected words after hearing them only twice, and could preach a sermon verbatim, which he had heard only once. In passing to and fro, from Temple-bar to the furthest end of Cheapside, he once undertook to tell at his return every sign as it stood in order, on both sides the way, repeating them either backwards or forwards; and performed it exactly.-No wonder also he was quaint! "That which was most strange and very rare in him, was his way of writing, which, something like the Chinese, was from the top of the page to the bottom; the manner thus: he would write near the margin the first words of every line down to the foot of the paper; then would, by beginning at the head again, fill up every one of these lines, which, without any interlineations or spaces, but with the full and equal length, would so adjust the sense and matter, and so aptly connex and conjoin the ends and

beginnings of the said lines, that he could not do it better (as he hath said) if he had writ it

all out in a continuation." [Life of Dr. Thomas Fuller, 1661.]

« НазадПродовжити »