amusements and sports, is well known. But the peculiarity of this case was, that the Archbishop was somewhat puritanically given; and shortly after (August 27, 1621) Yonge records that the Archbishop "betook himself more often than in former times to preaching, for which he was like to be in trouble."

The Puritan habit of preaching could in those days be less overlooked than homicide. However, after five months' delay, the King granted the Archbishop his pardon. It was in 1621 that Laud ascended the episcopal throne, and it is a curious circumstance that he and other Bishops elect scrupled to receive consecration at the hands of Archbishop Abbot. The Editor evidently traces the scruple, not to the blood-guiltiness, but to the Low-Churchism, of the Primate. A Royal Commission had to be issued to settle the question.

The following year was one of general distress, which was not diminished by the extortion of the King from all classes of his subjects, under the name of Benevolences. They that were nearer the Court seem to have fared the worst in the levy of this unconstitutional tax, the sums mentioned by Yonge as given by those of the better sort of ability about London being £200, £100, £50, and none under 20 marks (£13. 68. 8d.). In Devonshire, the highest sum paid, by the sheriff and one other, was £40; by three others, £10; all the rest (save one, who paid £2) gave £4. The Diary alludes to assemblies of starving men in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Devonshire. How little the principles of political economy were then understood, will appear from that portion of the next extract which we put in italics.

"It is said that merchants are enjoined to buy a quantity of clothes weekly at Blackwall Hall, in London, or otherwise they shall be disfranchised of their liberties and freedom of merchants in London. There is a great scarcity of money within all this kingdom, so that any man cannot depend upon any payment or receat any money due to him, and generally all the country is impoverished. And good livers cannot make any shift for money. The price of all things, except corn, is at a very low rate. Tradesmen complain that they cannot get work to employ themselves, so that many do offer to work for meat and drink only."-P. 52.

To add to his troubles, Walter Yonge heard at this time a rumour that all Puritan justices of the peace were to be put off the commission. We finish our extracts relating to the reign of James I. with a passage which shews how intimately religion mingled itself with all the State affairs of that day:

"Aug. 25, 1622. Mr. Hull, our Vicar, told me that the Lord Keeper, Dr. Williams, wrote to the judges of assize, so that they should deliver out of prison all such as were in prison for Popery, and that there are orders come forth, under the Great Seal of England, that no man shall be molested or troubled for professing the Popish religion; quod Deus avertat.-True.

“Note 1. First, exceptions were taken to the Translations of the Bible, and thereupon was a command given for a new Translation, which is now very excellent. But a restraint that there should be no marginal notes upon any place of it, or any quotations.

"2. Liberty was given for recreations upon the Sabbath, as for Church ales, dancing, &c.; but this seemed to be restrained to Lincolnshire or Leicestershire, as a means to draw recusants to church; but practised throughout the kingdom without restraint and with applause.

"3. That no lectures should be permitted other than such as were performed by ministers within their own cure.

"4. No lectures or sermons by ministers in the afternoon on the Sabbath in their own cure, but only catechising upon some part of the Commandments, Lord's Prayer, or Belief.

"5. That none should be imprisoned for holding any points of Popery, or denying to take the oath of supremacy."-P. 64.

That the Puritans had some reasons for fearing a return of Church and State to Popery, is well known. In this passage the Puritan Justice alludes to events separated from each other by considerable intervals, and long previous to 1622.

1. The new Translation of the Bible grew out of a request of the Puritan Reynolds to the King at the Hampton conference in 1603. The Translation, made by 47 learned men, was begun in 1607, completed in 1610, and published in 1611.

2. The reference is to the Declaration published by James I., 1618, at the instigation of Bishop Moreton, to encourage recreation and sports on the Lord's-day. It was a deliberate appeal of the orthodox Churchmen of that day to the alehouse and its revelries, to help them to empty the conventicles, which the zealous ministry and earnest preaching of the Puritan clergy were filling in most parts of England.

The other reference is to the Book of Canons which were passed by both houses of Convocation early in James's reign, and were ratified by letters patent granted under the Royal seal, but which never received the sanction of Parliament, and consequently are disallowed by the courts of law. Mr. Hallam describes this code of new canons as aiming at the exclusion of Nonconformists from all civil rights. (Const. Hist., I. 413.)

All that is most interesting in this Diary of Walter Yonge belongs to the reign of James. With respect to that of his ill-fated son, doomed to pay the long accumulating penalties of his own and his father's crimes, the sources of information are more numerous, and this Diary adds no facts of any importance.

We will finish our extracts with a story, in the favourite Puritan style.

"The 2nd of August, 1626, anno 2 Caroli Primi, there was a general fast commanded by proclamation, that all people should assemble to their parish church and humble themselves before the Lord, desiring him to avert his punishment of the Plague, which lieth heavy upon many parts of the kingdom, and to defend us from the swelling pride of Spain. This day some of Newmarket, beyond London, going to church, met with eight of their neighbours which were going to reap, whom they demanded what they meant, and whether they would not turn back with them to the church to join with the congregation in prayer and fasting, that God's wrath might be averted from the land. These eight answered that they could not live by fasting and prayer, and went on in their intended course. The 4th of August, being the Friday, these eight went into the field to reap, and being there (it being a champaign country, not enclosed), there suddenly came a great storm of thunder and lightning. These having no shelter, seven of them covered themselves with sheaves; the eighth stood it out and was smitten dead. Fire seized on the sheaves where the others lay, and burnt them, and so scorched three of them that they died also; the other four were so affrighted that they all ran mad and distracted. See here God's hand upon the contemners of his ordinances! "Further it is to be observed how troublesome and wet a harvest we had before that time, in so much that people were scarce able to save their hay, and some were not able to take up their grass fourteen days after it was cut.

Presently the day of the fast the weather waxed clear, and from that day fair weather came in and continued all the time of corn harvest, as all people generally in the realm know, and many have observed."-Pp. 95, 96.

If the spirit of this story be imbued with superstition, let it be remembered in extenuation of the Puritan writer, that the superstition is not yet purged from the Protestant Church of England, and that our own day has, in Parliament and elsewhere, repeatedly listened to its expression.

CHIVALRY AND PURITANISM.

HISTORIANS have loved to eulogize the manners and virtues, the glory and the benefits of Chivalry. Puritanism accomplished for mankind far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, Chivalry had the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of spirit; the Puritans, from the fear of God. The knights were proud of loyalty; the Puritans, of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs, in whose smile they beheld honour, whose rebuke was the wound of disgrace; the Puritans, disdaining ceremony, would not bow at the name of Jesus, nor bend the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry delighted in outward show, favoured pleasure, multiplied amusements, and degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged classes; Puritanism bridled the passions, commanded the virtues of self-denial, and rescued the name of man from dishonour. The former valued courtesy ; the latter, justice. The former adorned society by graceful refinements; the latter founded national grandeur on universal education. The institutions of Chivalry were subverted by the gradually increasing weight and knowledge and opulence of the industrious classes; the Puritans, rallying upon those classes, planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty.Bancroft's History of America, I. 468, 469.

THE INTEREST OF REAL LIFE.

How surpassingly interesting is real life, when we get an insight into it! Occasionally a great genius lifts up the veil of history, and we see men who once really were alive, who did not always live only in history. Or amidst the dreary page of battles, levies, sieges, and the sleep-inducing weavings and unweavings of political combination, we come, ourselves, across some spoken or written words of the great actors of the time; and are then fascinated by the life and reality of these things. Could you have the life of any man really portrayed to you, sun-drawn as it were, its hopes, its fears, its revolutions of opinion in each day, its most anxious wishes attained, and then perhaps crystalizing into its blackest regrets, such a work would go far to contain all histories, and be the greatest lesson of love, humility and tolerance that men had ever read.-Friends in Council, p. 88.

GOOD COMPANY.

WHAT is commonly called good company is merely a mosaic of polished caricatures.-A. W. SCHLEGEL.

By good company is meant, that which will not furnish matter for even the smallest poem.-GÖTHE.

MEMOIR OF THE LATE REV. ROBERT ASPLAND.

CHAPTER XVII.

LORD SIDMOUTH's ill-advised attempt to give new stringency to the Toleration Act, led in the following year to a partial revisal of the laws affecting Protestant Dissenters. In the long series of years that had intervened since the passing of the Toleration Act, only one law had been passed, for extending the relief granted by the Toleration Act to Protestant Dissenting ministers and schoolmasters. Until 1779, the benefits of the Toleration were limited to those who subscribed the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England. By the Act of that date, subscription to the Articles was remitted, and in lieu of it a declaration was substituted of being a Christian and a Protestant. The Statutebook was, however, encumbered with several unrepealed persecuting laws, such as the Conventicle and Five-mile Acts. It would have been a poor defence of these relics of perhaps the worst and most disgraceful period of English history, that they were practically inoperative; but they wanted even this defence. In remote parts of the country, where the Dissenters were few and weak, magistrates were still found not ashamed to make occasional use of these generally discarded weapons of persecution. As one of the Committee of the Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty, Mr. Aspland took an active part in consultations to devise the best mode for obtaining the repeal of the obnoxious laws. Mr. Belsham thus addressed him with his advice and encouragement:

Rev. Thomas Belsham to Rev. Robert Aspland.

"Tuesday, Dec. 17th. "My dear Sir,-Most cordially do I wish success to your proposed application to Parliament,—an application most seasonable and judicious, and which will, I trust, in its main object be successful. Indeed, it must be so. The voice of the delegates of 800 congregations of Protestant Dissenters must be heard. They will grant your request from a sense of justice, from fear, from policy-and, though last, not least, out of spite to the Whigs.

"Will you excuse my suggesting the hope that you will not clog your main object by connecting it too strongly with things of minor importance?

"The main and primary object, which ought never to be lost sight of for a moment, and to which every thing else should be sacrificed, is the repeal of the penal laws, particularly those mentioned in the 7th section of the Toleration Act. This they cannot refuse to grant, because these persecuting Acts have been lately enforced. And this is all which, as Dissenters, we can claim as a right. For no person could then be called to account for preaching or administering the sacraments.

"If we go further and ask for privileges and exemptions, the magistrate has then a right to demand a test, or, in other words, a description of the persons to whom those exemptions should be granted. The Act of the 19th of Geo. III. sets this matter nearly upon its proper basis. It grants exemptions to ministers of congregations who make a declaration to which no Christian can object. But it wants to be made imperative upon the magistrate; he should be required, instead of empowered, to administer the oaths. And if, in order to obtain this important object, you should consent that every applicant should bring a testimonial to his character and to the competency of his qualifications for the ministry, signed either by two qualified ministers or four respectable householders of his congregation, they will, I think, be pleased with the concession, and you will gain a great benefit without the sacrifice of any principle.

"I deprecate the entangling this important object with the trifling question of exemption from parish rates, of which the adversaries of religious liberty would lay hold as a handle to overturn the whole. At any rate, such a clause as that should only be proposed when the Bill is in the Committee, and by no means constitute a substantive part of the Bill. The same may be said of a clause for the repeal of the Antitrinitarian laws.

"I hope you will excuse the liberty I take of suggesting these hints. I most sincerely wish well to the cause, and I think that there never were better hopes of succeeding than at present.

"I hope Mr. Wyvill's Petition will be withdrawn: it can excite no interest and will do no good.

"Wishing you all possible success in your active exertions to promote the best of causes, I am, dear Sir, most sincerely yours,

T. BELSHAM.

"P. S. When you have determined upon your Reading Library, please to accept from me a copy of the Calm Inquiry, the Improved Version, and the Summary of Evidences, as a contribution to it. Vidler's conduct seems to have been most admirable."

Before the close of the year 1811, he, together with Mr. John Wilks and others, had an interview with the Prime Minister on the subject,† who listened favourably to their case. Early in the spring of the following year, the negociations were renewed with the Government, the Methodist "Committee of Privileges" taking the lead, seconded by the Protestant Society and the Committee of Deputies. The subject was one of the last which occupied the attention of Mr. Perceval. On Monday, May 11, Mr. Aspland, in company with Mr. Wilks and Mr. Mills, had a satisfactory interview with him at three o'clock in the afternoon, and two hours after, as he was entering the House of Commons, he was shot by a deranged assassin.‡

Active exertions were at this time made, under Mr. Aspland's direction, to establish an Unitarian congregation at Reading, in Berkshire. Mr. Vidler, of Parliament Court, rendered great aid. See Report of Unitarian Fund, 1812, and Mon. Repos., VII. 768.

In a familiar letter to his mother, dated December 21, 1811, he thus wrote: "This day week I waited, with four other gentlemen, on Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister. He received us very graciously. We are to go up to him again; and we have every reason to believe that we shall get some of the persecuting laws repealed."

The facts, as described by Mr. Aspland at the time, were these. "The assassination grew out of commercial transactions in the Russian empire. A merchant there, by name Bellingham, had a dispute relative to his business, which being referred to arbitration was given against him, and it ended in his being thrown into prison. He conceived that the English ambassador and consul were not sufficiently attentive to his complaints, and he came to England with this idea strong in his mind, impressed deeply by the indignities he had suffered, and heightened by a derangement to which he appears to have been subject. Here he laid his complaints before Ministers, Members of Parliament, and the Bow-street officers, but nowhere obtained that attention to which he thought himself entitled. Hence he formed the idea of sacrificing a public man to his resentment, with a confused notion of teaching them their duty; and it fell to the lot of the first Minister to receive the fatal blow. He was coming into the lobby of the House of Commons, when he received a pistol-shot, the ball piercing his heart; and, advancing only a step or two he fell, and expired in a few minutes.

"Having perpetrated the act, Bellingham retired to a seat behind, where he was seized soon after, with a very unnecessary degree of violence, for he did not betray the slightest wish to escape, nor did he make any resistance. After an