thought so meritorious and honourable a piece of service, that soon after he came to London, he could not deny himself the satisfaction of telling some friends that he was the man pitched upon to break the design of deposing the King her father, to her Royal Highness, two years before the Revolution: and that he gained her consent upon condition, that the Prince might assume the royal power with her, and be crowned with her. He told it to this purpose in the Deanery House of St. Paul's, and for the truth of it I appeal to the then Dean of that Church, I mean Dr. Stillingfleet, and to the worthy Bishop of Peterborough, I mean Dr. White, who was present, when he spoke to that effect."[1] Hickes is undoubtedly more severe on Burnet, than truth and justice required; but it cannot be denied, that the Bishop was too much of a partizan to be an honest actor in such
- ↑ Some Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, &c. &c. pp. 12, 13. Some curious particulars of Burnet, though of a different description, are given in this work by Hickes. In the year 1673, he published "A Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland," with a Dedication of a highly laudatory character to the Duke of Lauderdale. A large number of copies was sold by the author to Moses Pitt. Some time after, Burnet quarrelled with the Duke, on which account he requested Pitt to cancel the Dedication in the unsold copies. Pitt replied that he could not sell an imperfect as a perfect book. Burnet, therefore, received the unsold copies again, and they were afterward circulated in a mutilated form: so that when Hickes wrote in 1695 it was difficult to meet with a perfect copy. Ibid. p. 19. At present the book is met with in both states, some copies having the Dedication, others being destitute of it. It is singular that Burnet's Work on the Articles, the work by which perhaps he is best known, should have been condemned by the Lower House of Convocation, on the ground that it encouraged diversities of opinions, which the Articles were especially intended to prevent. His "Own Times" is a work full of gossip: but he did a service to the Church in his "History of the Reformation."
