Jortin’s work, however, has survived this and similar insinuations.
The Rev. William Trollope, in his life of the author, prefixed to a new edition of Dr. Jortin’s “Remarks on Ecclesiastical History,” informs us that he left, in writing, the following directions:—
“Bury me in a private manner, by daylight, at Kensington, in the church, or rather in the new churchyard, and lay a flat stone over the grave. Let the inscription be only thus:
Joannes Jortin,
mortalis esse desiit,
anno salutis. . . .
aetatis. . . .”
The Rev. T. B. Murray, rector of St. Dunstan’s, supposed that the thought expressed in this epitaph was suggested by the conclusion of an old epitaph in the chancel of that church, dated 1697, on Francis March, a Turkey merchant:—
Ineluctabili morbo cessit, et mortalitati non vita; valedixit.
The blanks in the epitaph had to filled up, as to time with mdcclxx., and as to age with lxxii. Dr. Jortin’s last illness began on 27th August, and he died on 8th September 1770.[1] Mrs. Jortin survived till 24th June 1778. One son and one daughter survived their parents. The daughter, Martha, wife of Rev. Samuel Darby, Rector of Whatfield, died in 1817, aged eighty-six. The son, Rogers Jortin, Esq., of Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four attorneys in His Majesty’s Exchequer Office for pleas, married, first, Anne (who died in 1774), daughter of William Prowting, surgeon; and, secondly, a descendant of French Protestant ancestry, Louisa, daughter of Dr. Maty, Principal Librarian of the British Museum. Rogers Jortin died in 1795, aged sixty-three, and his widow survived him nearly fourteen years. Archdeacon Jortin was celebrated for pithy sayings, such as:—
“A desire to say things which no one ever said makes some people say things which no one ought to say.”
“It is observable that Pharaoh, tyrant and persecutor as he was, never compelled the Hebrews to forsake the religion of their fathers and to adopt that of the Egyptians. Such improvements in persecution were reserved for Christians.”
Some men threaten to take revenge on the persecutions and superstitions of Popery by going over to scepticism or infidelity. What does Archdeacon Jortin say to that? — “Miserable spirit of contradiction! because a man would deprive me of common sense, I must, in resentment, throw away my religion? This is fulfilling, in a very bad way, the precept, If any man will take away thy coat let him have thy cloak also.”
As to Philip’s Life of Cardinal Pole he denounced it as a work “undertaken to recommend to us the very scum and dregs of Popery, and to vilify and calumniate the Reformation and the Reformers, in a bigoted, disingenuous, and superficial performance.”
“Men will compel others — not to think with them (for that is impossible) — but to say they do; upon which they obtain full leave not to think or reason at all, and this they call unity.”
“Their writers assure us that Papists are now grown much more mild and moderate, and have none of the ferocity and cruelty which was the temper of former times, and that they condemn persecution for a mere diversity of religious sentiments. They may say so; and they must be fools who believe them. It is probable enough that among their laity there are several who dislike all sanguinary methods of supporting their religion; but it is because they do not fully understand their own ecclesiastical system, into the very contexture of which persecution is so closely woven that nothing can separate it. Upon blood it was built, and by blood it must be supported.” (1770.)
Dr. Jortin, himself a good and learned writer, has been the theme of much good writing by learned men. Dr. Samuel Parr’s eulogy has been much admired; he said —
- ↑ I follow the dates given by Mr. Trollope, who took commendable pains to secure accuracy.
