the king and the favourite, in some instances, with very beneficial results to the public, as well as to individuals. He obtained the bishopric of Salisbury for the excellent Davenant, that of Exeter for Carew, and that of St David's for Laud; he also procured the liberation of the earl of Northumberland, who had been fifteen years a prisoner in the tower. On the death of King James, Williams preached his funeral sermon. Taking for his text the following words:-" And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father, and his son Rehoboam reigned in his stead." He opened his discourse in the following style: "It is not I, but this woeful accident that chooseth this text,-no book will serve this turn but the book of Kings, -no king but one of the best kings, but one that reigned over all Israel, which must be either Saul, as yet good, or David, or Solomon; no king of all Israel, but one of the wisest kings; neither unless he be a king of peace, which cannot be David, a man of war, but only Solomon; no king of peace neither, the more is our grief, alive and in his throne; and, therefore, it must of necessity be the funeral and obits of King Solomon." After this exordium, follows an elaborate commentary on the life, actions, and writings of Solomon, respecting whose choice of the gifts of wisdom, it is gravely observed, that "although kings be anointed on the arms, the instruments of action, yet are they crowned only on the head, the seat of wisdom. Whether," proceeds the erudite divine, "this wisdom of Solomon's was universal and embraced all sciences, as Pineda, or a prudence reaching to the practique only; also, whether Solomon did surmount as Tostatus, or fall short of Adam in the pitch of his wisdom, as Gregory de Valentia thinks, are such doughty frays, as I have no leisure to part at this time."

"Solo

A parallel is drawn between the two kings in these terms: mon is said to be the only son of his mother-so was King James. Solomon was of complexion white and ruddy-so was King James. Solomon was an infant king-so was King James a king at the age of thirteen months. Solomon began his reign in the life of his predecessor; so, by the force and compulsion of that state, did our late sovereign King James. Solomon was twice crowned and anointed a king; so was King James. Solomon's minority was rough through the quarrels of the former sovereign; so was that of King James. Solomon was learned above all the princes in the East; so was King James above all princes in the universal world. Solomon was a writer in prose and verse; so, in very pure and exquisite fashion, was our sweet sovereign King James. Solomon was the greatest patron we ever read of to church and churchmen; and yet no greater, let the house of Aaron now confess, than King James. Solomon was a main improver of his home and commodities, as you may see in his trading with Hiram; and God knows, it was the daily study of King James. Solomon was a great improver of shipping and navigation; a most proper attribute to King James. And yet, towards the end king Solomon had secret enemies. ... and prepared for a war upon his going to the grave; so had, and so did King James. Lastly, before any hostile act we read of in the history, king Solomon died in peace, when he had lived about sixty years, as Lyra and Tostatus were of opinion. And so you know did King James."

The bishop was removed from his office of lord-keeper by Charles 1. in October, 1626, having fallen under the displeasure of Buckingham. Soon after this misfortune he penned the following sycophantic epistle to the duke: "Most gracious lord, beinge com hither, accordinge unto the dutye of my place, to doe my best service for the preparation to the coronation, and to wayte upon his majestye for his royall pleasure and direction therein, I doe most humblye beseech your grace to crowne soe many of your grace's former favoures, and to revive a creature of your owne, struck dead onlye with your displeasure, (but noe other discontentment in the universall worlde,) by bringinge of me to kisse his majestye's hand, with whome I took leave in noe disfavoure at all. I was never hitherto brought into the presence of a kinge by any saint beside yourselfe; turne me not over (most noble lord,) to offer my prayers at newe aulters. If I were guiltye of any unworthye, unfaithfulnes for the time past, or not guiltye of a resolution to doe your grace all service for the time to com, all considerations under heaven could not force me to begge it so earnestlye, or to professe myselfe as I do before God and you. Your grace his most humble, affectionate, and de

voted servaunt, Jo. Lincoln." He was ordered at the same time not to appear in parliament, but he refused to comply with the injunction, and, taking his seat in the house of peers, promoted the petition of right. The influence of Laud also was now directed against him, notwithstanding the debt of gratitude that prelate owed him for his first promotion to the mitre. In the 4th year of Charles, a prosecution was commenced against the bishop in the star-chamber on some frivolous informations preferred against him by some of Laud's creatures. He defended himself ably, but was condemned to pay a fine of £10,000 to the king, and to be imprisoned during the royal pleasure. He was detained in the Tower till December, 1640, when the house of lords demanded, and obtained his liberation. Next year, he was advanced to the archbishopric of York. The same year he strenuously, though ineffectually, opposed the bill for depriving the bishops of their seats in the house of lords. On this occasion his usual prudence and foresight seem to have forsaken him, for he was mainly instrumental in preparing the protest of the twelve bishops which procured them instant imprisonment in the Tower.

In the year 1642, the archbishop retired from York to his estate at Aber-Conway, and was at no small expense in fortifying Conway castle for the king. After the excution of Charles, the archbishop spent his few remaining days in retirement and devotion. He died on the 25th of March, 1650. Besides several sermons, Archbishop Williams published a book against Laud's innovations, with this title, "The Holy Table, Name, and Thing, more antiently, properly, and literally used under the New Testament, than that of Aitar,' which Lord Clarendon characterises as a book "full of good learning, and that learning so closely and solidly applied-though it abounded with two many light expressions that it gained him reputation enough to be able to do hurt.' He likewise made some collections for a Latin commentary on the Bible, and a life of Bishop Grossteste.

Ellis's Original Letters, vol. iii. p. 255.

Bishop Hall.

BORN A. D. 1574.-died a. D. 1656.

JOSEPH HALL was born of very respectable parentage at Bristowpark, in the parish of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, on the 1st of July, 1574. His father was an officer under Henry, earl of Huntingdon; his mother, "of the house of the Bainbridges.' To the instruction and counsel of his maternal parent-who is described as a woman of "rare sanctity," Hall was doubtless greatly indebted for the bent of his subsequent character; and he has acknowledged his obligations to her in very affectionate and pleasing terms: "how often," says he, "have I blessed the memory of those divine passages of experimental divinity which I have heard from her mouth! What day did she pass without a large task of private devotion: whence she would still come forth with a countenance of undissembled mortification! Never any lips have read to me such feeling lectures of piety; neither have I known any soul that more accurately practised them than her own. Temptations, desertions, and spiritual comforts, were her usual theme. Shortly-for I can hardly take off my pen from so exemplary a subject-her life and death were saint-like." It is not to be wondered at that the highest ambition of such a "saintly" mother was to see her son engaged in the ministry of the gospel; and accordingly his parents appear to have devoted him from very early years to the sacred calling. The bishop has left behind him two interesting pieces of auto-biography,— one entitled Hard measure,'-and the other Observations on some specialties of Divine Providence in the life of Joseph Hall, written with his own hand;' in the latter of these works, the first "specialty" which he acknowledges is his having escaped from a system of private tutorage, which threatened ultimately to divert his attention from the work of the ministry, and having been permitted to pursue his studies at Cambridge. The expenses of a university-education would soon have proved too great for the father's means, whose "not very large cistern," the son quaintly remarks, had to "feed many pipes" besides his; but an unexpected benefactor happily stept forward at the critical moment when the young student was about to be removed from Cambridge, and supplied him with the means of prosecuting his studies at that ancient seat of learning, where, in due season, he was elected fellow of his college, Emanuel, and lectured on rhetoric for two years successively. Hall was an enthusiastic student; and used to declare that the years which he passed within the walls of his college were the happiest of his life. In early youth he had drank deeply from classic fountains; and, before the completion of his 23d year, the publication of his satires had powerfully contributed to one department at least of his country's literature, or, rather had given existence to it; for, in the judgment of Campbell '—no mean authority it will be allowed, on such a point-"of our satirical poetry, taking satire in its moral and dignified sense, he claims, and may be allowed, to be the founder."

Having entered into sacred orders, he was presented by Lady Drury to the rectory of Halsted in Suffolk, having previously declined the mastership of Tiverton school. His parochial charge was rendered somewhat troublesome by the impertinences and malice of "a witty and bold atheist, one Mr Lilly," who, having conceived some dislike to the worthy doctor's faithful ministrations, set himself to prejudice Sir Robert Drury, the son of his patroness, against him. Mr Jones conjectures that this was Lilly the author of Euphues,' who does not however appear to have avowed atheistical principles in any of his fantastic writings. But whoever the man was, he proved himself a source of considerable uneasiness to the future bishop, who confesses, that “finding the obdurateness and hopeless condition of that man, I bent my prayers against him, beseeching God daily, that he would be pleased to remove, by some means or other, that apparent hinderance of my faithful labours, who gave me an answer accordingly: for this malicious man, going hastily up to London to exasperate my patron against me, was then and there swept away by the pestilence, and never returned to do any further mischief." When he had been two years resident on his rectory, "the uncouth solitariness" of his life, and "the extreme incommodity of that single house-keeping," drew his thoughts "to condescend to the necessity of a married state." Dire however as this necessity appeared at first to be to the mind of the studious and quietloving rector, it proved-as he himself confesses the means of introducing him to "the comfortable society of a meet-help for the space of forty-nine years."

66

Two years after this deed of " condescension," the paucity of his pecuniary emoluments arising from the rectorship, and the desire he had to inform himself ocularly of the state and practices of the Romish church, induced him to accept the invitation of Sir Edmund Bacon to accompany him to Spa, and during their continental tour he engaged in a public disputation with some Jesuits at Brussels. An accidental opportunity which he had soon after his return home, of preaching at Richmond before Prince Henry, to whom he had already dedicated his Contemplations,' seems to have given the first impulse to his preferment. He was nominated one of the prince's chaplains, and was presented, by the earl of Norwich, to the valuable living of Waltham, at that time worth £100 a year, "with other considerable accommodations." On this occasion (1612,) he took his degree of doctor of divinity. His incumbency at Waltham lasted twenty-two years, during which period he continued to rise in favour at court, and was more than once engaged abroad on public missions. On his return from having accompanied Lord Doncaster in his embassy to France, he found himself created by the king, dean of Worcester. Subsequently he attended his majesty to Scotland, in an expedition from which James reaped no honours, and his subjects no advantage.

In 1618, Hall was nominated one of the four divines whom the royal polemic, who at that time filled the throne of Britain, thought fit to send to the famous synod of Dort, as the representatives of the English clergy. His colleagues on this occasion, were Carleton, Davenant, and Ward; the first, distinguished for episcopal gravity, the second for a sound judgment, and the third, for extensive reading; the quality which induced the king to appoint Hall a member of this illustrious

PERIOD.]

legation, as stated by Fuller, was his "expedita concionatio," his readiThe synod held its sittings from ness and fluency of public address. November, 1618, till the end of the following May; but Hall's constitution was so powerfully affected by the climate of Holland, that after two months' attendance, he was obliged to apply for his dismission The reluctance with which the synod complied with his request is a sufficient proof of the esteem in which he was held by his Dutch brethren, and the states-general sent him a respectful compliment by Heinsius, with a gold medal struck in commemoration of the synod,a badge which he constantly wore afterwards, and which is appended to his dress in several of his portraits. There can be no reasonable doubt that Hall was a Calvinist in sentiment, and that he maintained the doctrine of election in his writings and conferences; in particular, the "Articles of Accord," which he proposed in his 'Via Media,' a publication intended to moderate the violence of "the Belgic disease," as Hall terms the Calvinistic controversy, then raging in England, as well as in the Netherlands-are explicit with regard to his views on this subject. But there is as little reason to regard him as belonging to the fiery and high-flying Calvinistic party; his views were moderate, and his temperament pacific, and he evidently made the preservation of peace a leading object throughout his whole life.

Having "with much humble deprecation, refused the bishopric of Gloucester, which was earnestly proffered to him," Hall was raised by Charles I. to the see of Exeter, in 1627; and with his bishopric he was permitted to hold in commendam the rectory of St Brock, in Cornwall, worth £300 per annum, so that his fortune was now ample. But the deplorable state to which, under the guidance of the infatuated monarch, public affairs were fast hastening, had now become evident to all but those who partook of Charles's infatuation; and the good bishop had beautifully expressed the apprehensions which filled his mind in the dedication to his Via Media,' which he published shortly after his elevation to the mitre, and wherein he says:-"There needs no prophetical spirit to discern, by a small cloud, that there is a storm coming to our church; such a one as shall not only drench our plumes, but shake our peace. Already do we see the sky thicken, and hear the winds whistle hollow afar off, and feel all the presages of a tempest." The tempest soon burst forth, and the bishop of Exeter was destined Assailed on one hand as a early to abide the pelting of the storm. partisan of the church of Rome, and on the other as a favourer of Puritanism, he found himself at the same time constrained to oppose the intolerance of the metropolitan Laud, who would have crushed and borne down by the strong hand of power, if he could, all dissentients At last the from the established order of things in church and state. nation arose to vindicate its rights; the long parliament assembled, and Laud was impeached; while Hall, alarmed for the existence of the church, stood up in his place in the house of lords, and, in a spirit rare with him-of no ordinary bitterness, denounced the dissenting congregations which now dared openly to worship God according to their conscience, in the suburbs and liberties of London, as "sectaries instructed by guides fit for them, cobblers, tailors, feltmakers, and such like trash;" he even attempted to represent them as not a shade better than the anabaptists of Munster. Besides delivering this violent speech