ters-such as Hume, Johnson, Southey, and oth- | ent; perhaps he was a Deist; he died a Roman ers have too often been careless in their facts, Catholic. The duke, his brother, was an uncomand how our worst writers in point of style have promising Papist. The king disliked the Presbeen painfully minute in their pins' heads of par- byterians; the ill-bred familiarity of the Scotch ticulars. The lives, by Strype, of the various divines had given him a distaste for that part of churchmen in the time of Queen Elizabeth; the the Protestant religion. The church for which biographies of Dr. Birch; and the Life of Dry- his father lost his head was as little to his liking; den by Malone, are so many storehouses of minute sectaries of all kinds he viewed with fear and and even extraneous information. The student disgust. His licentious course of life led him to of English history-we use the word in its wide repose at last on the bosom of a forgiving and insense-will seldom quit their pages without finding fallible church, and the easy nature of his temperwhat he seeks, and without carrying away much ament to enforce an Act of Uniformity at one curious matter, foreign, it is true, from his sub-time, and a Declaration of Indulgence at another. ject, but still important. The rare art is to com- Barrow and South were as little to his taste and bine the two great qualities of research and style. inclination as Calamy and Baxter. He would A Strype and Southey combined would make a not trust sufficiently to his own sense of what was perfect biographer, and a Life by their united ex- just and proper, but threw himself into the hands ertions a complete biography. of others, who used him as a means to their own evil ends, or their own personal aggrandizement. This was his father's fault; but the father did think, and then allowed himself to be overruled: while the son was ruled, to save himself the trouble of thinking at all.

No country is richer in worthies than Great Britain, or richer in materials for the proper compilation of their Lives. But these materials lie scattered over so many volumes-some small and scarce, and consequently dear, others large and expensive. The student of English history is per- Raleigh wrote his History of the World in the petually at a loss for a good Biographia Britan- prison of the Tower; Wither, his Shepherds Huntnica. He feels a difficulty at every turn, and ing within the walls of the Marshalsea; Lovelace, wanders out of his way in search of information his little poem on the Freedom of the Mind within which one good work should supply to his hand the Westminster Gate House; and Bunyan, his at once. We have, it is true, several sets of glorious dream of the Pilgrim's Progress in the Lives. Johnson wrote the Lives of the Poets from gaol at Bedford. Raleigh perished on the block; Cowley to Gray; Campbell the Lives of the Brit- and Lovelace in a Shoe Lane lodging, surrounded, ish Admirals; Macdiarmid the Lives of the British it is said, by want. Wither was afterwards an inStatesmen; Allen Cunningham, the Lives of the mate of Newgate and the Tower; but Bunyan had British Artists; and Sir Walter Scott, the Lives a happier end. State matters were of very little of the British Novelists. All possess a variety of moment to honest John Bunyan; and, so long as merits, and some of the shorter Lives are good he was allowed to preach the Lord openly and honspecimens of matter and manner. But the Bi-estly, his happiness was at its height; and this he ographia Britannica, though a century old, is still was allowed to do unmolested from the period of our great storehouse of facts; nor is it likely, his enlargement till his death. The fruit of his from what we hear, to be soon supplanted. This imprisonment is before the world; the true hiswe regret, because the Lives of British Worthies | tory of his release has yet to be related. should be a British undertaking-one that would The toleration promised by the king at Breda prove, when properly performed, a far nobler was wholly overlooked in the act of uniformity; monument to their memories than the statues in and Bunyan was one of the first persons after the bronze about the squares of London, or the statues restoration, who was punished for disobedience of in marble that choke Westminster Abbey, or the law. He was unwilling to desist from preachstand half seen within St. Paul's. ing the word of God, and was imprisoned for his We have been led into these remarks from a re- preaching. Twelve long years was Bunyan an perusal of Mr. Southey's "Life of Bunyan," in inmate of Bedford gaol; and he at length owed Mr. Murray's Colonial Library; and from the his release to accident, and to his old enemies the recent publication of a new Life of the fine old Quakers. After the fatal fight at Worcester, the Baptist dreamer by Mr. George Godwin, before king made his way, it is well known, through danMr. Selous' illustrated edition of the Pilgrim's gers and difficulties, to the sea-side at Shoreham, Progress. Mr. Southey exhausted the stores from whence he effected his escape, by a small of his own shelves and the supply of books fishing-vessel, to the coast of France. The maswhich his publisher had sent him in the composi-ter and mate of this little vessel were Quakers, as tion of his biography. Mr. Godwin exhibits a spirit of patient investigation, and the recent annotator of Southey's Life a love of reference and research, which merit imitation. But the Life of Bunyan, though inimitably well written by Mr. Southey, and succinctly compiled by Mr. Godwin, has yet to be written, not at greater length, we must allow, but with the new materials which fresh investigation cannot fail to produce; and, in the hope that some pains-taking inquirer will go into the subject forthwith, we here contribute a new and important fact in the consideration of Bunyan's life to the future biographer of this "Spenser of the people."

No kind of religion was safe under Charles II. Persecution prevailed at one time, and toleration at another. The king was careless and indiffer

we gather from the following interesting letter, hitherto unpublished, from Ellis Hookes to the wife of Fox, the founder of the sect of Quakers. The original letter is preserved among the Quaker records at Devonshire House in Bishopsgate Street :

"For Thomas Greene, shopkeeper in Lancaster. "For M. F.

[January, 1669-70.] "Yesterday there was a friend with the king, one that is John Grove's mate. He was the man that was mate to the master of the fisher-boat that carried the king away when he went from Worcester fight, and only this friend and the master knew of it in the ship, and the friend carried him (the king) ashore on his shoulders. The king

And then," he goes on to say, "Thomas Moore, myself, and our friend Thomas Greene, attended at the council-chamber at Whitehall, and were all admitted in before the king and a full council. When I had opened and more fully pleaded our suffering friends' case, the king gave Whereupon," says Whitehead, "I advised this answer, I'll pardon them.' Whereupon them to petition the king for his warrant to have Thomas Moore pleaded the innocency of our them inserted in the same patent with the Quakers, friends-that they needed no pardon, being inno-which accordingly they did petition for and obtain; cent; the king's own warrant, in a few lines, will discharge them, For where,' said Thomas Moore, 'the word of a king is, there is power.'"

compassion or charity towards them who had been | II. "How a learned man such as he was could my opposers in some cases. Blessed be the Lord sit and listen to an illiterate tinker?" is said to my God, who is the Father and Fountain of mer- have replied, "May it please your majesty, could cies; whose love to us in Christ Jesus should I possess that tinker's abilities for preaching I oblige us to be merciful and kind to one an- would most gladly relinquish all my learning." other."

When the pardon or patent was ready for delivery, the friends got frightened at the amount of fees properly payable upon it. The usual charge was a fee of above twenty pounds on each person, and the Dissenting sects in England were then both poor and needy. The patent enumerated the names of above four hundred persons, and the fees at the customary rate had amounted to at least ten thousand pounds. The friends of the Shoreham fisherman applied once more to the king, and the following order was issued forthwith:

[Locus Sigilli.]

"His majesty is pleased to command that it be signified as his pleasure to the respective offices and sealers where the pardon to the Quakers is to pass, that the pardon, though comprehending great numbers of persons, do yet pass as one pardon, and pay but as one.

66

"ARLINGTON.

Bunyan died on the 31st of August, 1688, at
the house of his friend Mr. Strudwick, a grocer,
at the sign of the Star, on Snow Hill, and was
buried in that friend's vault in Bunhill Fields
burial-ground. Modern curiosity has marked the
place of his interment with this brief inscription :-
MR. JOHN BUNYAN,
AUTHOR OF

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS,
OB. 31ST AUGUST, 1688.
ET. 60.

There is no entry of his burial in the register at Bunhill Fields, and there was no inscription upon his grave when Curll published his Bunhill-Fields Inscriptions in 1717, or Strype his edition of Stow in 1720. Many, it is said, have made it their desire to be interred as near as possible to the spot where his remains are deposited. No kind of proper veneration should be bestowed in vain; we trust, therefore, that the place of Bunyan's interment has been correctly marked.

A thoughtful mind may pass an hour very profitably in the Campo Santo of the Dissenters at Bunhill Fields. There is no outward or visible sign of attractive interest about the place. Monuments abound; but mere head-stones, with some twenty or thirty altar-tombs, and no attempt at art among the thousands that surround you. The thoughtful visitor must bring his associations with him. Dull and uninviting though it looks, the place will well repay you. Great men are buried here. Two of the best-known names in English literature are here interred, and the place has a sanctity from its first use that will fill you with awe and gratitude to God.

"At the Court of Whitehall, Sept. 13, 1672." Whitehead quaintly observes on this, "Note, that though we had this warrant from the king, yet we had trouble from some of the covetous clerks, who did strive hard to exact upon us. The pardon was dated the same day, and some of the Quakers carried the deed in procession round the kingdom. "The patent," says Whitehead, I was so big and cumbersome, in a leathern case, and tin box, and great seal in it, that Edward Mann was so cumbered with carrying it hanging by his side, that he was fain to tie it cross the horse's back behind him." The original patent fills eleven skins of parchment, and is still served among the records of the Society of The site of this cemetery was part of the Friends. The curious reader will find it printed famous fen or moor, described by Fitzstephen as entire at the end of Whitehead's interesting pic-watering the walls of London on the north side. ture of his own life, with an alphabetical key to the names which it enumerates, some four hundred in number, and all unknown to fame save one, and that one the poor and contemptible servant of Jesus Christ, as he calls himself, John Bunyan.

pre

Moorfields and Fensbury Fields, now Finsbury,
preserve a memory of its original condition. It
was first effectually drained in 1527, when Stow,
the historian of London, was two years old. The
flags, sedges, and rushes, with which it was over-
grown, were removed, and part was turned into
pasture, and part into a city laystall. Three
windmills were erected on the highest laystall.
Stow mentions three, and Aggas, in his large
map, confirms the accuracy of the city historian
in this trifling particular. Finsbury soon became
famous for its windmills, and Shirley refers to
them in his play of the Wedding, though the
allusion has been overlooked by Mr. Gifford and
his fellow-assistant Mr Dyce, in their edition of
Windmill street,
this interesting old dramatist.*
Finsbury, perpetuates a memory of these subur-
ban windmills.

From this it would appear that Bunyan owed his release to the Quakers, and the Quakers their pardon to the king's recollection of the master and mate who took him on board their boat at Shoreham, and effected his escape to France after the fatal fight at Worcester. The Penderells were among the first to congratulate the king on his return, but friend Carver kept away till he had something to ask, not for himself, but for his friends suffering in the Lord. Trusty Dick Penderell had a pension for life, and trusty Dick Carver a compliance with his request, neither a small nor personal one, but large and of state importance. "He did what he did to relieve a man The laystalls were removed in the third year of [that is, the king] in distress, and now he desired King James, during the mayoralty of Sir Leonard nothing of him [the king] but that he would set Halliday, and the fields laid out "into new and friends at liberty who were great sufferers." pleasant walks." The citizens affected to laugh Bunyan might have spent the remainder of his at the mayor for his pains, and called it in derision life in prison but for the timely intercession of thea Holiday work; but when they saw what was Shoreham fisherman and his old enemies the Qua-done they ceased to laugh. The ground was kers. The fine old Baptist dreamer lived sixteen then one fine level, and musters took place here. years after his release. Little, however, has been 'Is this Moorfields to muster in?" says a charac

recorded of him in this time. Owen, we are told, admired his preaching, and when asked by Charles

66

*Shirley, vol. i., p. 421. There are two pages with this number.

ter in Shakspeare's Henry VIII.; and Davenant | London without the walls of their burning city describes it, in 1634, as covered by laundresses into the fields of Finsbury and Hoxton. Here and bleachers with acres of old linen. As the they erected sheds and shops, living in tents like ground improved, it became a fashionable city gipsies, till such time as they could return to their promenade upon a Sunday; and Bassompierre, old localities, though not to their old habitations. who was ambassador here in 1626, tells us that When the plague was over, the great pit in he "went to walk in the Morffield." Shadwell Finsbury was enclosed with a brick wall, “at the commemorates the cudgel-players, and Wycherley sole charges of the City of London." The conthe organ and tongs at the Gun in Moorfields. venience of the site, the size, and, if the expression The Artillery Company removed from Bishopgate to Moorfields in the year 1622. Strype describes the relative position of the new artillery ground, being the third great field," he says, "from Moorgate, next the six windmills."

may be allowed, the consecrated nature of the ground, recommended it soon after to the notice of the great dissenting sects in London, who conscientiously scrupled to the burial-service of the Book of Common Prayer. What stipulation was made There were three great fields appertaining to with the city is unknown, but here all the interthe manor of Finsbury Farm when the survey of ments of the dissenters took place. The city the 30th of December, 1567, was taken. These subsequently leased it to a person of the name of three fields were named Bonhill Field, Mallow Tindal, the same lessee who refused to furnish Field, and the High Field, or Meadow Ground, Maitland with a return of the number of burials in "where the three windmills stand, commonly any one year. "This obstinate refusal," says called Finsbury Field." "Bonhill Field con- Maitland," put me upon inquiring of John Smith, taineth," says the Survey, "twenty-three acres, the grave-digger, who assured me that, though he one rod, and six poles; butting upon Chiswell kept no register, yet, in the course of his long serstreet on the south, and on the north upon the vices, he had made such observations, that he was highway that leadeth from Wenlock's Barn to the sure they buried annually between seven and well called Dame Agnes the Cleere." Wenlock's eight hundred."* Barn no longer exists; and the well, called St. Agnes le Clair (corruptly called Anniseed Cleer) was, in 1761, if not before, converted into a cold bath. The efficacy of this spring is referred to by one of Ben Jonson's characters in his play of Bartholomew Fair.

and no printed book preserves anything like a mere common transcriber's account of what is daily disappearing. This should not be. A careful restoration of the better-class inscriptions might be done at a comparatively trifling cost. The sale of a sixpenny guide-book would, when the purport

It is to be regretted that no dissenter has thought it worth his while to compose a proper account of this Campo Santo of his sect, a work much wanted and of some research. Very little or no care seems to be taken of the many memorials of the dead; the register is very imperfect, and the In Queen Elizabeth's time the fields about Fins- inscriptions are fast wearing away. No Old Morbury were the usual resort of the plainer citi-tality repairs a fading letter with religious care, zens. Master Stephen, a country gull, in Every Man in his Humor, is indignant at the idea of being suspected, though dwelling at Hoxton, of keeping company with the archers of Finsbury, or the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington ponds. The archers of Finsbury found full employment for the bowyers and bowstring-makers, of its publication was fully known, more than rewho dwelt in Grub street, immediately adjoining; but, when archery gave way to bowling-greens and dicing-houses, Grub street was tenanted by the hack authors of the booksellers in Little Britain, and the ballad-makers that befringed the rails of Bedlam and Moorfields. Grub street has since undergone another change; authors no longer inhabit this notorious locality, and Grub street is now known as Milton street, from the nearness of its locality to the last garden residence of the great epic poet of our nation.

When the great plague of 1665 broke out, of which De Foe has left so terrible a description, the field called Bonhill Field was made use of as a common place of interment for the victims of that dreadful scourge.

"I have heard," says De Foe, "that in a great pit in Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lying open then to the fields, for it was not then walled about, many, who were infected and near their end, and delirious, also, ran, wrapped in blankets or rugs, and threw themselves in, and expired there, before any earth could be thrown upon them. When they come to bury others, and found them there, they were quite dead, though not cold."

This is a sad picture of the pleasant walks of Moorfields in the year 1665. Nor is the picture of the following year much brighter, for the dreadful fire of 1666 drove the inhabitants of

* Strype, b. iv., p. 101.

pay, or we are much mistaken, the total of a mason's bill for this common piece of commemorative gratitude. But it must be set about soon, or it will be attempted when it is too late. We call upon the Court of Common Council, the nominal keepers of this interesting cemetery, to stir at once in the matter; and we call upon the whole body of dissenters, throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain, to put at once this Westminster Abbey of their sects in order.

We have been at some pains in compiling what must necessarily be a very imperfect account of the eminent dead who are buried in Bunhill Fields. But the task has been a pleasing one. We have succeeded in identifying, to ourselves at least, a dull, damp, and gloomy-looking square of ground, with many attractive spots, over which we may speculate when the humor is upon us. The little reveries into which men occasionally run when the workday business of the world is past, make many of the duller hours of life innocently pleasing. The churchyard of Stoke in Buckinghamshire, which suggested to Gray his inimitable Elegy, is, by this one circumstance alone, an interesting spot; but when we know that the poet of the Elegy is buried in the same churchyard, there is a further link of interest to enchain the contemplative mind to the spot a little longer.

The first person of any eminence buried in Bunhill Fields, of whom our researches will enable us

* Maitland, ed. 1739, p. 537.

swer.

to give any account, was Dr. Thomas Goodwin, "Obscure the place and uninscribed the stone," the Independent preacher, who attended Oliver if stone there ever was to distinguish the grave of Cromwell on his death-bed. Cromwell had then one who deserves a monument from the sect he his moments of misgiving, and he asked of Good- called into permanent existence. win, who was standing by, if the doctrine were The mild and peaceable George Fox was foltrue that the elect could never finally fall. "Noth-lowed to his grave in Bunhill Fields by Lieutenanting could be more certain," was Goodwin's an- General Fleetwood, the Lord-Deputy Fleetwood "Then am I safe," said Cromwell, "for of the Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell's son-in-law, I am sure that once I was in a state of grace!" and the husband of the widow of the gloomy Ireton. Cromwell foresaw that his hour was come, but Fleetwood had no great brilliancy of parts, but Goodwin pretended not to see it, and is said to he was a gallant soldier, though destitute of that have assured him that he was not then to die. fine soldierly quality, decision. When Monk was But die he did, within a very few minutes after. debating what he should do, whether he should reYet Goodwin maintained the reality of the assur-store the king, or continue the command of the naance he had received by prayer, and, at a fast at tion in a council of officers, Fleetwood was advised Whitehall, a week after Cromwell's death, was by Whitelock to be beforehand with Monk, and ofheard to say, in an address to God, "Thou hast fer his sword and services to the king. The advice deceived us, and we were deceived." This Bur- was good, and Fleetwood seemed inclined to net had from Tillotson, who was present and adopt it. Such, however, was his indecision, heard it. Dr. Thomas Goodwin died on the 23d that meeting with Vane and Desborough, just as of February, 1679, at the great age of eighty. Whitelock was going away, he was induced to tie His epitaph, preserved in Strype, was written, says his fortunes to the sword of Lambert. The upshot Antony Wood, by Mr. Thomas Gilbert, of Oxford, of this irresolution is well known. Monk was "the common epitaph-maker for dissenters, being made Duke of Albemarle by a grateful monarch one himself."

Lambert banished for life to the island of GuernThe second person of eminence interred in Bunsey, and Fleetwood allowed to end his days in hill Fields, of whom we find a note, was the singing psalms about Hoxton and Stoke-Newinglearned Dr. John Owen, dean of Christchurch, ton. A stone in the burying-ground of Bunhill and vice-chancellor of Oxford when Cromwell was Fields recorded the death of Charles Fleetwood, chancellor of that university. He was much in Esq., at the age of seventy-four, on the 4th of favor with his party, and preached the first sermon October, 1692. It was there when Strype drew before the Parliament after the execution of Charles up his additions to Stow, but the curious inquirer I. Cromwell carried him to Ireland and to Scot- will now search in vain for any memorial of the land; and Clarendon, at the restoration, offered kind. him speedy preferment in the church. This he did not accept, but died, like Calamy and Baxter, a steady and unflinching nonconformist. He was a man of more learning and politeness than any of the Independents, and met with the esteem, as he deserved, of all parties. Dr. Owen died on the 24th of August, 1683, at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried at Bunhill Fields, in a new vault towards the east end of the ground, over which was erected an altar tomb of freestone, with a Latin inscription from the pen of a ready writer, the facile Mr. Gilbert.

The two sturdy Independents, Goodwin and Owen, were followed to the grave, in 1688, by the Baptist Bunyan,—

"The Pilgrim's Progress now is finished,

And Death has laid him in his earthly bed."

66

Fox followed Bunyan. George Fox, the founder of the sect of Quakers, is the next eminent individual buried in Bunhill Fields. His Journal is a scarce, but very entertaining book, and one, therefore, that should not continue scarce. He was born, in 1624, at Crayton, in Leicestershire, and apprenticed to a man that was a shoemaker by trade, and that dealt in wool, and used grazing, and sold cattle." This is his own description of his master's pursuits, and is, as it appears to us, an exact description of the trade of Shakspeare's father, who is described as a glover by some of his biographers, and as a considerable dealer in wool by others. Fox's master united many callings in an age when a subdivision of labor was not so much practised or so well understood as now. Is it unfair to suppose that Shakspeare's father may have done the same? Fox died in 1690, in White Hart Court, Bishopgate Street. There is no memorial to his memory,

Another memorial existing in Bunhill Fields, and preserved by Strype, was a stone to the memory of "Mr. Roger Morris, M. A., and chaplain to the late Hon. Denzil Lord Hollis." died at the age of seventy-three, on the 17th Jan

Morris

uary, 1701.
"This gentleman," says Strype,
and his name deserves remembrance for this one
act alone," was a very diligent collector of eccle-
siastical MSS. relating to the later history of the
English church, whereof he left vast heaps behind
him, and who favored me with his correspondence."
Denzil, Lord Hollis, was one of the five members
impeached by King Charles I. He was a steady
Presbyterian, and has left his Memoirs behind him
full of hatred and bitterness to Cromwell, whose
ends he foresaw, but could neither favor nor re-
tard.

There is a pleasure in turning from the graves
of men who filled important stations and effected
very little good in their generations, to the graves
of men who have been the humble instruments of
important and enduring benefactions to society at
large. We must own to a kind of secret pleasure
which we felt in standing by the side of the tomb
of Dr. Daniel Williams. This Dr. Williams, who
died in 1716, was the founder of the library in Red
Cross street, which bears his name.
The library
which Archbishop Tenison gave to the parish of
St. Martin's in the Fields was not half so large, or
for its size, half so important. When Dissenters,
by principles of their own adoption, were excluded
from the advantages of church-registration of bap-
tism for their children, there was a register kept
in Dr. Williams' library, wherein parents might
enter the births of their children, with all the legal
advantages of a Church of England register. Dr.
Dibdin is silent on the subject of Williams' claim
to be considered a bibliomaniac; but surely he had
a greater right than very many he has mentioned