481 ([return])
[ Cibber's play, as Cibber wrote it, ceased to be popular when the Jacobites ceased to be formidable, and is now known only to the curious. In 1768 Bickerstaffe altered it into the Hypocrite, and substituted Dr. Cantwell, the Methodist, for Dr. Wolfe, the Nonjuror. "I do not think," said Johnson, "the character of the Hypocrite justly applicable to the Methodists; but it was very applicable to the nonjurors." Boswell asked him if it were true that the nonjuring clergymen intrigued with the wives of their patrons. "I am afraid," said Johnson, "many of them did." This conversation took place on the 27th of March 1775. It was not merely in careless tally that Johnson expressed an unfavourable opinion of the nonjurors. In his Life of Fenton, who was a nonjuror, are these remarkable words: "It must be remembered that he kept his name unsullied, and never suffered himself to be reduced, like too many of the same sect to mean arts and dishonourable shifts." See the Character of a Jacobite, 1690. Even in Kettlewell's Life compiled from the papers of his friends Hickes and Nelson, will be found admissions which show that, very soon after the schism, some of the nonjuring clergy fell into habits of idleness, dependence, and mendicancy, which lowered the character of the whole party. "Several undeserving persons, who are always the most confident, by their going up and down, did much prejudice to the truly deserving, whose modesty would not suffer them to solicit for themselves...... Mr. Kettlewell was also very sensible that some of his brethren spent too much of their time in places of concourse and news, by depending for their subsistence upon those whom they there got acquainted with.">[
482 ([return])
[ Reresby's Memoirs, 344]
483 ([return])
[ Birch's Life of Tillotson.]
484 ([return])
[ See the Discourse concerning the Ecclesiastical Commission, 1689.]
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[ Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Prideaux; Gentleman's Magazine for June and July, 1745.]