[658] Bishop Burnet says of him, at his appointment: ‘As he was never a great divine, so he was now superannuated.’ Own Time, vol. i. p. 303.
[659] Of which his own friend, Bishop Parker, gives a specimen. See Parker's History of his own Time, pp. 31–33. Compare Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, vol. iv. p. 429; Wilson's Mem. of De Foe, vol. i. p. 46.
[660] In 1669, Pepys was at one of these entertainments, which took place not only at the house, but in the presence of the archbishop. See the scandalous details in Pepys' Diary, vol. iv. pp. 321, 322; or in Wilson's De Foe, vol. i. pp. 44, 45.
[661] Burnet, who knew Sancroft, calls him ‘a poor-spirited and fearful man’ (Own Time, vol. iii. p. 354); and mentions (vol. iii. p. 138) an instance of his superstition, which will be easily believed by whoever has read his ridiculous sermons, which D'Oyly has wickedly published. See Appendix to D'Oyly's Sancroft, pp. 339–420. Dr. Lake says that everybody was amazed when it was known that Sancroft was to be archbishop. Lake's Diary, 30th Dec. 1677, p. 18, in vol. i. of the Camden Miscellany, 1847, 4to. His character, so far as he had one, is fairly drawn by Dr. Birch: ‘slow, timorous, and narrow-spirited, but at the same time a good, honest, and well-meaning man.’ Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 151. See also respecting him, Macaulay's Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 616, vol. iii. p. 77, vol. iv. pp. 40–42.
[662] Frewen was so obscure a man, that there is no life of him either in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, or in Rose's more recent, but inferior work. The little that is known of Stearn, or Sterne, is unfavourable. Compare Burnet, vol. ii. p. 427, with Baxter's Life of Himself, folio, 1696, part ii. p. 338. And of Dolben I have been unable to collect anything of interest, except that he had a good library. See the traditionary account in Jones's Memoirs of Bishop Horne, p. 66.
[663] His wife was Joanna Bridges, a bastard of Charles I. Compare Notes and Queries, vol. vii. p. 305, with Heber's Life of Jeremy Taylor, in Taylor's Works, vol. i. p. xxxiv. Bishop Heber, p. xxxv. adds, ‘But, notwithstanding the splendour of such an alliance, there is no reason to believe that it added materially to Taylor's income.’
[664] Coleridge (Lit. Remains, vol. iii. p. 208) says, that this neglect of Jeremy Taylor by Charles ‘is a problem of which perhaps his virtues present the most probable solution.’
[665] Superior, certainly, in comprehensiveness, and in the range of his studies; so that it is aptly said by a respectable authority, that he was at once ‘the great precursor of Sir Isaac Newton, and the pride of the English pulpit.’ Wordsworth's Ecclesiast. Biog. vol. iv. p. 344. See also, respecting Barrow, Montucla, Hist. des Mathémat. vol. ii. pp. 88, 89, 359, 360, 504, 505, vol. iii. pp. 436–438.
[666] ‘His father having suffered greatly in his estate by his attachment to the royal cause.’ Chalmers's Biog. Dict. vol. iv. p. 39.
[667] Barrow, displeased at not receiving preferment after the Restoration, wrote the lines: