SIR J. MAYNARD.
Your lordship, I must own, has touched a very curious and interesting part of our subject. But you must not believe it was so much overlooked by me, as purposely left for your lordship’s better consideration. You, who have looked so minutely and carefully into the story of those times, will, better than any other, be able to unfold to us the mysteries of that affair. The fact is certain, as you say, that the English government wore a more despotic appearance from the time of the Tudor family’s accession to the throne, than in the reigns preceding that period. But I am mistaken, if your lordship will not open the reason of it so clearly as to convince us, that that increase of prerogative was no proof of a change in the constitution, and was even no symptom of declining liberty. I do not allow myself to speak my sentiments more plainly at present. But I am sure, if they are just, they will receive a confirmation from what your lordship will find occasion to observe to us in discoursing op this subject.
MR. SOMERS.
I will not disown that this was one of the matters I had in view, when I hinted some remaining doubts about your general conclusion. But I knew it would not escape my lord of Salisbury, who, of all others, is certainly the most capable of removing it.
BP. BURNET.
So that I have very unwarily, it seems, been providing a fine task for myself. And yet, as difficult as I foresee it will be for me to satisfy two such Inquirers, I should not decline that task, if I was indeed prepared for it, or if I could boast of such a memory as Sir J. Maynard has shewn in the course of this conversation. But the truth is, though I have not wanted opportunities of laying in materials for such a design, and though I have not neglected to take some slight notes of them, yet I cannot pretend to have them at once in that readiness, as to venture on such a discourse as I know you expect from me. But if, against our next meeting, I shall be able to digest such thoughts as have sometimes occurred to me when I was engaged in the History of the Reformation, I shall take a pleasure to contribute all I can to the further and more entire elucidation of this subject.
THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
Printed by J. Nichols and Son,
Red Lion Passage, Fleet Street, London.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mala et impia consuetudo est contra Deos disputandi, sive ex animo id fit, sive simulatè. De Nat. D. l. ii. c. 67.