[1037] Those traits in his character have been often elucidated by divers well known anecdotes, two or three of which we will here take the liberty of inserting.—One of them is given in a letter of Dr. Pyle, if we are not mistaken, of the date of 1752, addressed perhaps to his father.—
“Your old friend Sir W. B. came to my Lord Bp. of Winch—r some weeks ago, and told him that he waited upon him for a pension payable out of his estate to the College of Physicians. My Lord said, he never heard of any such pension paid out of his revenues; and as to an estate of his own, he had none. Yes, says the knight, you are chargeable herewith out of such an estate. My Lord said, he had no estate any where of his own, and as Bp. of W. he had no such estate as was named. Bp. of W—! quoth the knight; why then lam wrong; you are not the person. I wanted Sir Cecil Bishop, and they told me he lived here. Is Sir C. B. a clergyman, says my Lord? No, says the knight. Why then Sir you might have seen your mistake immediately, and so your Servant. This dog certainly wanted to see how the Bp. look’d, and thence judge of his being likely to live or not, on account of some estate that somebody he knows, is to buy or renew, who hold of the Bp. of W. and nobody but a man of his parts and assurance could, have got to the sight of him;” [July 1752.]
Another anecdote of him is related by Bp. Warburton in a Letter to Hurd; dated Prior Park, Nov. 18th 1767.—
“When you see Dr. Heberden pray communicate to him an unexpected honour I lately received. The other day word was brought me from below, that one Sir William Browne sent up his name, and would be glad to kiss my hand. I judged it to be the famous physician, whom I had never seen, nor had the honour to know. When I came down into the drawing room I was accosted by a little, round, well fed gentleman, with a large muff in one hand, and a small Horace open in the other, and a spying-glass dangling in a black ribbon at his button. After the first salutation he informed me that his visit was indeed to me, but principally, and in the first place, to Prior Park, which had so inviting a prospect from below: and he had no doubt but on examination it would sufficiently pay the trouble he had given himself of coming up to it on foot. We then took our chairs; and the first thing he did or said, was to propose a doubt to me concerning a passage in Horace, which all this time he had still open in his hand. Before I could answer he gave me the solution of this long misunderstood passage: and in support of his explanation had the charity to repeat his own paraphrase of it in English verse, just come hot, as he said, from the brain. When this and chocolate were over, having seen all he wanted of me, he desired to see something more of the seat; and particularly what be called the Monument, by which I understood him to mean, the Prior’s tower, with your inscription. Accordingly I ordered a servant to attend him thither; and, when he had satisfied his curiosity, either to let him out from the park above into the down, or from the garden below into the road. Which he chose I never asked; and so this honourable visit ended. Hereby you will understand, that the design of all this was to be admired. And indeed he had my admiration to the full; but for nothing so much, as for being able at past eighty to perform this expedition on foot, in no good weather, and with all the alacrity of a boy, both in body and mind.”
[Before we dismiss this anecdote, it ought to be observed that the bishop was somewhat incorrect in two instances at least: 1st. in representing our knight as a little man; 2ndly. in saying that he was then past eighty. Those who knew and remember him, speak of him as a tall man; and it is certain that he wanted several weeks of seventy six when he visited Prior Park.]—The next anecdote and the last that we shall here relate, came from the late Thomas Hollingworth, many years a respectable bookseller in this town, and who settled here under Dr. Browne’s patronage. He used to say that the first time he had to make out his bill after the doctor had been dubbed a knight, he wrote Sir William Browne debtor to Tho. Hollingworth. When he delivered it into the knight’s hand, he looked at it a short time, and then looking at him said, Mr. H. you might have said the honourable Sir Wm. Browne. I beg your pardon Sir Wm. replied the bookseller, but upon my word I did not know that it was customary to prefix to the name of a knight the word honourable. As to that, rejoined the knight, tho’ it be not customary, it would yet have been pleasing.—That to be sure was childish and ridiculous enough; but we believe that with all his eccentricities and foibles, Sir. Wm. B. was far from being one of the most disreputable or unworthy characters that were to be found among the gentlemen of this town and its vicinity during his long residence here.
[1039] The rough draught, or fragment of a translation of the inscription is longer, but the rest the present writer could not well make out.—The above seems enough to give the reader a pretty just idea of the tenor of the whole.—Before we entirely dismiss this article, or take our final leave of Sir Wm. we should not omit to notice the much admired impromptu, or extemporaneous epigram produced by him when a regiment of horse happened to be quartered at Oxford, and the king having purchased the noble library of Bp. Moore, made a present of it to the university of Cambridge. The epigram was an answer to one that had been made by a Dr. Trapp, a witty, torified clergyman, on that occasion, in these words,
“The king, observing with judicious eyes
The wants of his two universities;
To Oxford sent a troop of horse, for why?
That learned body wanted loyalty:
To Cambridge he sent books, as well discerning,
That that right loyal body wanted learning.”
Which drew from Sir Wm. the following reply, said so have been much commended, even by Dr. Johnson.
“Contrary methods justly George applies,
To govern his two universities;
To Oxford is dispatched a troop of horse,
Since Tories own no argument like force;
To Cambridge Ely’s learned books are sent,
Since Whigs admit no force like argument.”
[1052] The loose livers, (or whores and rogues of the parish, as some would call them) used to bring their bastard children to him to christen, or make them christians, although they discovered no desire or inclination to live soberly, righteously, and godly, or become christians themselves. This he thought very improper and objectionable, and no less than a direct profanation of a religious rite; and therefore refused to christen such children, unless their parents made a profession of repentance, and solemnly promised to forsake those irregular and vicious courses, and lead for the future virtuous and pious lives. Some willingly complied with his requirement, upon whose children therefore he performed the said rite. Others could not be prevailed upon to submit to this requirement, for which reason he left their children unchristened, which gave great umbrage, not only to their parents and such like folk, but even to his own ecclesiastical superiors, up to the very bishop—all blamed him for having any scruples about such frivolous, harmless, and indifferent matters as these. Some also even of the most decent among his parishioners disapproved of his refusing to christen the said bastard children, it being, as they said, punishing the poor things for the sins of their parents. Forbidding those of loose or immoral lives to come to the Lord’s Table was another circumstance that gave great offence, and caused him no small trouble. One of these was the greatest man in the parish, or head Squire of the place; and a very fierce and dashing fellow he certainly was. He, by way of retaliation and revenge, set himself about picking holes in Mr. R’s coat. They were not indeed of an immoral, but rather an uncanonical nature. Mr. R. had allowed a certain worthy person to partake of the Lord’s Supper sitting instead of kneeling. He also had not made a point of wearing the surplice while performing the burial service and some other duties. He had likewise taken the liberty of using the word honour instead of worship in the marriage service, and moreover of curtailing occasionally the liturgic part of the public service. These deviations were magnified into serious misdoings, and looked upon by his superiors in a very unfavourable light. Wherefore his conduct was afterwards more closely scrutinized; and from the examination and confession of his church-wardens the following articles of accusation were extracted, upon which he was proceeded against in the ecclesiastical court—1. That he did not read the Litany on Wednesdays and Fridays: 2. That he did not constantly wear the surplice in all his administrations: 3. That he did not usually administer the communion on Christmas-day, unless it fell on Sunday. Nor on Whit-Sunday. 4. That he did not read over the Canons and Articles twice a year. 5. That there were two children unbaptiz’d in the parish, which he refused to baptize. 6. That he was in the habit of conversing (or was on friendly terms) with one Mr. Richardson, an excommunicate person.—[Now this person was a worthy, pious dissenting minister, who had been persecuted for conscience sake, or for nonconformity, and excommunicated: and it was expected that no clergyman would converse or associate with him, unless he recanted: which was a sort of morality or religion which Rastrick did not approve, and therefore did not choose to practise.] The first time he appeared before the spiritual Court at Lincoln to answer to the above articles or charges, he had nothing to do but only to retain a Proctor against the next court-day. When that time came, it fell out to be the very day when king James’s Declaration for liberty of conscience came first down into the country, which must have been in the spring of 1687. At this his second appearance he found the court very much down in the mouth (as he expresses it) and far from the heat and violence in their proceedings that he expected. They did however proceed to business, and went over each of those charges, but came to no determination: not thinking perhaps the then aspect of things favourable enough to warrant a rigorous decision. However that was, Rastrick was now becoming more and more dissatisfied with the terms of conformity, and began soon to think of availing himself of the royal Declaration of liberty of conscience to quit his public station in the church, as he actually did before the close of that same year. After which he seems to have continued disengaged till 1701, when he settled with the Presbyterian congregation in this town.