Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 391 pages of information about Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles.

Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 391 pages of information about Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles.

l. 18. L’d Finch, Sir John Finch (1584-1660), Speaker, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Lord Keeper, created Baron Finch, 1640.  He was impeached in 1640 and fled to Holland.  ’The Lord Falkland took notice of the business of ship-money, and very sharply mentioned the lord Finch as the principal promoter of it, and that, being then a sworn judge of the law, he had not only given his own judgement against law, but been the solicitor to corrupt all the other judges to concur with him in their opinion; and concluded that no man ought to be more severely prosecuted than he’ (Clarendon, vol. i, p. 230).

Page 77, l. 26. haud semper, Tacitus, Agricola, ix.

Page 78, l. 17. in republica Platonis, Cicero, Epis. ad Atticum, ii. 1.

l. 20. it, i.e. his avoiding them.

l. 30.  Sir Harry Vane, the elder, was dismissed from the Secretaryship of State in November 1641.  In an earlier section of the History (vol. i, p. 458) Clarendon claims responsibility for Falkland’s acceptance of the Secretaryship:  ’It was a very difficult task to Mr. Hyde, who had most credit with him, to persuade him to submit to this purpose of the King cheerfully, and with a just sense of the obligation, by promising that in those parts of the office which required most drudgery he would help him the best he could, and would quickly inform him of all the necessary forms.  But, above all, he prevailed with him by enforcing the ill consequence of his refusal’, &c.

Page 80, l. 19. in tanto viro, Tacitus, Agricola, ix.

l. 20. Some sharpe expressions.  See the quotation by Fuller, p. 105, ll. 14, 15.  Clarendon refers to Falkland’s speech ’Concerning Episcopacy’ in the debate on the bill for depriving the bishops of their votes, introduced on March 30, 1641:  ’The truth is, Master Speaker, that as some ill Ministers in our state first tooke away our mony from us, and after indeavoured to make our mony not worth the taking, by turning it into brasse by a kind of Antiphilosophers-stone:  so these men used us in the point of preaching, first depressing it to their power, and next labouring to make it such, as the harme had not beene much if it had beene depressed, the most frequent subjects even in the most sacred auditories, being the Jus divinum of Bishops and tithes, the sacrednesse of the clergie, the sacriledge of impropriations, the demolishing of puritanisme and propriety, the building of the prerogative at Pauls, the introduction of such doctrines, as, admitting them true, the truth would not recompence the scandall; or of such as were so far false, that, as Sir Thomas More sayes of the Casuists, their businesse was not to keepe men from sinning, but to enforme them Quam prope ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accedere:  so it seemed their worke was to try how much of a Papist might bee brought in without Popery, and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospell, without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by the Law.’—­Speeches and Passages of This Great and Happy Parliament:  From the third of November, 1640 to this instant June, 1641, p. 190.  The speech is reprinted in Lady Theresa Lewis’s Lives of the Friends of Clarendon, 1852, vol. i, pp. 53-62.

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