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.

Page 174, ll. 17-19.  Compare the character of Godolphin, p. 96, ll. 1 ff.

Page 176, l. 14. the Adversary, Edward Knott (1582-1656), Jesuit controversialist.

l. 29. Lugar, John Lewgar (1602-1665):  see Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses, ed.  Bliss, vol. iii, cols. 696-7.

Page 177, l. 24.  This Engine is described in the narrative of the siege of Gloucester in Rushworth’s Historical Collections, ed. 1692, Part III, vol. ii, p. 290:  ’The King’s Forces, by the Directions of Dr. Chillingworth, had provided certain Engines, after the manner of the Roman Testudines cum Pluteis, wherewith they intended to Assault the City between the South and West Gates; They ran upon Cart-Wheels, with a Blind of Planks Musquet-proof, and holes for four Musqueteers to play out of, placed upon the Axle-tree to defend the Musqueteers and those that thrust it forwards, and carrying a Bridge before it; the Wheels were to fall into the Ditch, and the end of the Bridge to rest upon the Towns Breastworks, so making several compleat Bridges to enter the City.  To prevent which, the Besieged intended to have made another Ditch out of their Works, so that the Wheels falling therein, the Bridge would have fallen too short of their Breastworks into their wet Mote, and so frustrated that Design.’

ll. 26 ff.  Hopton took Arundel Castle on December 9, 1643, and was forced to surrender on January 6 (Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 330-5).  Aubrey says that Chillingworth ’dyed of the morbus castrensis after the taking of Arundel castle by the parliament:  wherin he was very much blamed by the king’s soldiers for his advice in military affaires there, and they curst that little priest and imputed the losse of the castle to his advice’. (Brief Lives, ed.  A. Clark, vol. i, p. 172).  The chief actor in the final persecution was Francis Cheynell (1608-65), afterwards intruded President of St. John’s College and Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford; see his Chillingworthi Novissima.  Or, the Sicknesse, Heresy, Death, and Buriall of William Chillingworth (In his own phrase) Clerk of Oxford, and in the conceit of his fellow Souldiers, the Queens Arch-Engineer, and Grand-Intelligencer, 1644.

53.

Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 55; Life, ed. 1759, pp. 24, 25.

Weakness of character disguised by ready wit, pleasant discourse, and charm of manner is Clarendon’s judgement on Waller.  They had been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his behaviour on the discovery of ‘Waller’s plot’, the purpose of which was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them.  To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are transparent.  ’His company was acceptable, where his spirit was odious.’  The censure was the more severe because of the part which Waller had just played at Clarendon’s fall.  The portrait may be overdrawn; but there is ample evidence from other sources to confirm its essential truth.

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