London, with some Brief Observations to refute the Lies and Scandals that are contained in it. 1644.1

To these prayers our chaplain added constant preaching on the Lord's day. In his addresses to the soldiers, he especially animated them "to fight courageously, and to demean themselves worthy of that glorious cause with which God had honoured them." It was such exhortations as these that inspirited the garrison of Basing House. Yet he neglected not to remind the troops that he had found that there was no better armour against the darts of Death than to be busied in God's service: "no malice of man can antedate my end a minute whilst my Maker hath any work for me to do." It was also his custom in his daily services to read David's Psalms. In a collection of Prayers, printed in 1648, certain psalms are given as proper to be said upon such occasions as the setting the guards, upon marching forth, &c.: with suitable prayers to accompany them.

Amidst the many leisure hours which Fuller now found, his love of antiquarian pursuits came back upon him. He had in view two great works which from this time onward fostered his studies. A curious account of his proceedings is given by his biographer :

66

'With the progress of the war he marched from place to place; and wherever there happened (for the better accommodation of the army) any reasonable stay, he allotted it with great satisfaction to his beloved studies. Those cessations and intermissions begot in him the most intentness and solicitous industry of mind; which as he never used to much recreation or diversion in times of peace, which might loose and relasch [relax] a well-disciplined spirit; so neither did the horror and rigidness of the war stiffen him in such a stupidity (which generally possessed all learned men) or else distract him, but that in such lucid intervals he would seriously and fixedly come to himself and his designed business.

"Indeed his business and study then was a kind of Errantry, having proposed to himself [in addition to his Ecclesiastical History] a more exact collection of the Worthies General of England, in which others had waded before, but he resolved to go through. In what places soever therefore he came, of remark especially, he spent frequently most of his time in views and researches of their antiquities and church-monuments; insinuating himself into the acquaintance (which frequently

The two Forms of Prayer are in the Lee Library, Owens College. See also Notes and Qu. 1st Ser. viii. 356, ix. 405.

2 Life, p. 25.

Good Thoughts: Scrip. Obs. x. p. 30. 4 Ibid. ix. p. 29.

ended in a lasting friendship) of the learnedest and gravest persons residing within the place, thereby to inform himself fully of those things he thought worthy the commendation of his labours. It is an incredible thing to think what a numerous correspondence the Doctor maintained and enjoyed by this

means.

"Nor did the good Doctor ever refuse to light his candle, in investigating Truth from the meanest persons' discovery. He would endure contentedly an hour's or more impertinence from any aged church-officer, or other superannuated people, for the gleaning of two lines to his purpose. And though his spirit was quick and nimble, and all the faculties of his mind ready and answerable to that activity of dispatch; yet in these inquests he would stay and attend those circular rambles till they came to a point; so resolute was he bent to the sifting out of abstruse antiquity. Nor did he ever dismiss any such feeble adjutators or helpers (as he pleased to style them) without giving them money and cheerful thanks besides."1

This was a strange sort of life for a Royalist chaplain ! But there are other instances on record of the manifestation of this antiquarian spirit under the same circumstances. Cæsar displays it in his Commentaries. In the civil war, one Captain Richard Symonds, who belonged to a troop of horse commanded by a son of the Duke of Lennox, "never in his leisure moments lost sight of his ruling passion-the love of topography, with its handmaids-genealogy and heraldry;" but who noted so many particulars of this nature that he met with during the marches of his regiments, that his Diary forms one of the most interesting of the issues of the Camden Society, by whom it was first printed."

In a subsequent chapter Fuller himself will enumerate the various quarters in which he sought or acquired the information necessary for his historical works. The biographer's statement in regard to his extensive correspondence applies rather to a later period of his life than the present. We may, meanwhile, notice here that Fuller's writings show that in particular he attentively examined the Registers in the churches which came in his way these he found useful in some "nativities." Here, with him, we cannot but bemoan the "μéya xáoμa, that 'great gulph,' or broad blank, left in our registers during our civil wars, after the laying aside of Bishops, and before the restitution of his most sacred Majesty; yea, hereafter this sad vacuum is like to prove so thick, like the Egyptian Life, pp. 26-29.

Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army, &c. Edited by Edward Long, M.A.

darkness, that it will be sensible in our English histories. I dare maintain that the wars betwixt York and Lancaster, lasting by intermission some sixty years, were not so destructive to Church records as our modern wars in six years: for during the former their differences agreed in the same religion, impressing them with reverence of all Sacred muniments; whilst our civil wars, founded in faction, and variety of pretended religions, exposed all naked church records a prey to their armed violence."1

It is a matter of surprise that antiquarian research should have been followed under circumstances so unfavourable for such pursuits. And it is still more wonderful to find the results embodied in works of lasting importance. The idleness often associated with a soldier's life was in this way averted in the case of our chaplain. The constant mental activity which his military life exhibits did not, as one of his admirers has said, go unrewarded. "More than anything else, perhaps-besides the approval of his own conscience-did it tend to what appears so remarkable in studying his works-that unmurmuring acquiescence in the decrees of Providence, even when they were the most averse to his own earnest hopes and most cherished desires, a feature in his character not enough noticed by his biographers, but which is very strikingly apparent when his works are read with a recollection of the times and the circumstances in which they were severally written. And that there is no assumed resignation here, every reader of them will feel assured; for never was the character of an author more impressed on his writings than that of Fuller on his. That they are perfectly natural, it is as impossible to doubt as to doubt their perfect honesty." 2

Often therefore, at this time of his life and subsequently, Fuller took delight in "travelling into former times." His skill in pedigrees and descents, which is particularly evinced in his Worthies, was acquired by these pursuits. In his character of The Good Herald, which, we doubt not, acquired for him the favourable regard and afterwards the friendship of the great heralds of that antiquarian age, he said: "To be able only to blazon a coat doth no more make an Herald than the reading the titles of Gallipots makes a physician. Bring our Herald to a monument, ubi jacet Epitaphium, and where the arms on the tomb are not only crest-fallen, but their colours scarce to be discerned, and he will tell whose they be, if any certainty therein can be rescued from the teeth of time." In the com

1 Worthies, chap. xxiii. p. 65.

2

Knight's Cabinet Portrait Gallery, vii. 74.

panion-character of The True Church Antiquary, the bent of the mind of the shrewd and pious delineator is equally apparent: Fuller illustrated the maxim of baiting at middle antiquity, but lodging not till he came at that which is ancient indeed. "Some scour off the rust of old inscriptions into their own souls, cankering themselves with superstition, having read so often Orate pro anima, that at last they fall a-praying for the departed; and they more lament the ruin of monasteries than the decay and ruin of monks' lives, degenerating from their ancient piety and painfulness. Indeed, a little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion. A nobleman who had heard of the extreme age of one dwelling not far off, made a journey to visit him, and finding an aged person sitting in a chimney corner, addressed himself unto him with admiration of his age, till his mistake was rectified; for 'Oh, Sir,' said the young-old man, ‘I am not he whom you seek for, but his son; my father is farther off in the field.'2 The same error is daily committed by the Romish Church, adoring the reverend brow and grey hairs of some ancient ceremonies, perchance but of some seven or eight hundred years' standing in the Church, and mistake these for their fathers, of far greater age in the primitive times."3

CHAPTER XII.

THE SIEGE OF EXETER.

"GOOD THOUGHTS IN

BAD TIMES." (1644-May, 1646.)

EXETER DURING THE WAR.—ARRIVAL OF THE QUEEN AND THE BIRTH OF A PRINCESS. THE CHILD'S SPONSORS: SIR JOHN BERKELEY; LADY POULETT; LADY DALKEITH.-VISITS OF THE KING TO EXETER.-FULLER RESORTS THITHER.-APPOINTED CHAPLAIN TO THE PRINCESS. THE KING OFFERS HIM THE LIVING OF DORCHESTER: HIS MOTIVE.--THE REV. JOHN WHITE. -FULLER'S LIFE AT EXETER. HIS FRIENDS: DR. R. VILVAIN; THE EARL OF BRISTOL.-HIS "GOOD THOUGHTS IN BAD TIMES."-HIS MEDITATIVE MIND.-HOPTON'S MILITARY MOVEMENTS.—THE CITY INVESTED BY FAIRFAX. -LARK POTTAGE.-DEFEAT OF HOPTON.FULLER APPOINTED BODLEIAN LECTURER.-PREACHES THE FEAR OF LOSING THE OLD LIGHT."-SURRENDER OF THE CITY ON ARTICLES.-FUTURE LIFE OF THE PRINCESS.FULLER IS DISMISSED FROM HIS LECTURESHIP.

Long was this land wasted with civil war betwixt the two houses of York and Lancaster, till the red rose became white with the blood it had lost, and the white rose red with the blood it had shed."-Good Thoughts in Bad Times: Hist. Applications, v. p. 138 (orig. ed.). (See also The Profane State, p. 364; Church-History, iv. 188; Worthies, xviii. p. 50.)

XETER, acity "beautiful for situation," was described by our author in the year 1660 as one of the sweetest and neatest cities in England. But at the time of his sojourn there in the year 1644, a different state of things existed. Dr. Kellett, one of the canons of the cathedral, said in his Tricanium (1641) that "whereas the city of Exeter by its natural situation is one of the sweetest cities in England, yet by the ill use of many is one of the nastiest and noysommest cities of the land; but for my love to that city I do forbear to say more." "Mr. Fuller's" Observations of the Shires declares that though Exeter had a dozen churches, it had never a churchyard but the cathedral. Hence Bishop Hall asserted that the accumulation of corpses buried within the walls was so great that they threatened to bury the cathedral! The frequency of epidemics among the inhabitants at that time testifies to the truth of these statements.

Owing to its advantageous position, and the commercial industry of the inhabitants, Exeter was then the metropolis of the West, and a place of great importance. It was a compact