SPRAT'

HOMAS SPRAT was born in 1636, at Tallaton in Devon

1THO

shire, the son of a clergyman'; and having been educated, as he tells of himself, not at Westminster or Eaton, but at a little school by the churchyard side 3, became a commoner of Wadham College in Oxford in 1651, and, being chosen scholar next year, proceeded through the usual academical course, and in 1657 became master of arts. He obtained a fellowship, and commenced poet.

2 In 1659 his poem on the death of Oliver was published, with those of Dryden and Waller 5. In his dedication to Dr. Wilkins he appears a very willing and liberal encomiast, both of the living and the dead. He implores his patron's excuse of his verses, both as falling 'so infinitely below the full and sublime [lofty] genius of that excellent poet 6 who made this way of writing free of our nation,' and being 'so little proportioned and equal to the renown of the [that] prince on whom they were written; such great actions and lives deserving to be the subject [subjects] of the noblest pens and most divine phansies.' He proceeds: 'Having so long experienced your care and indulgence, and been formed, as it were, by your own hands, not to entitle you to

1 Sprat is not included in Campbell's British Poets.

''He was born in 1635 at Beaminster in Dorset, son of Thomas Sprat, minister of the parish.' Dict. Nat. Biog. liii. 419. See also N. & Q. I S. x. 84.

36 'Sprat in his last will and testament gives God thanks that he, who had been bred neither at Eton nor Westminster, but at a little country school by the church-yard side, should at last come to be a Bishop.' WARBURTON, Pope's Works, iv. 157.

Sprat's words are:-'From an obscure birth and education in a far distant country, where I was the son of a private minister, God brought me to stand before Princes.'

Some Account of the Life of Thomas
Sprat, 1715, p. 8.

419.

In 1657. Dict. Nat. Biog. liii.

Ante, WALLER, 67; DRYDEN, 7; Eng. Poets, xxvi. 213. He ends his poem by comparing Oliver Cromwell to Moses and Richard Cromwell to Joshua. In his History of the Royal Society, p. 152, speaking of Charles I's 'suffering virtues' he says: -'In them he was only exceeded by the divine example of our Saviour.' Cowley. The poem is an imitation of his Pindarique Odes! Ante, COWLEY, 124.

6

? In the original :-'Having been a long time the object of your care and indulgence towards the advan

any thing which my meanness produces, would be not only injustice but sacrilege.'

He published the same year a poem on the Plague of Athens; 3 a subject of which it is not easy to say what could recommend it. To these he added afterwards a poem on Mr. Cowley's death".

After the Restoration he took orders, and by Cowley's 4 recommendation was made chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham3, whom he is said to have helped in writing The Rehearsal*. He was likewise chaplain to the king 5.

As he was the favourite of Wilkins, at whose house began those 5 philosophical conferences and enquiries, which in time produced the Royal Society, he was consequently engaged in the same studies, and became one of the fellows; and when, after their incorporation, something seemed necessary to reconcile the publick to the new institution, he undertook to write its history, which he published in 1667. This is one of the few books which selection of sentiment and elegance of diction have been able to preserve, though written upon a subject flux and transitory. The History of the Royal Society is now read, not with the wish to know what they were then doing, but how their transactions are exhibited by Sprat❝.

In the next year he published Observations on Sorbière's 6 Voyage into England, in a Letter to Mr. [Dr.] Wren. This is a work not ill performed; but perhaps rewarded with at least its full proportion of praise 7.

In 1668 he published Cowley's Latin poems, and prefixed in 7 Latin the Life of the Author; which he afterwards amplified, and placed before Cowley's English works, which were by will committed to his care 8.

Ecclesiastical benefices now fell fast upon him. In 1668 he 8 became a prebendary of Westminster, and had afterwards the

church of St. Margaret, adjoining to the Abbey'. He was in 1680 made canon of Windsor, in 1683 dean of Westminster, and in 1684 bishop of Rochester.

9 The court having thus a claim to his diligence and gratitude, he was required to write the History of the Ryehouse Plot, and in 1685 published A true Account and Declaration of the horrid Conspiracy against the late King, his present Majesty, and the present Government3; a performance which he thought convenient, after the Revolution, to extenuate and excuse *.

10 The same year, being clerk of the closet5 to the king, he was made dean of the chapel-royal"; and the year afterwards received the last proof of his master's confidence, by being appointed one of the commissioners for ecclesiastical affairs'. On the critical day, when the Declaration distinguished the true sons of the church of England, he stood neuter, and permitted it to be read at Westminster, but pressed none to violate his conscience';

In one passage (p. 121) he slanders Tillotson, who was afterwards his archbishop, and Burnet, who was afterwards his brother bishop. Speaking of the paper Lord Russell left at his death he writes: 'It was such as rather became the subtlety, artifice and equivocation of some crafty hypocritical confessor, or Presbyterian casuist, than the noble plainness and simplicity of a gentleman.' Tillotson and Burnet, who had attended Russell on the scaffold, were called before the Council about his dying speech. Burnet's Hist. ii. 178. See also Birch's Life of Tillotson, 1752, p. 121. Sprat, in his Second Letter to the

He

Earl of Dorset, dated March 26, 1689, says he had written the Account at the request, or rather the command, of King Charles II,' and that he was over persuaded.' continues:-'I lamented my Lord Russell's fall, after I was fully convinced by discourse with the Dean of Canterbury [Tillotson] of that noble gentleman's great probity.' Two Letters to the Earl of Dorset, 1711, pp. 11-13.

6

5 Sprat's Relation, &c., p. 53. According to Macaulay (History, ii. 350) Crewe, Bishop of Durham, was made Dean.

7 For the new Court of High Commission see post, SHEFFIELD, 13; Burnet's Hist. ii. 298; Macaulay's Hist. ii. 348, iii. 11.

The critical day' was May 20, 1688, when the clergy of London were ordered to read aloud in their churches the King's Declaration of Indulgence. 'Sprat officiated in the Abbey as Dean. As soon as he began to read the Declaration murmurs and the noise of people crowding out of the choir drowned his voice. He trembled so violently that men saw the paper shake in his hand.' MACAULAY, Hist. of. Eng. iii. 79. 90.

9 Two Letters, &c., p. 18.

and when the bishop of London was brought before them, gave his voice in his favour'.

Thus far he suffered interest or obedience to carry him; but 11 further he refused to go. When he found that the powers of the ecclesiastical commission were to be exercised against those who had refused the Declaration, he wrote to the lords and other commissioners a formal profession of his unwillingness to exercise that authority any longer, and withdrew himself from them. After they had read his letter they adjourned for six months, and scarcely ever met afterwards".

When king James was frighted away and a new government 12 was to be settled, Sprat was one of those who considered in a conference the great question whether the crown was vacant, and manfully spoke in favour of his old master 3.

He complied, however, with the new establishment, and was 13 left unmolested; but in 1692 a strange attack was made upon him by one Robert Young and Stephen Blackhead, both men convicted of infamous crimes, and both, when the scheme was laid, prisoners in Newgate. These men drew up an Association, in which they whose names were subscribed declared their resolution to restore king James; to seize the princess of Orange, dead or alive; and to be ready with thirty thousand men to meet king James when he should land. To this they put the names of Sancroft, Sprat, Marlborough, Salisbury, and others. The copy of Dr. Sprat's name was obtained by a fictitious request, to which an answer 'in

Two Letters, &c., p. 5. The Bishop was brought before them in the summer of 1686, for refusing to suspend a clergyman on the order of the Secretary of State. Macaulay's Hist. ii. 347, 352.

2 He thus ends his letter, dated Aug. 15, 1688:-'I earnestly request your Lordships to . . assure his Majesty that I am still ready to sacrifice whatever I have to his service but my conscience and religion.' Two Letters, &c., p. 17.

'Immediately upon the receipt of my letter wherein I renounced them they adjourned in confusion for six months, and scarce ever met afterwards.' lb. p. 8.

'A government must be indeed in danger when men like Sprat addressed it in the language of Hampden.'

his own hand' was desired'. His hand was copied so well, that he confessed it might have deceived himself. Blackhead, who had carried the letter, being sent again with a plausible message, was very curious to see the house, and particularly importunate to be let into the study, where, as is supposed, he designed to leave the Association. This however was denied him, and he dropt it in a flower-pot in the parlour 3.

14 Young now laid an information before the Privy Council; and May 7, 1692, the bishop was arrested, and kept at a messenger's under a strict guard eleven days. His house was searched, and directions were given that the flower-pots should be inspected. The messengers, however, missed the room in which the paper was left. Blackhead went therefore a third time; and finding his paper where he had left it, brought it away".

15

The bishop, having been enlarged, was, on June the 10th and 13th, examined again before the Privy Council, and confronted with his accusers'. Young persisted with the most obdurate impudence against the strongest evidence; but the resolution of Blackhead by degrees gave way. There remained at last no doubt of the bishop's innocence, who, with great prudence and diligence, traced the progress and detected the characters of the two informers, and published an account of his own examination and deliverance 10; which made such an impression upon him that he commemorated it through life by an yearly day of thanksgiving ".

'Sprat's Relation, p. 56.

2 lb. p. 67.

3 Ib. pp. 47, 61, 65, 69, 160. Horace Walpole wrote on Aug. 5, 1752 (Letters, ii. 296) :-'While they were changing our horses at Bromley we went to see the Bishop of Rochester's palace; not for the sake of anything there was to be seen, but because there was a chimney, in which had stood a flower-pot, in which was put the counterfeit plot against Bishop Sprat.'

'It was on Saturday, the seventh of May of this present year 1692, in the evening, as I was walking in the orchard at Bromley, meditating on something I designed to preach the next day, that I saw a coach and four horses stop at the outer gate, out of which two persons alighted.'