sity, had deposited them with her."* He accom panied his noble donation with the following letter:

"To Dr. Fell, the Bishop of Oxon. "MY LORD,

"I am ashamed that the small present I make my indulgent mother, the University of Oxon, has been thus long detained from expressing my sincere wishes for her prosperity, and paying the tribute of gratitude I must always acknowledge to owe her. But the only reason of this hath been the removal of myself and family into the country, where my domestic concerns have since hindered me from coming to London, to rectify the mistakes the watermen and those I ordered to deliver them made: therefore I hope that their now speedy and safe arrival to your Lordship will at the same time make my apology, and they find acceptance among the studious of antiquity, to whom I wish they may be serviceable; especially if they shall have the honour to

W* LXII. ΓΛΑΥΚΕΤΗΣ.

W+ LXIII. QIAOAHMOE. V. Mus. Veron. p. 441.

W+ LXXXIII.

W* XCIII.

IOTA. ΠΟΝΤΑΡΧΗΣ. Mus. Veron. p. 441. AIOANPA.

PARS TERTIA contains nothing of Sir George Wheler's.

* Wood's Ath. Ox. II. 222.

be received under your Lordship's patronage, whose humanity will protect them as strangers, and whose illustrious virtues will render them (although of themselves unworthy of such honour) conspicuous, and deserving a place among the famous Marmora Arundeliana, rather now Oxoniana, "where instead of their barbarous Athenian Academy they may be proud to enjoy a lasting repose in our flourishing Oxonian University."*

Dr. William Jane, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, was principally concerned in drawing up the famous Judgement and Decree of the University, passed in Convocation July twenty-first, 1683, " against certain pernicious

66

books and damnable doctrines destructive to the sacred persons of Princes, their state of government and of all human society†, which was pre

* Id. ib. The Pomfret statues with the ancient inscriptions collected by Sir George Wheler, and Messrs Dawkins, Bouverie, and Wood, during their travels, some which Dr. Rawlinson bought out of Lord Oxford's or Kemp's collection, and various fragments of our own antiquities, have been all united together and engraved by Millar, at the expense of the University, in the 'Marmora Oxoniensia.' Fol. Ox. 1763."

(Gough's British Topography, II. 132.)

+"A copy of this Decree was hung up in the hall, refectory, or library of every college; and all tutors, with readers and catechists, were strictly commanded to instruct their pupils in the doctrines opposite to those which the University had cenand all members of the same were interdicted the reading

sured;

sented on the twenty-fourth of that month in Latin and English by Dr. Robert Huntingdon (subsequently Bishop of Raphoe, in Ireland) to Charles II., in the presence of the Duke of York, and many of the nobility and gentry. It was burnt, however, by the common executioner, by order of the House of Lords, in 1710. "Such,"

it has been remarked, "is the vicissitude and revolution of opinions, with respect to the policy of this world."* Sir George Wheler, whilst he was an officiating Curate in the retirement of a country-village, expressed in very strong language his approbation of the conduct of the University, in the following letter to Bishop Fell:

"MY LORD,

"The many honours and favours I have received from your Lordship make me ashamed

reading of those books therein condemned to be burnt, under the penalties in the statutes exprest.”

(The Life of Mr. John Kettlewell, p. 69.) Notwithstanding this Decree, many Heads of Colleges at Oxford, and others who had been zealous for passing it, renounced the doctrine advanced in it.

* In the second session of the second Parliament of Great Britain, the Lords voted, March 16, 1710, that "the Decrees of the University of Oxford passed in 1683, in which the absolute authority of Princes and the unalterableness of the hereditary right of succeeding to the Crown were asserted in a very high strain, should be burnt with Dr. Sacheverell's Sermon."

(History of the House of Lords, II. 276.)

that I have been so long without paying my duty to you, and indeed to beg your pardon for not giving your Lordship an account of my design of dedicating myself more peculiarly to the service of God in his Church; whose approbation, I acknowledge, is most highly to be esteemed of all men, both in respect to your learning, piety, zeal, and wisdom, without mentioning your high dignity in the most catholic, I mean orthodox Church now remaining in the world. But indeed there were two principal reasons, that made me keep it as a secret: the one was, that I much suspected mine unworthiness of so great a calling, till after my examination, whether my zeal might prove accompanied with competent instruction for so high an undertaking, my studies having been much interrupted by divers accidents after my leaving Oxon; though these three years last past I did purposely retire into the country more closely to apply myself to them, according to the methods my worthy tutor Dr. Hickes advised me to, when I told him of my desire therein several years ago. And the other was, that I more than suspected I should be opposed in it by some of my relations, whom accordingly I found unreasonably displeased at it afterward, openly and publicly upbraiding me with desperate folly and indiscretion therein : which put me upon a necessity of vindicating myself against some of their spiteful censures,

which I was obliged to answer to several of my good friends, who otherwise approved of what I had done all which assure me since, had I positively declared my intention, I should not have done it with that quietness I did. And this, Sir, so took up the little time I had to spare from the necessary duties of my calling, that I had no time to pay that respect I ought to so noble a patron.

"And now, my Lord, give me leave to express the satisfaction, that I have newly met with here in my country-solitude: I mean the news of the late proceedings of the University-Convocation in condemning those heretically schismatical and profane propositions, of which I am confident you had the principal management, and for which high applause is due from the whole Church and State. And I heartily wish that it may be pursued yet more home by a Synodal condemnation and anathema, either provincial or capitular, by the Bishop, Dean, and Chapter of every Diocese in England; the copies of whose censure to be printed, dispersed, and read in every parish-church, and the renouncing thereof to be made an indisputable condition of our communion: that we may no longer let such snakes lie hid in the grass, nor cast our childrens' bread to dogs by prostituting that inestimable pearl of our communion in Christ to such swine, as are continually ready upon every occasion to fall on us and devour us.