In proportion then as the reign of
Charles I. is Important to the history of our constitution, in that
proportion are those to be taxed with the most dangerous of all possible
falsifications of our history, who have misrepresented either the facts or
the principles of those times. Now I affirm that the clergy of the Church
of England have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the
restoration to misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean I
refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. Grey: for the proof I might
refer to some thousands of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case: for he
swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, the most extravagant
that the malice of those times could invent against either the
Presbyterians or the Independents: and for this I suppose amongst other
deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by Warburton. But, amongst
hundreds of illustrations more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer
the reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical Biography [in
part a republication of Walton's Lives] edited by the present master of
Trinity College, Cambridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he
is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious and as impartial
as in such a case it is possible for a high churchman to be. Yet so it is
that there is scarcely one of the notes having any political reference to
the period of 1640-1660, which is not disfigured by unjust prejudices: and
the amount of the moral which the learned editor grounds upon the
documents before him--is this, that the young student is to cherish the
deepest abhorrence and contempt of all who had any share on the
parliamentary side in the 'confusions' of the period from 1640 to 1660:
that is to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was owing that the
very revolution of 1688, which Dr.
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