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same part of the country where Colonel Hutchinson commanded for the Parliament, is represented throughout as living on a footing of the greatest friendship and cordiality with this valiant relative. Under the protection of mutual passes, they pay frequent visits to each other, and exchange various civilities and pieces of service, without any attempt on either side to seduce the other from the cause to which his conscience had attached him. In the same way, the houses and families of various royalists are left unmolested in the district commanded by Colonel Hutchinson's forces; and officers conducting troops to the siege of the castle, are repeatedly invited to partake of entertainments with the garrison. It is no less curious and unique to find Mrs Hutchinson officiating as a surgeon to the wounded; and the Colonel administering spiritual consolation to some of the captives who had been mortally hurt by the men whom he had led into action.

After the termination of the war, Colonel Hutchinson was returned to Parliament for the town which he had so resolutely defended. He was appointed a member of the High Court of Justice, for the trial of the King ;-and after long hesitation and frequent prayer to God to direct him aright in an affair of so much moment, he deliberately concurred in the sentence which was pronounced by it ;-Mrs Hutchinson proudly disclaiming for hine the apology, afterwards so familiar in the mouths of his associates, of having been overawed by Cromwell. His opinion of the protector, and of his government, has been pretty fully explained in the extracts we have already given. During that usurpation, he lived in almost unbroken retirement, at Owthorpe; where he occupied himself in superintending the education of his children, whom he himself instructed in music and other elegant accomplishments; in the embellishment of his residence by building and planting; in administering justice to his neighbours, and in making a very choice collection of painting and sculpture, for which he had purchased a number of articles out of the cabinet of the late King. Such were the liberal pursuits and elegant recreations of one whom all our recent histories would lead us to consider as a gloomy fanatic, and barbarous bigot!

Upon the death of the Protector, he again took his seat in Parliament, for the county of Nottingham; and was an indignant spectator of the base proceedings of Monk, and the headlong and improvident zeal of the people in the matter of the restoration. In the course of the debate on the course to be followed with the regicides, such of them as were members of the House rose in their places, and made such a defence of their conduct as they respectively thought it admitted of. The following passage is very curious, and gives us a high idea of the readiness and address of Colonel Hutchinson in a situation of extraordinary difficulty.

• When

When it came to Inglesbies turne, he, with maný teares, profest his repentance for that murther; and told a false tale, how Cromwell held his hand, and forc'd him to subscribe the sentence, and made a most whining recantation; after which he retir'd, and another had almost ended, when Coll. Hutchinson, who was not there at the be ginning, came in, and was told what they were about, and that it would be expected he should say something. He was surpriz'd with a thing he expected not; yet neither then, nor in any the like occa sion, did he ever faile himselfe, but told them, "That for his act ings in those dayes, if he had err'd, it was the inexperience of his age, and the defect of his iudgement, and not the mallice of his heart, which had ever prompted him to persue the generall advantage of his country more then his owne; and if the sacrifice of him might conduce to the publick peace and settlement, he should freely submit his life and fortunes, to their dispose; that the vain expence of his age, and the greate debts his publick employments had runne him into, as they were testimonies that neither avarice nor any other interest had carried him on, so they yielded him iust cause to repent that he ever forsooke his owne blessed quiett, to embarque in such a troubled sea, where he had made shipwrack of all things but a good conscience; and as to that particular action of the king, he desir'd them to believe he had that sence of it that befitted an Englishman, a christian, and a gentleman." Assoone as the collonell had spoken, he retir'd into a roome, where Inglesbie was, with his eies yet red, who had call'd up a little spirit to succeeed his whinings, and embracing Coll. Hutchinson, "O collonell," say'd he, "did I ever imagine wee could be brought to this? Could I have suspected it, when I brought them Lambert in the other day, this sword should have redeem'd us from being dealt with as criminalls, by that people, for whom we had so gloriously exposed ourselves." The colIonell told him, he had foreseene, ever since those usurpers thrust out the lawfull authority of the land, to enthrone themselves, it could end in nothing else; but the integrity of his heart, in all he had done, made him as chearefully ready to suffer as to triumph in a good cause. The result of the house that day was to suspend Coll. Hutchinson and the rest from sitting in the house. Monke, after all his greate professions, now sate still, and had not one word to interpose for any person, but was as forward to sett vengeance on foot as any man. p. 367-369:

He was afterwards comprehended in the act of amnesty, and with some difficulty obtained his pardon; upon which he retired to the country; but was soon after brought to town, in order to see if he could not be prevailed on to give evidence against such of the regicides as it was resolved to bring to trial. The Inglesby who is commemorated in the preceding extract, is known to have been the chief informer on that occasion; and Colonel Hutchinson understood, that it was by his instigation that he had been B4 called

called as a witness. His deportment, when privately examined by the Attorney-General, is extremely characteristic, and includes a very fine and bitter piece of irony on his base associate, who did not disdain to save himself by falsehood and treachery. When pressed to specify some overt acts against the prisoners,

-the collonell answered him, that in a businesse transacted so many years agoe, wherein life was concern'd, he durst not beare a testimony; having at that time bene so little an observer, that he could · not remember the least title of that most eminent circumstance, of Cromwell's forcing Coll. Inglesby to sett to his unwilling hand, which, if his life had depended on that circumstance, he could not have affirm'd. And then, Sir," sayd he, " if I have lost so great a thing as that, it cannot be expected lesse eminent passages remaine with p. 379.

me.

It was not thought proper to examine him on the trial; and he was allowed, for about a year, to pursue his innocent occupations in the retirement of a country life. At last he was seized, upon suspicion of being concerned in some treasonable conspiracy; and though no formal accusation was ever exhibited against him, and no sort of evidence specified as the ground of his detention, was conveyed to London, and committed a close prisoner to the Tower. In this situation, he was treated with the most brutal harshness; all which he bore with great meekness of spirit, and consoled himself in the constant study of the Scriptures, and the society of his magnanimous consort, who, by the powerful intercession of her brother, was at last admitted to his presence. After an imprisonment of ten months, during which the most urgent solicitations could neither obtain his deliverance, nor the specification of the charges against him, he was suddenly ordered down to Sandown castle in Kent, and found, upon his arrival, that he was to be closely confined in a damp and unwholesome apartment, in which another prisoner, of the meanest rank and most brutal manners, was already established. This aggravated oppression and indignity, however, he endured with a cheerful magnanimity; and conversed with his wife and daughter, as she expresses it, with as pleasant and contented a spirit as ever in his whole life. Sir Allan Apsley at last procured an order for permitting him to walk a certain time every day on the beach; but this mitigation came too late. A sort of aguish fever, brought on by damp and confinement, had settled on his constitution; and, in little more than a month after his removal from the Tower, he was delivered by death from the mean and cowardly oppression of those whom he had always disdained either to flatter or betray.

England should be proud, we think, of having given birth to Mrs Hutchinson and her husband; and chiefly because their cha

racters

racters are truly and peculiarly English; according to the standard of those times in which national characters were most distinguishable. Not exempt, certainly, from errors and defects, they yet seem to us to hold out a lofty example of substantial dignity and virtue; and to possess most of those talents and principles by which public life is made honourable, and privacy delightful. Bigotry must at all times debase, and civil dissension embitter our existence; but, in the ordinary course of events, we may safely venture to assert, that a nation which produces many such wives and mothers as Mrs Lucy Hutchinson, must be both great and happy.

For the Reverend Julius Hutchinson, the editor of these Memoirs, it is easy to see that he is considerably perplexed and distracted, between a natural desire to extol these illustrious ancestors, and a fear of being himself mistaken for a republican. So he gives us alternate notes in laud of the English levellers, and in vituperation of the atheists and jacobins of France. From all this, our charity leads us to infer, that the said Reverend Julius Hutchinson has not yet obtained that preferment in the church which it would be convenient for him to possess; and that, when he is promoted according to his merits, he will speak more uniformly, in a manner becoming his descent. In the mean time, we are very much obliged to him for this book, and for the pains he has taken to satisfy us of its authenticity, and of the accuracy of the publication. We do not object to the old spelling, which occasions no perplexity; but when the work comes to another edition, we would recommend it to him to add a few dates on the margin, to break his pages into more paragraphs, and to revise his punctuation. He would make the book infinitely more saleable, too, if, without making the slightest variation in what is retained, he would omit about 200 pages of the siege of Nottingham, and other parish business; especially as the whole is now put beyond the reach of loss or corruption by the present full publication.

ART. II. A Letter to the Right Honourable Spencer Perceval, on a Subject connected with his Bill, now under Discussion in Parliament, for improving the Situation of Stipendiary Curates. Hatchard, London. 1808.

8vo.

THE poverty of curates has long been a favourite theme with novellists, sentimental tourists, and elegiac poets. But, notwithstanding the known accuracy of this class of philosophers, we cannot help suspecting that there is a good deal of misconception

misconception in the popular estimate of the amount of the evil.

A very great proportion of all the curacies in England are filled with men to whom the emolument is a matter of subordinate importance. They are filled by young gentlemen who have recently left college, who of course are able to subsist as they have subsisted for seven years before, and who are glad to have an opportunity, on any terms, of acquiring a practical familiarity with the duties of their profession. They move away from them to higher situations as vacancies occur; and make way for a new race of ecclesiastical apprentices. To those men, the smallness of the appointment is a grievance of no very great magnitude; nor is it fair, with relation to them, to represent the ecclesiastical order as degraded by the indigence to which some of its mem'bers are condemned. With regard, again, to those who take curacies merely as a means of subsistence, and with the prospect of remaining permanently in that situation, it is certain that by far the greater part of them are persons born in a very humble rank in society, and accustomed to no greater opulence than that of an ordinary curate. There are scarcely any of those persons who have taken a degree in an university, and not very many who have resided there at all. Now, the son of a small Welsh farmer, who works hard every day for less than 40%. a year, has no great reason to complain of degradation or disappointment, if he get from 50% to 100%. for a moderate portion of labour one day in seven. The situation, accordingly, is looked upon by these people as extremely eligible; and there is a great competition for curacies, even as they are now provided. The amount of the evil, then, as to the curates themselves, cannot be considered as very enormous, when there are so few who either actually feel, or are entitled to feel, much discontent on the subject. The late regulations about residence, too, by diminishing the total number of curates, will obviously throw that office chiefly into the hands of the well educated and comparatively independent young men, who seek for the situation rather for practice than profit, and do not complain of the want of emolument.

Still we admit it to be an evil, that the resident clergyman of a parish should not be enabled to hold a respectable rank in society from the regular emoluments of his office. But it is an evil which does not exist exclusively among curates; and which, wherever it exists, we are afraid is irremediable, without the destruction of the Episcopal church, or the augmentation of its patrimony. More than one half of the livings in England are under 801. a year; and the whole income of the church, including that of the bishops, if thrown into a common fund, would

not

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