[254] As in the case of John Hales of Eton, William Chillingworth, who wrote The Religion of Protestants, and Jeremy Taylor, author of The Liberty of Prophesying.—Ed.

[255] The Cambridge Platonists, Ralph Cudworth, John Smith, and Henry More, are referred to.—Ed.

[256] Milton.—Ed.

[257] Compare Paradise Lost, book iii. ll. 54, 55.—Ed.

[258] Izaak Walton, author of The Complete Angler, wrote also The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson.—Ed.

[259] With those lines of Wordsworth compare the following: a Sonnet addressed "to the King of Scots," in Henry Constable's Diana, published in 1594—

A sonnet by Dorothy Berry, prefixed to Diana Primrose's Chain of Pearl, a memorial of the peerless graces, etc., of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1639—

Also John Evelyn, in his Life of Mrs. Godolphin, "It would become the pen of an angel's wing to describe the life of a saint," etc.—Ed.

[260] 1827.

[261] By the Act of Uniformity (1662), nearly 2000 Presbyterian and Independent Ministers, who had been admitted to benefices in the Church of England during the Puritan Ascendency, were ejected from their livings.—Ed.

[262] 1827.

[263] See Milton's Sonnet XVIII., On the late Massacre in Piedmont, beginning—

This was in 1655. In the following year Cromwell, to whom the persecuted Vaudois subjects of the Duke of Savoy had appealed, interposed in their behalf. Nearly £40,000 were collected in England for their relief.—Ed.

[264] Compare The Excursion, book i. 11. 175, 176.—Ed.

[265] The Bishops who protested against James II.'s Declaration of Indulgence and refused to read it. He ordered the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to deprive them of their Sees, and the Bishops were sent to the Tower. "They passed to their prison amidst the shouts of a great multitude, the sentinels knelt for their blessing as they entered the gates, and the soldiers of the garrison drank their healths.... The Bishops appeared as criminals at the bar of the King's Bench. The jury had been packed, the judges were mere tools of the Crown, but judges and jury were alike overawed by the indignation of the people at large. No sooner had the foreman of the jury uttered the words 'Not guilty,' than a roar of applause burst from the crowd, and horsemen spurred along every road to carry over the country the news of the acquittal." (Green.) See Wordsworth's note to the eleventh sonnet in Part I. (p. 12.)—Ed.

[266] 1827.

[267] 1827.

[268] William III. of Nassau, Prince of Orange, was invited over to England by the nobles and commons who were disaffected towards James II., and landed at Torbay in November 1688.—Ed.

[269] 1845.

[270] 1845.

[271] King James II., who fled to France in December 1688.—Ed.

[272] Algernon Sidney, second son of the Earl of Leicester, equally opposed to the tyranny of Charles and of Cromwell, was implicated in the Rye House Plot, arraigned before the chief-justice Jeffries, condemned illegally, and executed at Tower Hill in December 1683.—Ed.

[273] Lord William Russell, third son of the Duke of Bedford, member of the House of Commons like Sidney, and like him implicated in the Rye House Plot, condemned at the Old Bailey, and beheaded at Lincoln's-Inn-Fields in July 1683.—Ed.

[274] Henry Sacheverel, a high-church clergyman, preached two sermons in 1709, one at Derby, and the other in St. Paul's, London, in which he attacked the principles of the Revolution Settlement, taught the doctrine of non-resistance, and decried the Act of Toleration. He was impeached by the Commons, and tried before the House of Lords in 1710, was found guilty, and suspended from office for three years. This made him for the time the most popular man in England; and the general election which followed was fatal to the Government which condemned him. He was a weak and a vain man, who attained to notoriety without fame.—Ed.

[275] 1832.

[276] Compare the extracts from Mary and Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals in the "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent" (vol. vi. p. 300).—Ed.

[277] 1845.

[278] 1845.

[279] In a letter to Professor Henry Reed, dated March 1, 1842, Wordsworth wrote:—"I have sent you three sonnets upon certain 'Aspects of Christianity in America,' having, as you will see, a reference to the subject upon which you wished me to write. I wish they had been more worthy of the subject: I hope, however, you will not disapprove of the connection which I have thought myself warranted in tracing between the Puritan fugitives and Episcopacy."—Ed.

[280] American episcopacy, in union with the church in England, strictly belongs to the general subject; and I here make my acknowledgments to my American friends, Bishop Doane, and Mr. Henry Reed of Philadelphia, for having suggested to me the propriety of adverting to it, and pointed out the virtues and intellectual qualities of Bishop White, which so eminently fitted him for the great work he undertook. Bishop White was consecrated at Lambeth, Feb. 4, 1787, by Archbishop Moore; and before his long life was closed, twenty-six bishops had been consecrated in America, by himself. For his character and opinions, see his own numerous Works, and a "Sermon in commemoration of him, by George Washington Doane, Bishop of New Jersey."—W. W. 1845.

[281] The Book of Common Prayer of the American Episcopal Church was avowedly derived from that of England, and substantially agrees with it.—Ed.

[282] "I hope you will not disapprove of the connection which I have thought myself warranted in tracing between the Puritan fugitives and Episcopacy." (Wordsworth to Henry Reed, March 1, 1842.)—Ed.

[283] Dr. Seabury was consecrated Bishop of Connecticut by Scottish Bishops at Aberdeen, in November 1784. Dr. White was consecrated Bishop of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Provoost, Bishop of New York, at Lambeth, in February 1787. It was Wordsworth's intention, in 1841, to add a sonnet to his "Ecclesiastical Series" "On the union of the two Episcopal Churches of England and America."—Ed.

[284] Compare The Excursion, book vi. ll. 17-29 (vol. v. p. 236).—Ed.

[285] Among the benefits arising, as Mr. Coleridge has well observed, from a Church establishment of endowments corresponding with the wealth of the country to which it belongs, may be reckoned as eminently important, the examples of civility and refinement which the Clergy stationed at intervals, afford to the whole people. The established clergy in many parts of England have long been, as they continue to be, the principal bulwark against barbarism, and the link which unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual advancement of the age. Nor is it below the dignity of the subject to observe, that their taste, as acting upon rural residences and scenery, often furnishes models which country gentlemen, who are more at liberty to follow the caprices of fashion, might profit by. The precincts of an old residence must be treated by ecclesiastics with respect, both from prudence and necessity. I remember being much pleased, some years ago, at Rose Castle, the rural seat of the See of Carlisle, with a style of garden and architecture which, if the place had belonged to a wealthy layman, would no doubt have been swept away. A parsonage-house generally stands not far from the church; this proximity imposes favourable restraints, and sometimes suggests an affecting union of the accommodations and elegancies of life with the outward signs of piety and mortality. With pleasure I recall to mind a happy instance of this in the residence of an old and much-valued Friend in Oxfordshire. The house and church stand parallel to each other, at a small distance; a circular lawn or rather grass-plot, spreads between them; shrubs and trees curve from each side of the dwelling, veiling, but not hiding, the church. From the front of this dwelling, no part of the burial-ground is seen; but as you wind by the side of the shrubs towards the steeple-end of the church, the eye catches a single, small, low, monumental headstone, moss-grown, sinking into, and gently inclining towards the earth. Advance, and the churchyard, populous and gay with glittering tombstones, opens upon the view. This humble, and beautiful parsonage called forth a tribute which will not be out of its place here.—W. W. 1822.

He then quotes the seventh of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets," Part III. (see vol. vi. p. 217).—Ed.

[286] Compare the sonnet, On the sight of a Manse in the South of Scotland, belonging to the Tour in the year 1831.—Ed.

[287] 1837

[288] Compare The Christian Year, by Keble, passim.—Ed.

[289] 1845.

(Or)

[290] See The Revelation of St. John, chapter xx. v. II.—Ed.