Sub-Dean of Westminster.

WRITTEN BY HIS SON IN LAW JOHN BARNARD, D. D. REC. OF WADDINGTON NEAR LINCOLN.

To correct the Errors, supply the Defects, and confute the Calumnies of a late Writer.

ALSO AN ANSWER TO MR. BAXTERS FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF DR. HEYLYN. Quisquis patitur peccare peccantem is vires subministrat Audacioe.

Arnob. L. 4. f9 London , Printed for or. S. and are to be sold by Ed. Eckelston, at the Sign of the Peacock in Little-Britain. 1683.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

TWO writers were engaged at the same time on the life of Heylyn, — his son-in-law, Dr Barnard, and Mr Vernon, rector of Bourton-onthe- water, in Gloucestershire. The latter was patronized by the Heylyn family, who wished to procure a memoir which might be pre-fixed to a republication of the Ecclesia Vindicata and other Tracts. Dr Barnard had offered his services as biographer; but “by reason of some unhappy differences, as usually fall out in families,” they had been declined.

While the folio volume of Tracts was in the press, Dr Barnard received a letter written in behalf of Mr Harper, the bookseller who had undertaken the publication. Harper had supposed that the Life would be furnished by Barnard, and was disappointed at finding that another person had been employed by the representatives of Heylyn; it was therefore requested that Dr Barnard would revise the MS. supplied by Vernon, — the author having “desired Mr Harper to communicate the papers to whom he pleases, and cross out or add what is thought convenient.” He complied, although unwillingly: “I dealt most ingenuously with the Life,” he tells us “made several additions to it, corrected many mistakes, abated only the harangue of transcriptions, necessarily made from Dr Heylyn’s published works f16 , and such passages as I thought were disgraceful reflections on my reverend father; I put it into a method, which was before very confused;…. I also disposed both his and my own discourses into distinct paragraphs, that the one might be known from the other; and finally, I writ a civil letter of thanks to him.”

Another passage, however, shows that the alterations introduced by Barnard were far greater than this statement might lead us to suppose. “I sent up [Mr Vernon’s MS.] whole and entire, took the pains to transcribe out of it what I thought fit to be inserted into the Life, and set his name thereto” In short, he substituted his own composition, using that of Vernon only as supplementary.

The Life thus produced underwent a treatment of which Dr Barnard vehemently complains. “My papers,” he says, “came home miserably clawed, blotted and blurred, — whole sentences dismembered and pages scratched out, several leaves omitted which ought to have been printed; especially” — (and the reader of the following biography may form some idea how deeply this must have been felt) — “if [the editor] met with any passages in the Life that seemed an ornament to it, he would give no fair quarter to them ...... Before my copy was carried to the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from it; in the room of which, he shuffled in a preposterous conclusion at the last page, which he caused to be printed in a different character from the other.” f18 But who was the party guilty of these outrages? Barnard assumed that it could be no other than Vernon; but the truth seems to be that the rector of Bourton had nothing whatever to do with the matter. The publisher had called in a more important adviser — Dr Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln; the mutilations of Barnard’s MS. were really the work, not of the obscure Gloucestershire clergyman, but of the indignant author’s own diocesan; and we need not hesitate to ascribe the abruptness of the conclusion, and the smallness of the type in which it is printed, to Mr Harper’s economical desire to save the expense of an additional sheet.

Such is the history of the Life prefixed to the folio of Tracts, 1681. The authors who had shared in producing it were both dissatisfied with the treatment which they had received. Vernon, in conjunction with Heylyn’s son, drew up a protest on the subject, and from this it is that we learn Bishop Barlow’s share in the affair. But Barnard appears never to have seen this paper, (which is described as existing only in MS), and, supposing Vernon to be the mutilator of his composition, he directed the whole of his resentment against him.

In the following year, 1682, appeared an independent biography by Vernon. He tells us in his preface that “had it not been for the indiscretion of some persons, and the forwardness and ostentation of others, none had been put to the trouble of reading, or expense of buying, a second impression of Dr Heylyn’s Life; this very account of it having been written on purpose to be printed with that learned volume of his Tracts that has been lately collected.” He declares that he has borrowed nothing from the folio, except the account of Heylyn’s exertions in preserving the church of St Nicolas at Abingdon, and that of the dream which he had before his last illness; and he expresses an opinion that this might be fairly done, inasmuch as the author of the printed Life had “excerpted” various things from his papers.

By this imputation, Dr Barnard tells us that the publication of his own volume was provoked. He indignantly denies the charge of plagiarism; he explains that the similar passages in the two Lives were derived from certain memoranda of Heylyn’s own, which had been successively in the hands of both biographers; and in return he accuses Vernon of having borrowed largely from his papers, in addition to those passages for which the obligation was acknowledged. Much of this might have been spared, if the writer had been acquainted with the fact which has been mentioned, that Vernon was not the editor of the folio Life. We have already seen, from his own statement, that he had interwoven passages from Vernon’s MS. with the narrative which he sent to the publisher; and such of these as had been retained in the printed copy — which may be easily detected on a comparison of the three biographies, — were, doubtless, all that the author of them meant to claim; while, on the other hand, it would seem that the matter had been entirely taken out of Vernon’s hands by the publisher — that his own manuscript had been returned to him, after being sent back from Lincolnshire, but that it was not accompanied either by that of Barnard or by the “civil letter.” Thus Vernon knew nothing of the principle on which the folio Life had been constructed, and his own sentences had been borrowed for it. Bishop Barlow and the bookseller had made the mischief between the parties, who, instead of attempting a private explanation, attacked each other in print. As to the information which Barnard supposed that his rival must have derived from his papers — since we have reason to think that Vernon had never seen those papers, the most probable explanation is that they may have been supplied by the son and nephew of Heylyn, to whom Vernon’s work is dedicated.

Although a dispassionate modern reader may be little able to sympathize with Dr Barnard, either in his contempt for his rival, or in his opinion of his own great superiority, there could be no doubt which of the Lives was the more eligible for republication. The materials of both are in a great measure the same — the manuscript memoir already mentioned, and the autobiographical passages which are scattered throughout Heylyn’s published works. But after the period to which the memoir extended — “ the eleven first lustrums of his life” — the work of the son-in-law has greatly the advantage over that of Vernon, who had never been acquainted with the subject of his biography. f28 It has not been thought necessary to reprint Barnard’s Preface of sixty-nine pages, nor his Dedication to Crewe, Bishop of Durham. The chief contents of the Preface, besides the disparagement of the rival biography, are a retaliation on Baxter, who had spoken disrespectfully of Heylyn, and a vindication of the term Protestant, which the author wishes us to suppose that Vernon had treated in a slighting manner. This charge, it may be remarked, is as unjust as any part of Barnard’s attack; for Vernon, after stating that the term “implies little in it of the positive part of Christianity . it being only a rejecting or protesting against the abominable errors and superstitions of the Roman Church,” had proceeded to style it an “honorable and glorious name,” and to complain of those who unworthily assumed it.

The “calumnies,” of which the title-page announces a confutation, have no real existence in the pages of Vernon, whose tone is quite as laudatory as that of our author himself. Indeed Barnard allows that his rival had “a hearty zeal and affection toward” the subject of his work, while he denies him “reason and common discretion” to guide these feelings; and the only proof of a calumnious inclination which is advanced, is the publication by Vernon of “these particulars following — (1) The Earl of Derby’s speech to [Dr Heylyn]; f31 (2) The rude usages he found in court; f32 (3) His writing Mercurius Aulicus; f33 (4) His clandestine marriage; f34 (5) His marrying a wife without a portion; f35 (6) His parishioners of Alresford persuaded that they should never fix eye on him, unless they took a journey to a gaol or a gallows. f36 All which matters,” says Dr Barnard, “true or false, are unworthy to be mentioned in the Life of so venerable a person as Dr Heylyn; but they are scandals, and, for the most part, untruths, as shall appear hereafter.” f37 It may be observed that of these points there are only two which could be likely in any way to hurt the reputation of the subject — his clandestine marriage, and his engagement in the undignified office (as it was considered) of “diurnal-maker.” As to the marriage, the fact is, that Vernon did no more than copy an account of it which had been published by Heylyn himself, and moreover, that whereas Heylyn and his first biographer had labored to disprove the imputation of secrecy, Barnard himself proceeds to establish it; while both the marriage and the authorship of the Mercurius Aulicus were matters as to which the readers of Heylyn’s Life had a right to expect information from his biographer. I have introduced the account of the newspaper-writing into the text, (marking the insertion by brackets). Other passages from Vernon have also been inserted in like manner; and, where this could not be done without displacing or altering some of Barnard’s words, extracts which it seemed desirable to borrow from the earlier biography have been printed in the notes.

The errata noticed in the list given by the author, and other evident mistakes of printing, have been tacitly corrected; but I have not ventured to interfere with the construction of the sentences — strangely perplexed and ungrammatical as they often are, — except by very rarely inserting in brackets a supplementary word.