Catalogue Entry: OTHE00047

^[1] I. Kramnick (ed.), Lord Bolingbroke. Historical Writings (Chicago, 1972), 7-8.

^[2] C. Leslie, Theological Works, 7 volumes (Oxford, 1882), I, 411.

^[3] Ibid., 411-12. See also Richard Baxter: 'He that is but furnished with the historical knowledge of past matters of fact and then impartially readeth over the book itselfe, will have cause to thank God that he hath a clearer expository light than most expositors give him and that he hath escaped their obscuring self devised expositions', cited in W. M. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium (1979), 67.

^[4] R. Twysden, An Historical Vindication of the Church of England (1675), III, 195-8.

^[5] J. Inett, Origines Anglicanae, 2 volumes (Oxford, 1704, 1710), II, 11, xxiv.

^[6] T. Fuller, The Appeal of Injured Innocence (1659), Dedication: 'To the Right Hon. George Berkeley'.

^[7] P Heylyn, Examen Historicum (1659), Sig. A4.

^[8] E. Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicae (1685), 1.

^[9] G. Burnet, The Abridgement of the History of the Reformation, Sig. A3v.

^[10] G. Burnet, The History of the Reformation, III, Introduction, iii.

^[11] G. Burnet, Reflections on Mr Varillas' History of the Revolution (1689), 9-10.

^[12] Note that the Cambridge University Library's first edition of Burner's History of the Reformation belonged to the High Church man Thomas Baker. There are many marginal corrections and additions in his hand.

^[13] For an account of Wharton, see G. D. D'Oyly, The Life of William Sancroft, 2 volumes (1821), passim. Also D. C. Douglas, English Scholars 1660-1730 (1951), 139-55, on Anglia Sacra at 144-.51.

^[14] Wharton, A Specimen, iv.

^[15] Ibid., 26.

^[16] Ibid., 26.

^[17] G. Burnet, Letter to the Bishop of Coventry (1693), 7.

^[18] Ibid., 8, 13-14.

^[19] Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1, 272-304; 11, 383-416.

^[20] See G. Burnet, Reflections on Mr Varillas (1689), A Continuation of the Reflections (1687), A Defence of the Reflections (1687).

^[21] Ibid., 32-3.

^[22] Ibid., 30; History of the Reformation, I, Introduction, Sig. bv.

^[23] J. Leclerc, Parrhasiania (1700), 107.

^[24] Ibid., 108-10. If we simply look at the function of citations as persuasive mechanisms we can understand the preoccupation authors had with referring the reader to the original sources. Consider a seventeenth-century reader examining a work upon a contentious theme, for example the historical narration of the rights of the monarchy over the Church. We encounter a description of events that suggests the king's authority is supreme over all other powers both civil and spiritual, and that the Church is simply an appendage of the civil state. This is a view we have always been taught is incorrect. We examine the text: the author has written a 'true' account, following documents and contemporary descriptions to which he has given us directions. We may not be convinced by reasonable argument, but someone declaring 'look this is how it was done, here are the manuscripts to prove it' is less easily dismissed. In this way the reader was led to depend upon the expertise of the historian.

^[25] Burnet, Abridgement of the History (1682), Sig. A4r-v.

^[26] Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1, Sig. bv. Henry Hickman, Heylyn's redoubtable Presbyterian opponent, had similarly taunted the High Church man with the same charge. Hickman wrote about one of Heylyn's unhelpful references: 'Who these are I know not, nor have any direction to find them out, but a blind one in the margin, v. Synod. Rem. which I am not scholar enough to make use of, if the Synodolia Remonstentium be intended, why is not the page in which those words occur quoted? Can the historian imagine his readers do so <32> abound in leisure, as to read over a Book of so great a bulk, as the Synodolia to find out one phrase?' Hickman, Historia Quinqu-Articularis (1659), 15.

^[27] Burnet, History of the Reformation, I, Sig. cr.

^[28] Burnet, History of the Reformation, III, Introduction, i, ii.

^[29] See B. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, 1983), especially chapter 5, 'Historical Method', 119-63, i.e. 117-20, 126, 139-40, 147; on the connection between humanism and the rise of modern science, see B. Shapiro and F. R. Frank, English Virtuosi in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries (Los Angeles, 1972); also G. Wylie Sypher, 'Similarities between the scientific and historical revolutions at the end of the Renaissance', JHI 26 (1965); see A. Richardson, History, Sacred and Profane (1964), 41, commenting on the Restoration period as 'a kind of twilight period, an age of half seeing, between the fading brilliance of the medieval world system and the dawn of our modern historically minded age'.

^[30] See his concluding remarks: 'It is the contention of this writer that some English Church historians of the later seventeenth century showed increasing awareness of the difficulty of the problem of bias and adjusted their methodology in an attempt to solve or at least reduce the problem. In doing so they disclosed attitudes towards historiography that foreshadowed some nineteenth-century developments, and in stressing the importance of sources, they anticipated contemporary practices in historical writing'. J. H. Preston, 'The Problem of Bias in Ecclesiastical History' in JHI 32 (1971), 204, 208, 217.

^[31]

Smith Fussner, The Historical Revolution (1962), 27, 32-37, 60-91, 92-113, 274; A. B. Ferguson, Clio Unbound (North Carolina, 1974), xv, 2, 83. Note G. R. Elton's hostility to the latter work which he castigates for its 'astonishingly anachronistic air. In fact the twentieth century keeps sticking its superfluous nose into the discourse', HT 20 (1981), 94. For other works that rest upon proleptic premises, see D. R. Kelley, The Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York, 1970), J. H. Preston, 'Was There an Historical Revolution?', JHI 38 (1977); J. Levine, 'Ancients, Moderns and History: The Continuity of <34> Historical Writing' in P. J. Korshin (ed.), Studies in Change and Revolution (Menston, 1972); J. H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (New York, 1963); F. J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (California, 1967); Levi Fox (ed.), English Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford, 1956). The most recent example is P. Avis, Foundations of Modern Historical Thought from Machiavelli to Vico (1986).

One of the more sensitive studies, A. M. Momigliano, 'Ancient History and the Antiquarian' in Studies in Historiography (1969), 1-40, promotes a more sophisticated argument. Momigliano suggests that during the seventeenth century the distinction between historian and antiquarian, or between collecting facts and interpreting these facts, became more pronounced. Following this development he argued that, threatened by the accusations of historical Pyrrhonism in the German universities, historiography evolved from the Renaissance rhetorical tradition of ars historica, to a more empirical notion of ars critica or textual criticism. While accepting Momigliano's thesis for the general shape of Continental historiography, I would dispute its aptness in the English context. My case is that there were crucial rhetorical elements within the development of a critical discipline in historical writing, that is in Momigliano's terms ars historica and ars critica became entangled, rather than separated. The dynamics of English historiography developed within a context of polemical dispute, rather than the purely academic or intellectual threat of scepticism.

^[32] See K. V. Thomas, The Perception of the Past in Early Modern England (The Creighton Trust Lecture, 1982); H. White, Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1978), especially chapter 5, 'Fictions of Factual Representation'; L. Jardine, Francis Bacon and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge, 1974). E. Said, Orientalism (1978), 9-10, is useful on the distinction between pure and political knowledge: 'The determining impingement on most knowledge produced in the contemporary West … is that it be non-political, that is scholarly, academic, impartial, above partisan, or small minded doctrinal belief.' Said attacks the liberal consensus that true knowledge is fundamentally non-political. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1987), has recently pointed out the inherent Whiggish dangers of a history of historiography.

^[33] For general accounts of the epistemological crisis of the seventeenth -century mind see: <35> H. Van Leeuwen, The Pursuit of Certainty in English Thought 1630-1690 (The Hague, 1963); R. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (1979); R. S. Carroll, The Commonsense Philosophy of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet (The Hague, 1975); H. Baker, The Wars of Truth (Massachusetts, 1969).

^[34] W. T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth Century Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), at 39-51; Jardine, Francis Bacon and the Art of Discourse, passim. On linguistic theory, see M. Coheri, Sensible Words (Baltimore, 1977).

^[35] See P. Burke, 'A Survey of the Popularity of Ancient Historians 1450-1700', HT 5 (1966) and 'Tacitism' in T. A. Dory (ed.), Tacitus (1969); I. W. Johnson, 'The Classics and John Bull 1660-1714' in H. T. Swedenborg (ed.), England in the Restoration (California, 1972); R. S. Ogilvie, Latin and Greek. A History of the Influence of the Classics on English Life, from 1600-1918 (1967); J. Johnson, The Formation of English Neo-Classical Thought (Princeton, 1967). G. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (North Carolina, 1980).

^[36] T. Hobbes, Art of Rhetoric (1681), Sig. A,3v. See W. J. Ong, 'Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric in English', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1 (1951), esp. 261-2. The idea of manipulative rhetoric, or the creation of false ideologies, is a central, if understudied, theme of Books III-IV of Leviathan. This is a polemic that links Hobbes firmly with the later writings of Toland, in particular his Christianity Not Mysterious: see below.

^[37] Hobbes, Art of Rhetoric, 111; Aristotle, Rhetoric: Or the True Grounds and Principles of Oratory (1681), 4, 5, 8. See Bacon: 'For as knowledges have hitherto been delivered, there is a kind of contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver; for he who delivers knowledge desires to deliver it in such a form as may be best believed, and not as may be most conveniently examined; and he who receives knowledge requires present satisfaction', cited in Jardine, Bacon, 174. See also Toland: 'Humane authority is also call'd Moral Certitude; as when I believe all intelligible relation made by my friend, because I have no reason to suspect his veracity, nor he any interest to deceive me', Christianity Not Mysterious, 15.

^[38] T. P. Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics (Leicester, 1979), 1-8. For general discussions of the rhetorical heritage of antiquity and its relationship with historical method see: N. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1970), 5-40; P. Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York, 1966); L. B. Campbell, Tudor Conceptions of History and Tragedy in a Mirror for Magistrates (Berkeley, 1936); M. Gilmore, Humanists And Jurists (Harvard, 1963); B. R. Reynolds, 'Latin Historiography: 1400-1600', Studies in the Renaissance 2 (1955): L. Janik, 'Lorenzo Valla: The Primacy of Rhetoric and the Demoralisation of History', HT 12 (1973); B. Reynolds, 'Shifting Currents in Historical Criticism', JHI 13 (1953); G. H. Nadel, 'The Philosophy of History before Historicism', HT <37> 3 (1963-4); G. Gentile, 'Eighteenth-Century Historical Methodology: De Sovia's Institutions', HT 4 (1964-5); G. H. Nadel, 'History as Psychology in Francis Bacon's theory of history', HT 5 (1966).

^[39] Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 38-9.

^[40] T. Hobbes, Eight Books of the Peloponnesian Warre … Written By Thucydides (1634), Epistle Dedicatory, Sig. A2r, 'Of the Life and History of Thucydides' Sig. br. a2v.

^[41] Ibid., 'Of the Life and History of Thucydides', Sig. a3r.

^[42] Thucydides' history was a replacement for experience; the reader was placed in the position of spectator. Hobbes declared: 'For he setteth his Reader in the assemblies of the people, and in the senates, at their debating; in the streets, at their seditions; and in the field, at their battels. So that looke how much a man of understanding, might have added to his experience, if he had then lived, a beholder of their proceedings, and familiar with the men, and the <38> business of the time, so much almost may be profit now, by attentive reading of the same here written', Hobbes, Eight Books … by Thucydides, 'To the Readers', ii.

^[43] Hobbes, Leviathan, 369-70.

^[44] Isaac Casaubon had written an expert and scholarly Latin edition of Polybius' histories in 1609, complete with an eulogy of the historian's skills. In 1634 Edward Grimston had attempted an English translation, with rather inadequate results.

^[45] Sheeres, Histories of Polybius, 1, 'The Character of Polybius and his writings', Sig. A2v, Blv-B2r.

^[46] Ibid., Sig. B2r, B7v, B8r.

^[47] See J. Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, ed. B. Reynolds (New York, 1945); L. F. Dean, 'Bodin's Methodus in England before 1625', Studies in Philology 38 (1943); J. A. Bryant, 'Milton and the Art of History', Philological Quarterly 24 (1950); E. M. Tillyard, Milton's Private Correspondence (Cambridge, 1932). For an interesting contemporary work, see T. Heywood, The Two … Histories both Written by C. C. Sallust (1608), in particular the prefatory 'Of the Choise of History, by way of Preface, dedicated to the courteous reader' which translated portions of Bodin's work.

^[48] On Wheare, see C. Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), 54, 72, 176-77, 211, 310. See H. Prideaux, 5 January 1679, commending Wheare's work, Letters of Humphrey Prideaux, 63-4; and John Locke, 'Some Thoughts concerning the Reading and Study for a Gentleman' in P. Desmaizeux (ed.), A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr John Locke (1720), 239, where he strongly recommends Wheare's work.

^[49] Wheare, Reflections, 15, 20, 299, 304, 324, 341, 362.

^[50] Ibid., 'Mr Dodwell's Invitation', Sig. A4r.

^[51] Ibid., Sig. A5v, A3r-v, A7r.

^[52] E. Bolton, Hypercritica: or a Rule of Judgement (Oxford, 1622), 233, in J. Haslewood (ed.), Ancient Critical Essays 2 (1815).

^[53] R. Rapin-Thoyras, The Modest Critick: or Remarks on the Most Eminent Historians (1691), 71-2, translated by J. Davies of Kidwelly from French. Note that the work was originally translated in 1680 under the title of Instructions for History. The work is an abridgement of both classical (Lucian and Dionysus of Halicarnassus) and 'Spanish and Italian modern' (Francis Patrizi, Agostino Muscardi, Paolo Beni and Lewis Cabrera) historical methods. On Rapin-Thoyras, see R. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage (1986).

^[54] See, for example, Languet de Fresnoy, A New Method For Studying History (2 volumes, 1730), 1, 259, who insisted that the best method for the reader to follow was that of Aristotle and take the middle road. He wrote: 'We must not be too credulous on the one side, nor on the other hand too much affect a pyrrhonism, that is doubting of everything. In truth, if on the one side too great a credulity causes us to slip into errors, and makes us take up for true, <41> things the most dubious and false; on the other hand, an incredulity which we may entertain in the study of history, shall hinder us from reaping any benefit.'

^[55] F. Osborne, Advice to a Son (Oxford, 1658), 73, 74. See also the hostile injunctions of C. Agrippa, The Vanity of Arts and Sciences (1684), 2, 8, 27, against the insidious dangers of false history which was worse than the 'mad dreams of poets'.

^[56] Osborne, Advice to a Son, 79; on the term 'constructive scepticism', see R. Popkin, The History of Scepticism (1979).

^[57] Bolton, Hypercritica, 245; du Fresnoy, A New Method For Studying History, 1, 275. See also J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Understanding (1690), IV, chapter 15.4, discussing the grounds for probability: 'First, the conformity of anything with our own knowledge, observation, and experience. In the testimony of others, is to be considered: (1) the number, (2) the integrity, (3) the skill of the witnesses, (4) the design of the author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited, (5) the consistency of the parts and circumstances of the relation, (6) contrary testimonies.'

^[58] Leclerc, Parrhasiania, 58-61.

^[59] Braithwaite, A Survey, 123. For a general discussion see L. J. Davis, 'A Social History of Fact and Fiction: Authorial Disavowal in the Early English Novel' in E. Said (ed.), Literature and Society (1980); M. E. Novak, Realism, Myth, and History in Defoe's Fiction (Nebraska, 1983). A useful epitome of the tensions between factual and fictional discourse is Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), which Defoe presented as a 'Just history of fact, neither is there any appearance of fiction in it'. Defoe was attacked by the converted deist Charles Gildon in The Life and Strange Adventures of Mr D … de F … (1719) which condemned Defoe's manipulative and false history. Defoe was to defend his 'emblematic history' in The Serious Reflections … of Robinson Crusoe (1720). For Defoe historical writing was a valid mode of literary discourse, useful for conveying moral or religious principle to the reader.

^[60] Braithwaite, A Survey, 239.

^[61] Aristotle wrote: 'That being probable that for the most part and most usually happens to be; not simply, as some would have it to be; but as being that, which in those things that may be otherwise has the same relation to probable, as universal to particular.' Hobbes, Art of Rhetoric, 13. See also John Locke's notions on probability and witnesses in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), IV, chapters 15 and 16, at IV, 16.xi defending history: 'I would not be thought here to lessen the credit and use of history: it is all the light <43> we have in many cases, and we receive from it a great part of the useful truths we have, with a convincing evidence.'

^[62] Aristotle, Rhetoric, 236-7.

^[63] Ibid., 248-9.

^[64] The ability to confer credit on a thesis was given further treatment in Aristotle's Rhetoric IV, chapter 23, 'Of Confirmation'. Here 'just and profitable proofs' drawn from examples, common opinions, and recapitulations were to be deployed, see Aristotle, Rhetoric, 271-3. For a further discussion of the idea of 'probability', see I. Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge, 1984), especially 11-39. Note also the case of the Newtonian and friend of Gilbert Burnet, John Craig, and his Theologia Christiane Principia Mathematica (1699), edited by G. Nadel in History and Theory, supplement 4 (The Hague, 1964). This work attacked monkish histories, and created a mathematical method for calculating the probability of historical data. He argued that 'after 3150 years from the birth of Christ the probability of his written history will vanish'. It was thus likely that Christ would return to earth before this date. Note F. Atterbury, The Epistolary Correspondence, (4 volumes, 1789), 1, 86-7: Atterbury to Trelawny, 11 March 1701, reporting the indictment of Craig's work alongside that of Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) in the Lower Convocation Committee for inspecting books. He wrote: 'I bring in tomorrow a book of one Craig, a Scotch-man, chaplain to the Bishop of Sarum, to prove, by mathematical calculation, that, according to the pretension of the probability of historical evidence, in such a space of time (which he mentions) the Christian religion will not be credible. It is dedicated to the Bishop.'

^[65] Hobbes was to describe this process of conviction; commenting on Aristotle's Rhetoric he wrote: 'That the Judge, while he hears the facts proved probable, conceives it as true. For the understanding has no object but truth. And therefore by and by, when he hear an instance to the contrary; and thereby find that he had no necessity to think it true, presently changes his opinion, and thinks it false, and consequently not so much as probable. For he cannot at one time think the same thing both probable and false: and he that says a thing is probable, the meaning is he thinks it true, but finds not arguments enough to prove it' (Art of Rhetoric, 97-8).

^[66] Atterbury, Rights, Powers, and Priviledges of an English Convocation (1700), Sig. A8v. For an account of the importance of 'matter of fact' in the polemics of dispute in issues of natural philosophy, see S. Shapin, 'Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology', in Social Studies of Science (1984), and S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump (Princeton, 1985), passim.

^[67] Atterbury, Rights of Convocation, 243-4.

^[68] Ibid., 73, 132.

^[69] E. Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicae (1685), 262.

^[70] Ibid., iii.

^[71] Leslie, Theological Works, 1, 412-14. W. H. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism, and Politics: Two Traditions of Political Thought 1500-1700 (Oxford, 1964), 173, writes on the historiography of the late Restoration: 'The result was a more extensive and reliable mass of historical data as an empirical basis for discussion and as a force of authoritative examples and precedents.' Although Greenleaf is correct to stress the empirical element, he falls to set this within a context of authority and credit.

^[72] Burnet, Letter to Thêvenot, 20-1.

^[73] W. Kennett, Ecclesiastical Synods (1701), 29, 108.

^[74] Ibid., 108. For a modern example of this metahistorical rhetoric, see J. C. Rule, 'Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History 1945-1957', HT supplement 1 (1961), Index, s.v. 'fact, historical . . .' (see also: 'objectivity', 'reality', 'science,' 'truth'), and 'verification (justification, evidence) of historical statements and theories' (see also: 'fact', 'logic', ,probability', 'science').

^[75] Ibid., 108-109.

^[76] Ibid., 175.

^[77] Ibid., 153.

^[78] Atterbury, Rights, 154. See also I. Basire, The Ancient Liberty of the Britannick Church (1661), 22; T. Jones, Of The Heart (1678), 45, 52.

^[79] M. A. Goldie, 'The Nonjurors, Episcopacy and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy' in E. Cruickshanks (ed.), Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism 1689-1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), 21. See also G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, chapter, 3; N. Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker (Cambridge, 1959), chapter 2; Douglas, English Scholars, chapter 10; G. Every, The High Church Party, chapters 5, 8.

^[80] H. Hody, Reflections on a Pamphlet Entitled Remarks on the Occasional Paper Numb. VII (1698), 18.

^[81] For an account of Dodwell see DNB.

^[82] H. Dodwell, Vindication of the Deprived Bishops (1692), 11.

^[83] S. Lowth, Ekalogai (1704), xxvi.

^[84] S. Lowth, Historical Collections (1696),Sig.A2v.

^[85] H. Hody, Case of Sees Vacant (1693), 'To the Reader', ii-iv.

^[86] Hody, Reflections (1698), 17 and Case of Sees, 'To the Reader', 111-1V.

^[87] Hody, Reflections 20, 27-8, 15.

^[88] Dodwell, Vindication of the Deprived Bishops, 4-6, 16, 22.

^[89] N. Bisbie, An Answer to a Treatise (1691), 22, 29-30. The canons are at 31-2. See also N. Bisbie, Unity of Priesthood Necessary to the Unity of Communion in a Church (1692).

^[90] Dodwell, Vindication, 2nd part, 33-106.

^[91] H. Hody, A Letter from Mr Humphrey Hody to a Friend (Oxford, 1692), 4-6, 8-9.

^[92] Ibid., 15-16, 18.

^[93] As already noted above, Locke, particularly in the Essay, recommended the didactic value of history. John Toland is perhaps an even more persuasive case. S. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind (McGill, 1984) gives the most detailed discussion of this facet of Toland's polemic, although Daniel's notion of Toland as an 'historian-exegete' lacks an explicatory humanist framework (see 28, 56-8). Toland's promotion of history as a weapon against priestcraft (i.e. as a hypothetical rather than categorical activity) was central to his polemic. In Christianity Not Mysterious Toland's epistemological category 'Evidence', was not mere philosophical investigation, but practical advice on how to attain just moral precepts; see CNM, 14, 16-19, 21-2. It seems likely that Toland was following Hobbes (compare Leviathan, 410 with CNM, 14-16) rather than Locke. I do not intend to trace the penetration of historical ideas down into the realms of the popular press since the research of B. Capp and M. Spufford have admirably illustrated this dissemination. B. Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1981), M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories (1981). For literacy and popular readership, see D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order (Cambridge, 1980), and C.J. Sommerville, Popular Religion in Restoration England (Gainsville, 1977).