PREFACE.

"MR. SOUTHEY," says a late Journalist, "is arming, but it cannot be in his own defence, for he will scarcely find an enemy to combat. Mr. Butler's appeal to history has been accepted by Mr. Townsend; his theological information has fallen to nothing before the learning and acuteness of Dr. Phillpotts; and what answer can he give to the affecting personal experience of Mr. Blanco White?" The controversy which the Book of the Church has occasioned might indeed have been safely left in the hands of such advocates; and probably in their hands I might have left it, if some progress had not been made in the present volume before their works appeared. There were, however, in Mr. Butler's book particular criticisms and remarks affecting the fidelity of my statements, which were properly considered as my individual concern. One of these, which, if not the most important, is the most curious, I shall notice in this place.

A few days after the Book of the Church was published, I called on the friend to whom this volume is inscribed, and heard from him of a letter in the newspapers, showing that a story concerning Gardiner's death, which I had taken from Fox, could not be true. I was on the point of leaving town; and when shortly afterwards a second edition of the work was called for, and the Publisher wrote to ask whether any alterations were to be made, I gave directions for expunging the passage, without troubling myself to inquire into a question which I had no immediate means of investigating. It may be imagined then with what surprize I perused the following passage in Mr. Butler's Letters; "the falsehood of the story was noticed by Dr. Lingard; still it found its place in the first edition of your work. Articles afterwards appeared in different newspapers, showing the falsehood of Fox's narrative: you have however retained it in your second edition; and long may it there remain, as proof of the little reliance that should be placed on those writers who place their trust in Fox."

What could I suppose, upon reading this positive assertion, but that the directions which I had sent to Mr. Murray must have been mislaid, or overlooked; that the fact was as Mr.

Butler had stated it; and that a charge affecting my integrity as an historian was brought against me, of which I knew myself innocent, and yet must appear to stand convicted? Under this apprehension I referred to the second edition, and found, hardly with less surprize than the charge itself had excited, that the passage was not there; that my directions had been duly observed; and that Mr. Butler's assertion so positively made, so pointedly applied, was, ...(what shall I say?)...like many other of his assertions. He had not thought it necessary to ascertain the fact for himself; but had hazarded this broad, unqualified accusation upon the faith of others, who either knew not, or cared not what they said.

Convicted, however, I must have stood in the opinion of the public if I had not thus casually heard of the communication in the newspapers. For I never saw that letter,.. nor heard of it from any other quarter. I had not seen Dr. Lingard's fifth volume in which his remarks upon the story are contained,.. and I had forgotten that the mistake in Fox was pointed out in Collyer's Ecclesiastical History, not having referred to that author when engaged upon the Marian persecution, nor having noted the passage, when I went through his work, many years ago. Any man's character

may be endangered by a conspiracy against it, or by a scheme of settled falsehood: but till this incident occurred I was hardly aware how seriously, in such a case as this, it might be affected by accident.

The truth or falsehood of the story was in itself of no importance. It could neither affect the reputation of John Fox who recorded the sufferings of our Martyrs, nor of Stephen Gardiner who had so great a share in inflicting them. Fox tells us on whose authority he related the anecdote. And whether the disease of which Gardiner died came on him like an immediate stroke of divine vengeance, or unperceived, in the ordinary course of nature, the character of that crafty and hard-hearted man remains the same, and is as odious as it deserves to be. I inserted it, believing it to be true; and upon hearing that in one point it was certainly erroneous, I expunged it, little thinking that I should ever have occasion to notice. it again, still less that I should be accused of bringing forward and retaining an anecdote which I knew to be false, for to that Mr. Butler's accusation amounts. In his book, which conveys in the smoothest language the most insidious misrepresentations,...which is not more plausible in manner than disingenuous in matter,..not more courteous and complimentary

in its terms, than injurious in its spirit and design, I should have been sorry if there had been a single charge which I could not refute as easily as I can unravel its sophistry, and as completely as I can lay open the fallacy of its statements.

As a courteous controversialist, it would not be easy to find a parallel for my antagonist: all who are acquainted with Mr. Butler would expect this from his habitual suavity, the benignity of his disposition, and the practical toleration which that disposition induces, fostered as it has been in the wholesome atmosphere of a protestant country. No person, he says, admires more than he does the golden sentence of St. Francis of Sales, "A good Christian is never outdone in good manners." I should be sorry to offend against them in any point; but I should be more sorry to be outdone in ingenuousness and in good faith. Throughout his Letters, Mr. Butler has represented, that whatever I had said of the Papal Religion, in sketching the history of the English Church, was intended to ruin the moral and religious character of the existing English Romanists, and hold them up to their fellow countrymen as an abomination! This he has asserted; and this of course must be believed by all those of his own persuasion who have read his book, and would deem it a sin even to look into mine.