Воок I, LECTOR OF sided with the Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars. He was, however, one of those moderate statesmen who, in the words of a once-celebrated clerical adherent and martyr of LEIAN MSS. their party, Christopher Love, judged it an ill way to cure the body politic, by cutting off the political head.' In due time he also became one of those secluded members' of the Long Parliament who published the 'Remonstrance' of 1656, and who were then as strenuous-though far less successful-in opposing what they deemed to be the tyranny of the Protector, as they had formerly been in opposing the tyranny of the King. Sir Edward HARLEY promoted the restoration of CHARLES THE SECOND, and sat in all the Parliaments of that reign. He distinguished himself as a defender of liberty of conscience in 'unpropitious times; and he won, in a high degree, the respect of men who sat beside him in the House of Commons, but were rarely counted with him upon a division. HARLEY'S TARY The first public act of Robert HARLEY of which a record has been kept is his appearance with his father, in 1688, at the head of an armed band of tenantry and retainers, assembled in Herefordshire to support the cause of the Prince of ORANGE, when the news had come of the Prince's arrival in Torbay. In the first Parliament of WILLIAM and MARY Robert HARLEY sat for Tregony. To the second he was returned by the burgesses of New Radnor. The first reported words of his which appear in the debates were spoken in the course of a discussion upon the heads of a Bill of Indemnity.' 'I think,' said he on this occasion, that the King in his message has led us. He shews us how to proceed for satisfaction of justice. There is a crime [of which] God says, He will not pardon it. 'Tis the shedding of A gentleman said that the West was "a vol, ix. p. 247. innocent blood. Grey's Debates, BOOK I, Chap. V. THE COL LECTOR OF THE HAR shambles." What made that shambles? It began in law. It was a common discourse among the Ministers that "the King cannot have justice.' The debate on the Bill of Indemnity of 1690 may be looked upon as, in some sort, LEIAN MSS. the foreshadowing of a long spell of political conflict, in which Robert HARLEY was to take a conspicuous share. Twenty seven years afterwards the strife of parties was to enter on a new stage. Some of the men who acted as the political Mentors of the new member of 1689-90 were to live long enough to clamour for his execution as a traitor, and, on their failure to produce any adequate proof that he was guilty, were to console themselves by insisting on his exclusion from the Act of Grace' of 1717. Ms. Harl. 7524, f. 139, seqq. HARLEY won his earliest distinctions in political life by assiduous, patient, and even drudging labour on questions of finance. During six years, at least, he worked zealously as one of the Commissioners for stating the Public Accounts of the Kingdom.' In parliamentary debates on the public establishments and expenditure he took a considerable share. As a speaker he had no brilliancy. His usual tone and manner, we are told, were somewhat listless and drawling. But occasionally he would speak with a certain pith and incisiveness. Thus, in November, 1692, in a discussion on naval affairs, he said—'We have had a glorious Grey's victory at sea. But although we have had the honour, the enemy has had the profit. They take our merchant ships.' Again, in the following year, when supporting the Bill for more frequent Parliaments, he spoke thus :-' A standing Parliament can never be a true representative. Men are much altered after they have been here some time. They are no longer the same men that were sent up to us.' Of the truth of that saying, in one of its senses, HARLEY Debates, vol. x, p. 268. BOOK I, Chap. IV. THE COL Then came the civil war. But the injury which the ARUNDEL collections sustained from the insecurity and commotions of a turbulent time is very insignificant, in comparison with DELIAN MSS. that sustained, after the Restoration, through the ignorance and the indolence of an unworthy inheritor. LECTOR OF THE SUC- The immediate heir and successor of Earl Thomas survived his father less than six years. He died at Arundel House in April, 1652, leaving several sons, of whom the two eldest, Thomas and Henry, became successively Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk. The first of these was restored to the dukedom in 1660. But the whole of his life, after attaining manhood, was passed in Italy and under the heavy affliction of impaired mental faculties, following upon an attack of brain-fever which had seized him at Padua, in 1645. He never recovered, but died in the city in which the disease had stricken him, lingering until the year 1677. It was in consequence of this calamity that the inheritance of a large portion of the Arundelian collections, and also the possession of Arundel House in London, passed from Earl Henry-Frederick to his second son, Henry. We learn from many passages both in the Diary and in the Letters of John EVELYN that, under the new owner, Arundel House and its contents were so neglected as, at times, to lie at the mercy of a crowd of rapacious parasites. In one place he speaks of the mansion as being infested by 'painters, panders, and misses.' In another he describes the library as suffering by repeated depredations. He remonstrated with the owner, and at length obtained from him a gift of the library for the newly-founded Royal Society, and a gift of part of the marbles for the University of Oxford. In his Diary he thus narrates the circumstances under which these benefactions were BOOK I, made: the Chap. IV. LECTOR OF DELIAN MSS. the GIFT of the THE ARUN ARUNDEL my THE ROYAL Diary, &c., p. 20. AND THAT OF THE TO THE OF OXFORD. Having mentioned that on the destruction of meeting-place of the Royal Society, its members were invited by Mr. HOWARD to sit at Arundel House in Strand,' he proceeds to say that Mr. HOWARD, ‘at instigation, likewise bestowed on the Society that noble SOCIETY; library which his grandfather especially, and his ancestors, had collected. This gentleman had so little inclination to books that it was the preservation of them from embezzlement.' Elsewhere he says that not a few books had Evelyn, actually been lost before, by his interference, the bulk vol. ii, of the collection was thus saved. The gift to the Royal Society was made at the close of the year 1666. In September of the following year this entry occurs in the same Diary :-- [I went] to London, on the 19th, with Mr. Henry HOWARD of Norfolk, of whom I obtained the UNIVERSITY gift of his Arundelian Marbles, - those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greek and Latin, gathered with so much cost and industry from Greece by his illustrious grandfather the magnificent Earl of ARUNDEL. . . . When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected, and scattered up and down about the garden and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive air of London impaired them, I procured him to bestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleased to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all those stones, urns, altars, &c., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them, that were not statues. This I did, and getting them removed and piled together, with those which were encrusted in the garden-walls, I sent immediately letters to the Vice-Chancellor of what I had procured.' On the 8th of October he records a visit b., p. 29. (edit. 1850.) Book L THE COL from the President of Trinity, to thank me, in the name of the Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, and to receive my directions what was to be done to show their DELIAS MSS. gratitude to Mr. HOWARD.' LECTOR OF THE ARUS Ten months later, EVELYN records that he was called to London to wait upon the Duke of NORFOLK. The Duke, he says, ‘having, at my sole request, bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books and remove them. . . . . . . Many of these books had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of ARUNDEL and Dukes of NORFOLK; and the late magnificent Earl of ARUndel bought a noble library in Germany which is in this collection. I should not, for the honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these, had I not seen how negligent he was of them; suffering the priests and everybody to carry away and dispose of what they #5, pp. 122, pleased, so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.' 123. A curious narrative communicated, almost a century afterwards, to the Society of Antiquaries, by James THEOBALD, proves that in this respect the gallery of antiquities—notwithstanding the noble benefaction to Oxford-was even more unfortunate than the library of books. At the time when these gifts were obtained for Oxford and for the Royal Society, another extensive portion of the original collections had already passed into the possession of William HOWARD, Viscount Stafford, and had been removed to Stafford House. Lord STAFFORD was a younger son of the collector, and appears to have received the choice artistic DISPERSION treasures which long adorned his town residence by the gift of his mother. According to EVELYN, Lady ARUNDEL also 'scattered and squandered away innumerable other OF PART OF DEL MAR- |