Reliquiae Hearnianae

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: divers intrigues of a great minister of state are discovered, and the designs of the Whigs for destroying the church are manifested. tience prevented bis waiting the usual pcrind for obtaining practice in his profession, whether his paternal fortune was too slender to support him without some additional...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: divers intrigues of a great minister of state are discovered, and the designs of the Whigs for destroying the church are manifested. tience prevented bis waiting the usual pcrind for obtaining practice in his profession, whether his paternal fortune was too slender to support him without some additional resource, or whether he felt a natural inclination for politics and authorship, we hare now no means by which to determine: certain it is, that, impelled by one or all of these motives, he commenced writer for the booksellers very shortly after his arrival in town. In 1702 he was called before the house of lords for a pamphlet in which he was supposed to reflect on king William, was prosecuted for it by the attorney general, and acquitted. In 1704, being disappointed at the non-performance of a promise given him, by some perrons then in power, of an official situation, (I believe as commissioner of the sick and wounded, ) and at the same time angry at tin- rejection of the bill to prevent occasional conformity, Dr. Drake wrote the tract alluded to in the text. In this he was assisted by Mr. Pooley, the member for Ipswich, to whom he was indebted for the legal information it contains. No sooner did this tract make its appearance, than her majesty's ministers, who were not spared in the Memorial, made instant search after the author. The Queen noticed the production in her next speech to parliament, and both the houses of lords and commons addressed her majesty, requesting her to punish the author of so groundless and malevolent an assertion as that the church wai in danger under her administration. A proclamation was accordingly issued, and a reward offered for the printer, who surrendered himself, and pretended to make what diKCOveries he could. These however amounted to nothi...