Thomas Fuller

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Thomas Fuller
Aldwinkle St Peter's, Northamptonshire, England
Died16 August 1661(1661-08-16) (aged 52–53)
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
Occupation(s)Clergyman and historian
Known forWorthies of England

Thomas Fuller (baptised 19 June 1608 – 16 August 1661) was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen (and his many patrons).[1][2]

Early life

Fuller was the eldest son of Thomas Fuller, rector of

Edward Davenant, was a tutor there. He did well academically; and in Lent 1624–1625 he became B.A. and in July 1628, at only 20 years of age, received his M.A.[3] After being overlooked in an election of fellows of his college, he moved to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in November 1628. In 1630 he received from Corpus Christi College the curacy of St Bene't's
, Cambridge.

Fuller's oratory soon attracted attention. In June 1631 his uncle gave him a

Convocation of Canterbury, which assembled with the Short Parliament. On the sudden dissolution of the latter he joined those who urged that convocation should likewise dissolve. That opinion was overruled; and the assembly continued to sit by royal writ. Fuller wrote a valuable account of the proceedings of this synod
in his Church History, although he was fined £200 for remaining.

Civil War period

At Broadwindsor, early in 1641, Thomas Fuller, his curate Henry Sanders, the churchwardens, and five others certified that their parish, represented by 242 adult males, had taken the Protestation ordered by the speaker of the

Walter Balcanqual, and the brotherhood of that foundation, became lecturer at their chapel of St Mary Savoy
. Some of the best discourses of the witty preacher were delivered at the Savoy to audiences which extended into the chapel-yard. In one he set forth with searching and truthful minuteness the hindrances to peace, and urged the signing of petitions to the king at Oxford, and to the parliament, to continue their care in advancing an accommodation.

In his Appeal of Injured Innocence Fuller says that he was once deputed to carry a petition to the king at Oxford. This has been identified with a petition entrusted to Sir Edward Wardour, clerk of the pells, Dr Dukeson, "Dr Fuller," and four or five others from the city of Westminster and the parishes contiguous to the Savoy. A pass was granted by the House of Lords, on 2 January 1643, for an equipage of two coaches, four or six horses and eight or ten attendants. On the arrival of the deputation at the Treaty of Uxbridge, on 4 January, officers of the Parliamentary army stopped the coaches and searched the gentlemen; and they found upon the latter "two scandalous books arraigning the proceedings of the House," and letters with ciphers to Lord Viscount Falkland and the Lord Spencer. A joint order of both Houses remanded the party; and Fuller and his friends were briefly imprisoned. The Westminster Petition reached the king's hands; and it was published with the royal reply.[4]

When it was expected, three months later, that a favourable result would attend the negotiations at Oxford, Fuller preached a sermon at Westminster Abbey, on 27 March 1643, on the anniversary of Charles I's accession, on the text, "Yea, let him take all, so my Lord the King return in peace." On Wednesday 26 July, he preached on church reformation, satirising the religious reformers, and maintaining that only the Supreme Power could initiate reforms.

He was now obliged to leave London, and in August 1643 he joined the king at Oxford, where he lodged in a chamber at

Ralph Hopton
.

For the first five years of the war, he "had little list or leisure to write, fearing to be made a history, and shifting daily for my safety. All that time I could not live to study, who did only study to live." After the defeat of Hopton at

Henrietta Anne
(b. 1644), to whose household he was attached as chaplain. The corporation gave him the Bodleian lectureship on 21 March 1646, and he held it until 17 June following, soon after the surrender of the city to the parliament.

The Fear of Losing the Old Light (1646) was his farewell discourse to his Exeter friends. Under the Articles of Surrender Fuller made his composition with the government at London, his "delinquency" being that he had been present in the king's garrisons. In Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician (1646), partly authentic and partly fictitious, he satirised the leaders of the Revolution; and for the comfort of sufferers by the war he issued (1647) a second devotional manual, entitled Good Thoughts in Worse Times, abounding in fervent aspirations, and drawing moral lessons in beautiful language out of the events of his life or the circumstances of the time. In grief over his losses, which included his library and manuscripts (his "upper and nether millstone"), and over the calamities of the country, he wrote his work on the Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience (1647). It was prepared at

Archbishop Ussher
.

Under the Commonwealth

Amongst his benefactors was Sir

Waltham Abbey. His possession of the living was in jeopardy on the appointment of Oliver Cromwell
's "Tryers"; but he evaded their inquisitorial questions by his ready wit. He was not disturbed at Waltham in 1655, when the Protector's edict prohibited the adherents of the late king from preaching.

There is good reason to suppose that Fuller was at the Hague immediately before the Restoration, in the retinue of Lord Berkeley, one of the commissioners of the House of Lords, whose last service to his friend was to interest himself in obtaining him a bishopric. A Panegyrick to His Majesty on his Happy Return, one of the many contemporary poems celebrating the restoration of Charles II, was the last of Fuller's verse efforts.

After the Restoration

On 2 August 1660, by royal letters, he was admitted Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge. He resumed his lectures at the Savoy, where Samuel Pepys heard him preach; but he preferred his conversation or his books to his sermons. Fuller's last promotion was that of Chaplain Extraordinary to Charles II.

Death

St Dunstan's Church, Cranford Park, where Fuller was buried.

In the summer of 1661 Fuller visited the West in connection with the business of his

typhus fever, and died at his new lodgings in Covent Garden on 16 August. He was buried in St Dunstan's Church, Cranford, Middlesex
(of which he was rector). A mural tablet was afterwards set up on the north side of the chancel, with an epitaph which contains a conceit worthy of his own pen, to the effect that while he was endeavouring (i.e. in the Worthies) to give immortality to others, he himself attained it.

Works

A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine – Gallery

  • Icon Tabernaculi
    Icon Tabernaculi
  • Atria Templi Solominis
    Atria Templi Solominis
  • Terra Moriath
    Terra Moriath
  • Terra Canaan
    Terra Canaan
  • Pisgah-sight of Palestine
    Pisgah-sight of Palestine
  • Tribe of Asher
    Tribe of Asher
  • Tribe of Benjamin
    Tribe of Benjamin
  • Tribe of Dan
    Tribe of Dan
  • Tribe of Ephraim
    Tribe of Ephraim
  • Tribe of Gad
    Tribe of Gad
  • Tribe of Issacar
    Tribe of Issacar
  • Tribe of Judah
    Tribe of Judah
  • Tribe of Manasse
    Tribe of Manasse
  • Tribe of Naphtali
    Tribe of Naphtali
  • Tribe of Reuben
    Tribe of Reuben
  • Tribe of Simeon
    Tribe of Simeon
  • Tribe of Zebulon
    Tribe of Zebulon
  • Terra Canaan and Tribes
    Terra Canaan and Tribes

Reception

Fuller's sense of humour kept him from extremes. "By his particular temper and management", said

Charles Lamb made some selections from Fuller, and admired his "golden works." American essayist Samuel McChord Crothers devoted a chapter of his 1916 book The Pleasures of an Absentee Landlord to an appreciation of Fuller and of the genial spirit of Fuller's prose, writing that

Fuller retains the intimate tone of one who is in a little circle of friends. There is no attempt at the impartial dignity of history. If he tells what happens, he takes it for granted that we should like to know what he thinks about it.[10]

Family

In about 1640 Fuller married Eleanor, daughter of Hugh Grove of Chisenbury, Wiltshire. She died in 1641. Their son, John, baptised at Broadwindsor by his father on 6 June 1641, was afterwards of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, saw his father's Worthies of England through the press in 1662, and became rector of Great Wakering, Essex, where he died in 1687.

About 1652 Fuller married his second wife, Mary Roper, youngest sister of Thomas Roper, 1st Viscount Baltinglass, by whom he had several children.

Notes

  1. ^ Stephen, Leslie (1889). "Thomas Fuller". In Dictionary of National Biography. 20. London. pp. 315-320.
  2. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fuller, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. 11. (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  3. ^ a b "Thomas Fuller (FLR622T)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  4. ^ See J. E. Bailey, Life of Thomas Fuller, pp. 245 el seq.
  5. ^ Fuller, T. (1647). The historie of the holy warre. The third edition Cambridge: Printed by Roger Daniel, and are to be sold by John Williams.
  6. ^ Fuller, T. (1840). The history of the holy war. London: W. Pickering.
  7. ^ Fuller, T. (1869). A Pisguh sight of Palestine and the confines thereof: with the history of the Old and New Testament acted thereon. London: W. Tegg.
  8. ^ Fuller, T., Nuttall, P. Austin. (1840). The history of the worthies of England. A new ed., London.
  9. ^ Literary Remains, vol. 2 (1836), pp. 389–90.
  10. ^ Samuel McChord, The Pleasures of an Absentee Landlord, p.107 (Boston and New York, 1916).

References

Attribution

External links