TWO:Dr. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (b. 1643)[146] who figures so prominently in the reign of William and Mary, and who rendered such essential service to the establishment of religious liberty, is the great historian of his time. Without his narratives of his own period, we should have a very imperfect idea of it. With all his activity at Court and in Parliament, he was a most voluminous writer. His publications amount to no less than a hundred and forty-five, though many of these are mere tracts, and some of them even only single sermons. His earliest productions date from 1669, and they continued, with little intermission, to the time of his death in 1715a space of forty-six years. His great works are "The Reformation of the Church," in three volumes, folio, 1679, 1681, and 1715; and his "History of His Own Times," in two volumes, published after his death in 1724. Burnet lays no claim to eloquence or to much genius, and he has been accused of a fondness for gossip, and for his self-importance; but the qualities which sink all these things into mere secondary considerations are his honesty and heartiness in the support of sound and liberal principles far beyond the majority of his fellow prelates and churchmen. Whilst many of these were spending their energies in opposing reform and toleration, Burnet was incessantly, by word and pen, engaged in assisting to build up and establish those broad and Christian principles under which we now live. Besides the great works named, he wrote also "Memoirs of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton;" "Passages in the Life and Death of Wilmot, Earl of Rochester;" a "Life of Bishop Bedell;" "Travels on the Continent;" "An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles," etc. etc.Whilst the Court had been conspiring, the people had conspired too. The electors at the H?tel de Ville listened with avidity to a suggestion of Mirabeau, thrown out in the National Assembly, which passed at the time without much notice. This was for organising the citizens into a City Guard. The plan had originated with Dumont and his countryman, Duroverai, both Genevese. Mirabeau had adopted and promulgated it. Fallen unnoticed in the Assembly, on the 10th of July Carra revived it at the H?tel de Ville. He declared that the right of the Commune to take means for the defence of the city was older than the Monarchy itself. The Parisian people seconded, in an immense multitude, this daring proposition, and desired nothing more than a direct order to arm themselves and to maintain their own safety. Thus encouraged, Mirabeau renewed his motion in the National Assembly. He demanded that the troops should be withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Versailles and Paris, and a burgher guard substituted. He also moved that the "discussion on the Constitution should be suspended till the security of the capital and the Assembly were effected." He moved for an address to the king, praying him to dismiss the[363] troops, and rely on the affections of his people. The motion was carried, and a committee appointed to draw up the address. The address was presented by a deputation of twenty-four members. The king replied that the troops had been assembled to preserve public tranquillity and to protect the National Assembly; but that if the Assembly felt any apprehension, he would send away the troops to Noyon or Soissons and would go himself to Compigne. This answer was anything but satisfactory, for this would be to withdraw the Assembly much farther from Paris, and the movement would thus weaken the influence of the Assembly, and at the same time place the king between two powerful armiesthe one under Broglie, at Soissons, and another which lay on the river Oise, under the Marquis de Bouill, a most determined Royalist. The Assembly was greatly disconcerted when this reply was reported.
THREE:Here the Americans assert that when the minute-men did not retire on the first order, the English fired on them and killed eight of them. The English, on the other hand, declare that the Americans, in retiring, no sooner reached the shelter of a wall than they fired on the British; that the firing came also from some adjoining houses, and shot one man, and wounded Major Pitcairn's horse in two places; that then the English were ordered to fire, that they killed several, wounded others, and put the body, about a hundred in number, to flight. By this time the alarm had spread, the minute-men came running from all places, and as the English, having executed their commission, began to retire, the Americans shouted, "The lobsters run!" The minute-men now rushed over the bridge after them, and firing from behind trees and walls, killed a considerable number of them. The Americansexcellent shots with their riflescould only be seen by the smoke of these rifles, and the English, tired with their long night march, instead of halting to hunt them out, kept on their way towards Lexington. The whole march was of this description: the English, unable to get a good shot at their enemies, the minute-men pressing on their rear, still sheltered by trees and walls. The result would have been more disastrous had not General Gage sent on to Lexington another detachment of foot and marines, consisting of about sixteen companies, under command of Lord Percy. In this first bloodshed between the colonists and the mother country, the British found they had lost sixty killed, forty-nine missing, and one hundred and thirty-six wounded.[218] The Americans admitted that they had a loss of sixty, of whom two-thirds were killed.Mr. Fyshe Palmer was not tried till the 12th of September. He was then brought before the Circuit Court of Justiciary at Perth, and charged with writing and publishing an "Address to the People," which had been issued by the Society of the Friends of Liberty, at Dundee. Palmer was an Englishman of good family, in Bedfordshire. He had taken his degree at Cambridge, and obtained a fellowship at Queen's College; but he had afterwards joined the Unitarians, and had resided and preached some time at Montrose and Dundee, and had delivered lectures on Unitarianism in Edinburgh and Forfar. It appeared that Palmer was not the author of the Address, but had only been asked to correct the proof of it, and that he had, whilst so doing, struck out some of the strongest passages. One Mealmaker, a weaver, acknowledged himself the author of the Address; but Palmer was a Unitarian, and this, to the bigoted Presbyterianism of his judges, was rank poison. His advocate pleaded that he was not quite sane, but neither did this avail; the jury brought in an instant and unanimous verdict of guilty, and the judges condemned him to be transported for seven years. This was a still more outrageous sentence than that of Muir, for Palmer had corresponded with no French or Reforming societies whatever; he had simply corrected a proof!
TWO:Felipa started back so violently that she struck against the log she had been sitting upon, and lost her balance.
