FULLER, THOMAS, one of the wittiest and most original divines of the English Church, was born in 1608 at Aldwincliff in Northamptonshire. His father, who was minister of St Peter's Church in that village, conducted his education personally, and so well that Fuller was admitted of Queen's College, Cambridge, in his thirteenth year. In 1624 he took his degree of B.A., and four years later that of M.A. Shortly after taking orders, he was chosen minister of St Bennet's, Cambridge, where he attained great popularity as a preacher. In 1631 he was chosen fellow of Sidney College, and made a prebendary of Salisbury. This year is also memorable in his life as that which witnessed his maiden publication. It was a poem—now extremely scarce—entitled David's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance, and Heavy Punishment. Shortly after this he was presented to the rectory of Broad Windsor in Dorsetshire, where, as one of his biographers remarks, "he began to complete several works he had planned at Cambridge." To complete his happiness he married about this time, but had the misfortune, in 1641, to lose his wife after she had given birth to a son. Wearyed with the monotonous routine of rural life, and anxious to be near the principal scene of public affairs, Fuller repaired to London, where his fame as a pulpit orator secured for him the lectureship of the Savoy. In 1640 he published his deservedly celebrated History of the Holy War, which brought him in both money and a great increase of repute. He was a member of the Westminster Convocation of 1640, and has left an interesting account of its proceedings in his Church History. In 1642 he preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey which gave great offence to the Parliamentarians. The day happened to be the anniversary of the king's inauguration, and the preacher chose for his text the words, "Yea, let him take all, so that my lord the king return in peace." The sermon, which was in the same loyal spirit as the text, involved the preacher in no little odium with the Puritan party. In the same year Fuller published his most popular and in some respects his best work, entitled The Holy and Profane State. Declining, on grounds of conscience, to take the oath to Parliament, he now left London and joined the king at Oxford. His majesty was desirous to hear him preach, and Fuller immediately obeyed the royal order, but so little in the spirit of a partisan that the king was disgusted and the royalist party indignant at his calm moderation. His neutral policy was singularly ill-adapted for these troublous times, and he was soon to feel in a manner to him exquisitely galling the rancour of party spirit. Se-
questration was pronounced against him, and embittered by the loss of all his books and manuscripts. Two royalist noblemen, Lord Beauchamp and Cranfield Earl of Middlesex, generously repaired this misfortune by making over to Fuller such remains of their private libraries as had escaped the ravages of the civil war. Induced to identify himself with the royal cause, and anxious to clear himself of the charge of lukewarmness, he sought and obtained, through Sir Ralph Hopton, a chaplaincy in the king's army. This office put at his disposal a good deal of time, which he turned to account by collecting materials for his Worthies of England. His numerous marches and countermarches through the country enabled him to amass many valuable details which might otherwise have been lost. Having espoused the royal cause, he threw himself into it with vigour, and gave a memorable proof of his zeal in the defence of Basinghouse, when he was besieged there with a small party of royalists. For he animated his little garrison to so vigorous a defence that the parliamentary commander, Sir William Waller, was obliged to retire from the place with loss. When the royal forces were afterwards driven into Cornwall, Fuller took refuge in Exeter, where he preached regularly to the citizens. About this time he was appointed chaplain to the infant princess, Henrietta Maria, and presented to the living of Dorchester. During his stay at Exeter he is said to have written his work entitled Good Thoughts in Bad Times. When at length the town surrendered to the Parliament, Fuller repaired to London, where he found his Savoy lectureship occupied by another, but readily obtained in its room that of St Clement's, and subsequently of St Bride's. His appointment to these offices, however, was merely nominal, as he was "forbidden (to use his own language) till further order the exercise of his public preaching." This rigour, however, did not prevent the Earl of Carlisle from offering him in 1648 the rectory of Waltham Abbey in Essex. In this same year he published at Cambridge his Holy State, and two years later at London his Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confinement thereof, with the History of the Old and New Testaments, acted thereon. His literary history of the next two or three years exhibits nothing beyond a few tracts and sermons of temporary interest, which have been long forgotten. In 1654 he married a lady of noble family, the sister of Viscount Basinglass, and in the following year made himself notorious by persisting in the discharge of his ministerial functions, "notwithstanding Cromwell's prohibition of all persons from preaching or teaching schools who had been adherents of the late king." In this year also he published his Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII, to which was appended the History of the University of Cambridge, and the History of Waltham Abbey. The Church History called forth some strictures from Heylyn in his Examen Historicum, to which Fuller replied in a tract entitled Appeal of Injured Innocence. In 1658 Lord Berkely made him his chaplain, and presented him to the rectory of Cranford in Middlesex. It is also said that this nobleman took him over to the Hague, and introduced him to Charles II. there. Certain it is, that after the Restoration Fuller regained his lectureship at the Savoy, and was reinstated in his prebend of Salisbury. He was also appointed chaplain extraordinary to the king, made a doctor of divinity by Mandamus, and was within sight of a bishopric when a rather sudden death brought his earthly prospects to a close, 15th August 1661. He was buried in his church at Cranford, in the chancel of which a monument was erected to his memory.
The principal attribute of Fuller's genius is unquestionably wit; though, as Coleridge has well observed, "this very circumstance has defrauded him of his due praise for the practical wisdom—for the beauty and variety of the truths into which he shaped the stuff." His wit shows it-
self in the strangest forms, and whatever be the subject under discussion, it is sure to be presented in the wittiest guise. Sometimes it shows itself in a torrent of sarcasms so good-natured that the very person at whom they are levelled could not but join in the laugh against himself. At other times it exhausts itself in facetious stories, humorous illusions and illustrations and puns, more frequent and preposterous than those of Shakespeare himself. Even where a "lamentable accident" falls to be recorded, it is so mirthfully described that we feel ourselves more moved with laughter at the event than sympathy with the sufferers. A distressing catastrophe that befell a congregation of Catholics at Blackriars is thus described—"The sermon began to incline to the middle, the day to the end thereof, when on a sudden the floor fell down whereon they were assembled. It gave no charitable warning groan beforehand, but cracked, broke, and fell all in an instant. Many were killed, more bruised, all frightened. Sad sight to behold the flesh and blood of different persons mingled together, and the brains of one on the head of another. One lacked a leg, another an arm, a third whole and entire, wanting nothing but breath, stifled in the ruins." In Fuller's treatment of serious or sacred subjects, however, whatever may be the appearance of profane or indecorous levity, there is never anything of the reality of it. It would, perhaps, have been safer, had he employed a less jocose phraseology when discussing grave subjects; but the whole tenor both of his life and writings proves him to have been a man of genuine religious sensibilities, not one of those who talk lightly on divine things because they feel lightly. But though one of the wittiest of men, Fuller was not merely witty. His fancy was only less characteristic and fertile than his wit, and was brilliant enough to have made the reputation of any inferior writer. But his indulgence of the dominant faculty of his mind has defrauded both his fancy and his wisdom of the admiration fairly due to them. Another faculty which Fuller possessed in rare perfection, that of memory, must not be here omitted. It is said that he could repeat five hundred strange words after once hearing them, and could make use of a sermon verbatim under the like circumstances. Another still more memorable instance of this power is recorded elsewhere. It is said that he undertook, after passing once from Temple Bar to the end of Cheapside, to tell at his return every sign as it stood in order on both sides of the way, and that he succeeded perfectly. Neither of these instances must necessarily be taken as strictly true (though far more wonderful ones are on record); but they both point to the fact that Fuller's memory was an uncommonly powerful one. As a writer, Fuller possesses many excellent qualities. Though a man of extensive erudition, he was absolutely free from all the forms of learned pedantry. His style is far more idiomatic than that of his illustrious contemporaries, Donne, Jeremy Taylor, Browne, and Burton; and he seems to have studiously avoided the Latinisms which form so large an element in their style. His sentences are simpler and shorter than theirs, and the majority of the words that compose them are of Saxon origin. This homely simplicity is to be accounted for by the fact that he used to collect the materials for his historical works, not by poring over dusty tomes in libraries, but by gossiping with the common people and listening for hours to their prolix accounts of local traditions and family legends. Though they do not display any great vigour of reasoning or wide command of principles, they are yet highly valuable as collections of admirably-told stories, reflecting quite as successfully as the most elaborate history the social spirit of that age. But though from their arrangements they are not immediately available as histories, they are a mine of wealth to more systematic and less eccentric writers. The moral spirit of Fuller's writings is admirable. His calmness and impartiality in discussing various delicate points of English ecclesiastical
history contrast very favourably with the spirit of fierce partizanship displayed alike by most churchmen and dissenters of that age. It was in reference to this that Coleridge pronounced him "incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men." He was a firm friend of the Established Church, and sometimes testified his attachment to it by flattering its chief dignitaries in terms unnecessarily fulsome. But it was with the deepest sorrow that he beheld the indignities practised against the Puritans, and wherever he could do so he did his best to screen and aid them.
In addition to the works already mentioned, Fuller wrote some others of less importance. These are—Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician, 12mo, Lond. 1646; Good Thoughts in Worse Times, 16mo, Lond. 1647; Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, 12mo, Lond. 1660; The Speech of Birds, also of Flowers, partly moral and partly mystical, 8vo, 1660. The most of Fuller's works have been several times reprinted.