ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Lives contained in this volume were originally intended to form part of a much longer series of provincial Biography. From causes, in which the Author alone is concerned, and for which he alone is responsible, the publication is for a time suspended. The sample here offered, is, however, independent and complete in itself: and should it meet with approbation, the Author hopes at no distant period, to resume and fulfil the original design.

He trusts that few inaccuracies or deficiencies will be found in the detail of facts. One or two inadvertencies he takes this opportunity of correcting. The "Mercunis Rusticus" mentioned page 16, was not a Newspaper; but an account of the sufferings of the Episcopal Clergy, during the Commonwealth, written by Bruno Ryves, some time Rector of Acton, and published soon after restoration, probably with a view to justify or filliate the "Bartholoma Act." The dates of Roger Ascham's degrees, were 1534, and 1536, not, as given in his life, 1538, and 1544. It was not the Earl of Carnarvon that fell at the battle of Edge-hill, as stated in the life of Roscoe, but the Earl of Lindsey. Robert Earl of Carnarvon, was slain at the first battle of Newbury.

As to the principles on which the work has been conducted, and the sentiments which it breathes, explanation is needless, and apology would be base. The Author finds nothing to retract, nothing which he is resolved to dilute into no meaning, and nothing with which any sect, party, or person, can be justly offended.

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE EARL FITZWILLIAM,

THESE NOTICES

OF THE

TALENT AND VIRTUE OF THE PROVINCE,

WHICH HE HATH SO LONG HONOURED WITH HIS RESIDENCE,

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

WHAT duller looking volume than a Parish Register? commentary on the trite text, Mors omnibus communis? but a barren abstract of the annals of mortality

Where to be born, and die,

Of rich and poor makes all the history?

What drier
What is it,

It might, indeed, set on a calculator, or a life-insurance broker, to compute the comparative duration of life in different periods; a Shandean philosopher to speculate on the successive fashions in Christian names; a manuscript-hunter to note down the revolutions of penmanship; or a moral economist to infer the progress of corruption from the increase of illegitimate births: but to men whose thoughts and feelings travel in the "high-way of the world," its all-levelling uniformity presents neither amusement nor instruction.

But suppose an aged man to open this same volume, and, seated in the midst of a circle of his fellow-parishioners, run his eye along the time-discoloured pages, and relate his recollections, and his father's, and his great-great-grandfather's recollections of every name in the list, though perhaps few had done more than erect a new dial, or leave the interest of £5 to be distributed on New-Year's-Day to twenty poor widows; yet his talk would not be devoid of interest to such as "find a tale in every thing," and that all of whom he spake had been born within hearing of the same church clock, would infuse a family-feeling into his narratives. He would be a local biographer.

If a few leading characters be excepted, who often owe their exception more to fortune and circumstance than to their intrinsic power, the notices of men in general histories are very much like the Parish Register:-consisting of names and dates, and events in which the bulk of the species are as passive as in their own birth and death. Nor can the majority of readers derive any thing from such histories,

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