Christopher Potter*. DEAN OF WORCESTER AND DURHAM,-CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO KING CHARLES THE FIRST, &c. 1590-1645. "This zealot Is of a mongrel divers kind. HAT industrious and exact Antiquary and Biographer, Anthony Wood, says of this our fellow-countryman, "that he was a person esteemed by all that knew him to be learned and religious, exemplary in his behaviour and discourse,―courteous in his carriage, and of a sweet and obliging nature and comely presence." And (upon the authority of Fuller) let us add, a friend. to the poor;-yet, withal, a man with faults unwhipped of justice. One who so acted "As if hypocrisie and nonsense Had got th' advowson of his conscience;" *See Wood's Ath. Oxon. + Hudibras. whose defects were in the heart, not in the brain. He crawled into the Provostship of his College by some underhand dealing with his unsuspecting uncle; he became a dignitary of the Church by the sacrifice of his creed; from a Puritan he became an Armenian; from a Roundhead he became a Royalist, changes brought about by court influence, and put on to please Archbishop Laud*. We love the man who has the moral courage to think for himself, and to reduce his thoughts to practice; whether right or wrong, he is entitled to respect, if not sympathy: such a man is indeed worthy of Reason,-Reason the last and best gift of Heaven! But the world expects him in such a crisis to be not only pure, but, like Cæsar's wife, beyond suspicion. He must rebut the presumption arising from his fallen nature, or expect its penalties. Laud's creature, as Potter is sometimes called, was not beyond suspicion. Although in a letter to Mr. Vicars, he says he was more sinned against than sinning, and elaborately denies the desertion of his former principles; yet no one, after a calm review of his life, can seriously doubt but that the sprinkling of Court Holy water, like an exorcism, had enchanted and conjured him into this new shapet. Upon the whole, he seems to have had a trifling share (if any) in that admirable * Wood. ↑ Wordsworth's "Life of Sanderson," 504, n. nobility of soul, that indomitable perseverance, that sturdy self-reliance, and bold independence of spirit, which were at once the cause and secret of many of our fellow-countrymen of that age rearing themselves from a lowly condition of life to the highest offices in Church and State. If he had any virtue, it was not the virtue of the sturdy oak, but that of the creeping parasyte,-living by the embrace he gave. He was the nephew of the good and great Barnaby Potter, Bishop of Carlisle*. He was born within the barony of Kendal, about the year 1591. That the barony of Kendal was the place of his birth, all writers agree in saying, but the whereabouts is a mystery which we have endeavoured in a former page to solve. With respect to his good old uncle, as a reference to the passage will show, we had no difficulty in finding a fitting origin, should any one be dissatisfied with Winster as his native placet. But with the nephew it is otherwise his character obliges us (to do what pleaders were wont to do, in order to give the superior Courts jurisdiction over causes of action arising abroad) it obliges us to lay the venue, or give him a settlement in the parish of Stepney, in the county of Middlesext. Westmester, wherever it may turn + See p. 97. * See Life. In pleading, it used to be stated thus: "At Paris, in the Kingdom of France,-to wit, in the parish of Stepney, in the county of Middlesex;" from this probably arises the common saying and belief that if a man has no parish he belongs to Stepney. out to be, was the birth-place of both uncle and nephew. Kendal is assigned to them by some; but in this we do not agree, for reasons expressed more at large in a former page. Being but twelve years younger than his uncle, and being a zealous Puritan in the early part of his ministry in the church, the probability is,-for we can place it no higher,—that the village school of his native place was Scene I. Act I. of the Drama of Life, and that Mr. Maxwell (the puritanical tutor of the Bishop) was also the puritanical tutor of the nephew. In 1606, at the age of fifteen, he became Clerk of Queen's College, Oxford,-where he was afterwards Tarbarder, Chaplain, Fellow, and Provost. He took his M.A. degree in 1613. Soon after this he entered into Holy Orders, with duty at Abingdon, in Berkshire, where he was esteemed a zealous Puritanical lecturer, and much resorted to for his edifying way of preaching. It is remarkable that his uncle, and many others of our fellow-countrymen of the Calvinistic-Puritan sect, began their ministry in the Church at Abingdon. Not being a Queen's College living, we are a good deal at a loss to account for it; perhaps it was the accident of an accident whose history has passed away, or arose from that habit of clanship with which the genius of the North is said to unite her children. In 1620, he took his B.D., and in 1627 his D.D. degree. On the 17th January, 1626, he became Provost of his College, on the resignation of his uncle. When the College little expected a vacancy, uncle suddenly resigned, "self-denyingly, judging that his Church had more need of him as a Minister, than the College as a Provost;" or, as others say with more truth and honesty,-to make way for his nephew. Suspicion is not guilt, nor assertion. proof; but none can read the account of this transaction and be satisfied, except of one thing, that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. may after this well "Chez les prêtres fortune vault bien mieux que la raison." As he died in 1645, he was Provost of the College nearly twenty years. His epitaph says he was durus studiorum exactor; and history assures us that the College flourished during his reign. But we set no great price upon this, for Colleges, like Kingdoms, sometimes flourish from other causes than the virtue or ability of their head; sometimes, indeed, in very spite of their vices and ignorance. With a slight change, one exclaim with Montaigne : The Provost had now cast his bread on the waters. Henceforth, he was always fishing or mending his net; and by practice became an adept in the art and mystery of courtship. The little pilot boats that he sent up to discover the forces and currents of the atmosphere above disclosed to him that they were now setting strong around the |