from churches, old buildings, and the conversation of ancient
gossips, for his Church-History and Worthies of England. He
compiled in 1645 a small volume of prayers and meditations,—the
Good Thoughts in Bad Times,—which, set up and printed in
the besieged city of Exeter, whither he had retired, was called
by himself “the first fruits of Exeter press.” It was inscribed to
Lady Dalkeith, governess to the infant princess, Henrietta Anne
(b. 1644), to whose household he was attached as chaplain. The
corporation gave him the Bodleian lectureship on the 21st of
March 1645/6, and he held it until the 17th of 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 satirized 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 Boughton House in his native county, where he and
his son were entertained by Edward Lord Montagu, who had
been one of his contemporaries at the university and had taken
the side of the parliament.
For the next few years of his life Fuller was mainly dependent upon his dealings with booksellers, of whom he asserted that none had ever lost by him. He made considerable progress in an English translation from the MS. of the Annales of his friend Archbishop Ussher. Amongst his benefactors it is curious to find Sir John Danvers of Chelsea, the regicide. Fuller in 1647 began to preach at St Clement’s, Eastcheap, and elsewhere in the capacity of lecturer. While at St Clement’s he was suspended; but speedily recovering his freedom, he preached wherever he was invited. At Chelsea, where also he occasionally officiated, he covertly preached a sermon on the death of Charles I., but he did not break with his Roundhead patrons. James Hay, 2nd earl of Carlisle, made him his chaplain, and presented him in 1648 or 1649 to the curacy of Waltham Abbey. His possession of the living was in jeopardy on the appointment of 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. Lionel, 3rd earl of Middlesex, who lived at Copt Hall, near Waltham, gave him what remained of the books of the lord treasurer his father; and through the good offices of the marchioness of Hertford, part of his own pillaged library was restored to him. Fuller was thus able to prosecute his literary labours, producing successively his descriptive geography of the Holy Land, called A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine (1650), and his Church-History of Britain (1655), from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year 1648. With the Church-History was printed The History of the University of Cambridge since the Conquest and The History of Waltham Abbey. These works were furthered in no slight degree by his connexion with Sion College, London, where he had a chamber, as well for the convenience of the press as of his city lectureships. The Church-History was angrily attacked by Dr P. Heylyn, who, in the spirit of High-Churchmanship, wished, as he said, to vindicate the truth, the church and the injured clergy. About 1652 Fuller married his second wife, Mary Roper, youngest sister of Thomas, Viscount Baltinglass, by whom he had several children. At the Oxford Act of 1657, Robert South, who was Terrae filius, lampooned Fuller, whom he described in this Oratio as living in London, ever scribbling and each year bringing forth new folia like a tree. At length, continues South, the Church-History came forth with its 166 dedications to wealthy and noble friends; and with this huge volume under one arm, and his wife (said to be little of stature) on the other, he ran up and down the streets of London, seeking at the houses of his patrons invitations to dinner, to be repaid by his dull jests at table.
His last and best patron was George Berkeley, 1st Earl Berkeley (1628–1698), of Cranford House, Middlesex, whose chaplain he was, and who gave him Cranford rectory (1658). To this nobleman Fuller’s reply to Heylyn’s Examen Historicum, called The Appeal of Injured Innocence (1659), was inscribed. At the end of the Appeal is an epistle “to my loving friend Dr Peter Heylyn,” conceived in the admirable Christian spirit which characterized all Fuller’s dealings with controversialists. “Why should Peter,” he asked, “fall out with Thomas, both being disciples to the same Lord and Master? I assure you, sir, whatever you conceive to the contrary, I am cordial to the cause of the English Church, and my hoary hairs will go down to the grave in sorrow for her sufferings.”
In An Alarum to the Counties of England and Wales (1660) Fuller argued for a free and full parliament—free from force, as he expressed it, as well as from abjurations or previous engagements. Mixt Contemplations in Better Times (1660), dedicated to Lady Monk, tendered advice in the spirit of its motto, “Let your moderation be known to all men: the Lord is at hand.” 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 was the last of Fuller’s verse-efforts. On the 2nd of August, by royal letters, he was admitted D.D. 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 in extraordinary to Charles II. In the summer of 1661 he visited the west in connexion with the business of his prebend, which had been restored to him. On Sunday, the 12th of August, while preaching at the Savoy, he was seized with typhus fever, and died at his new lodgings in Covent Garden on the 16th of August. He was buried in Cranford church, where 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 (viz. in The Worthies) to give immortality to others, he himself attained it.
Fuller’s wit and vivacious good-humour made him a favourite with men of both sides, and his sense of humour kept him from extremes. Probably Heylyn and South had some excuse for their attitude towards his very moderate politics. “By his particular temper and management,” said Echard (Hist. of England, iii. 71), “he weathered the late great storm with more success than many other great men.” He was known as “a perfect walking library.” The strength of his memory was proverbial, and some amusing anecdotes are connected with it.
His writings were the product of a highly original mind. He had a fertile imagination and a happy faculty of illustration. Antithetic and axiomatic sentences abound in his pages, embodying literally the wisdom of the many in the wit of one. He was “quaint,” and something more. “Wit,” said Coleridge, in a well-known eulogy, “was the stuff and substance of Fuller’s intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material which he worked in; and this very circumstance has defrauded him of his due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men” (Literary Remains, vol. ii. (1836), pp. 389-390). This opinion was formed after the perusal of the Church-History. That work and The History of the Worthies of England are unquestionably Fuller’s greatest efforts. They embody the collections of an entire life; and since his day they have been the delight of many readers. The Holy State has taken rank amongst the best books of “characters.” Charles Lamb made some selections from Fuller, and had a profound admiration for the “golden works” of the “dear, fine, silly old angel.” Since
