1810.

P. 12.-14.

Here I must add a passage, concerning which I am in doubt whether it reflected more on the sincerity, or on the understanding of the English Ambassador.  The breach between the Pope and the Republic was brought very near a crisis, &c.

These pages contain a weak and unhandsome attack on Wotton, who doubtless had discovered that the presentation of the Premonition previously to the reconciliation as publicly completed, but after it had been privately agreed on, between the Court of Rome and the Senate of Venice, would embarrass the latter:  whereas, delivered as it was, it shewed the King’s and his minister’s zeal for Protestantism, and yet supplied the Venetians with an answer not disrespectful to the king.  Besides, what is there in Wotton’s whole life (a man so disinterested, and who retired from all his embassies so poor) to justify the remotest suspicion of his insincerity?  What can this word mean less or other than that Sir H. W. was either a crypt-Papist, or had received a bribe from the Romish party?  Horrid accusations!—­Burnet was notoriously rash and credulous; but I remember no other instance in which his zeal for the Reformation joined with his credulity has misled him into so gross a calumny.  It is not to be believed, that Bedell gave any authority to such an aspersion of his old and faithful friend and patron, further than that he had related the fact, and that he and the minister differed in opinion as to the prudence of the measure recommended.  How laxly too the story is narrated!  The exact date of the recommendation by Father Paul and the divines should have been given;—­then the date of the public annunciation of the reconciliation between the Pope and Venetian Republic; and lastly the day on which Wotton did present the book;—­for even this Burnet leaves uncertain.

P. 26.

It is true he never returned and changed his religion himself, but his son came from Spain into Ireland, when Bedell was promoted to the Bishopric of Kilmore there, and told him, that his father commanded him to thank him for the pains he was at in writing it.  He said, it was almost always lying open before him, and that he had heard him say, “He was resolved to save one.”  And it seems he instructed his son in the true religion, for he declared himself a Protestant on his coming over.

Southey has given me a bad character of this son of the unhappy convert to the Romish Church.  He became, it seems, a spy on the Roman Catholics, availing himself of his father’s character among them, a crime which would indeed render his testimony null and more than null; it would be a presumption of the contrary.  It is clear from his letters to Bedell that the convert was a very weak man.  I owe to him, however, a complete confirmation of my old persuasion concerning Bishop Hall, whom from my first perusal