Volume 1

Memoirs of the life and writings of Mr. William Whiston : containing memoirs of several of his friends also / written by himself.

  • Whiston, William, 1667-1752.
Date:
1753
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of the life and writings of Mr. William Whiston : containing memoirs of several of his friends also / written by himself. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/460 (page 5)
    addrefs’d the parliament. Upon which my note was as» follows. N. B. This Jofiah Whifton was my father, and at this time 1659, become fucceffor to my grand¬ father, Mr. Gabriel Rofs ; who died October 19. A. D. 165S. When I as his amanuenfis [for he had himfelf loft his fight feveral years before his death) read the catalogue of fubfcribers, he was prodigioufly uneafy at his name being in it. His account to me was this: that when fome apparitor or meffenger came from thofe at the helm to ob¬ tain the fubfcription, he was very unwilling to com¬ ply. He faid, he lived privately, and endeavour¬ ed to do his own duty without intermeddling with .the affairs of ftate, and fo earneftly defired to be excufed. But the apparitor or meffenger would admit of no excufe, and told him, that if he refu- fed, his name mull be put into the roll of refufers, or into his black book, to be feen by thofe in au¬ thority. The confequence of which my father fo dreaded, that he did at laft fubfcribe ; but deeply repented it all the days of his life, and upon his death-bed alfo. Nay, 1 believe he kept the 30th of January [the anniverfary day of humiliation for the death of king Charles I.] more folemnly, as a religious faft, than any other clergyman in England, every year till the day of his death, A. D. 1685. He alio wrote a book, though never publifhed, againft the lawfulnefs of that war ^ which I have now by me, under his own hand, in manufcript, and a better copy of which, as I take it, the late Sir John Harpur had. My copy begins with this declaration. That his doubts about the lawfulnefs of that war began this very year 1659, and informs us, that iC this manufcript was begun January 11, and finifhed February 19, 3665, 1666.” His brother, Mr. Jofeph Whifton, of Lewes, in Suftex, a very pious diffenter, that wrote feveral books for A 3 infant