which, "divided against itself," was inevitably doomed to fall. The same act of fatal weakness that gave the royal sanction to the death of Strafford, signed in effect the death warrant of the king. And when Corbet, though we are not his apologists, shall be decried as a revolutionary bigot, it should be remembered that he but trod at a humble distance in the track of the immortal Milton, whom Bayle, merging his poetical in his political character, has designated as "the famous apologist for the beheading of king Charles the First." But it is our purpose to shew the fitness of Corbet for the execution of the work we now republish; and rather to assert his claim to authenticity, than to enter into a defence of his motives, or a vindication of his conduct. We have seen from his official appointment that he was attached in his professional character to the establishment of the Governor Massey: hence he possessed peculiarly favourable opportunities of noticing the events connected with the siege of Gloucester, and of obtaining the best founded information of the state and progress of the civil war. Actively and personally engaged in many of the scenes he describes, and called upon in his station to incite a spirit of resistance to the loyalists, although his discourses were consequently marked with all the bitterness of invective, he appears in the composition of his record to have been actuated solely by the desire of truth; to have divested himself of prejudice and party feeling, and to have laboured anxiously, rather as a faithful narrator of the occurrences of that period, than as a vindicator of the war in which the city of his birth had become so unfortunately involved; "for," as he emphatically tells us, " Glou"cester did stand alone, without help and hope." Hence it will be found that, whilst the main facts of Corbet's military relation are incontrovertible, his statement, if not generally corroborated by the testimony of contemporary writers, is at least not invalidated by any historian of those perilous days. Nor should the forbearance with which he mentions the privations and sufferings of his fellow citizens be forgotten, any more than the modesty with which the achievements of his friend and patron Massey are recorded. He has contented himself with a simple detail, disinterestedly given; as if the soldier, whose triumph he commemorates, were to him an indifferent person; and this too at a time when every official announcement made by the parliamentary interest in London was enthusiastic in praise of the governor's bravery and skill. In Corbet we find no bombastic eulogy, no fulsome adulation; although the man of whom he wrote was the main support of his fortunes: this is strong evidence of the sincerity with which he wrote, and entitles him to the utmost credit in his recital of the facts that passed within his observation, and of which he might say with the hero of the Æneid," Quorum pars magna fui." At the end of the war he removed from Gloucester, and we next hear of him as a preacher at Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, whence he removed to Chichester, where he was much frequented by schismatic people. He was afterwards called to the richer cure of Bramshot, in Hampshire, from which he was, by the act of uniformity, ejected in the year 1662. He then retired to London, and lived in great privacy until the death of his first wife, of whose name and family we have no trace, neither of the period of his first marriage. Upon her decease, however, he went to live, most probably, as chaplain in the house of Sir John Micklethwaite, president of the college of physicians : he subsequently resided with Alderman Webb, and shortly afterwards married a daughter of Dr. William Twysse. Still dreading persecution, he retired to Totteridge, in Hertfordshire, where he lived very privately with his friend Baxter. On the publication of the license granted by Charles the Second, in 1671, he was invited by his old congregation to return to Chichester, where he preached with all his former popularity, and had a conference with Bishop Gunning on the topics which occasioned his non-conformity; but he was too deeply attached to the principles which prevailed during the usurpation, to yield in any point to the discipline of the church. He continued in the exercise of his functions until November, 1680, when being dreadfully afflicted with the gravel, he went to London to undergo a surgical operation, in the hope of obtaining relief; but expired soon after his arrival in the metropolis, in the sixtieth year of his age. He died on the 26th of December, 1680, and was buried in St. Andrew's, Holborn. A funeral sermon was preached on the occasion by Baxter, who expressed a very high opinion of his learning, piety, and humility, declaring, that he was so blameless in all his conversation, that he never heard one person accuse or blame him, but for non-conformity. LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. HIS MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE KING. L. P. HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF YORK, L. P. His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, large | Rev. Dr. Hall, Vice Chancellor of Oxpaper. The Right Hon. the Earl of Essex, large paper. The Right Hon. the Earl Somers, large paper. The Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Sir Berkeley Wm. Guise, Bart. M. P. Sir Christopher Bethel Codrington, Sir Thomas Crawley Boevey, Bart. Sir George Naylor, Knt. Garter King John Edmund Dowdeswell, Esq. M. P. large paper. S. B. M. Barrett, Esq. M. r. one large and one small paper. John Martin, Esq. M. P. London, large paper. ford, large paper. Rev. Archdeacon Rudge, B. D. large Matthew Baillie, M. D. F. R. S. Caven- Mr. Wm. Baylis, Jun. Painswick. Joseph Seymour Biscoe, Esq. Chelten- |