don, stood up and made his first Speech, a fragment of which has found its way into History, and is now known to all mankind. He said, ‘He had heard by relation from one Dr. Beard’ (his old Schoolmaster at Huntingdon), ‘that Dr. Alablaster had preached flat Popery at Paul’s Cross; and that the Bishop of Winchester’ (Dr. Neile) ‘had commanded him as his Diocesan, He should preach nothing to the contrary. Mainwaring, so justly censured in this House for his sermons, was by the same Bishop’s means preferred to a rich living. If these are the steps to Church-preferment, what are we to expect?’[1]
Dr. Beard, as the reader knows, is Oliver’s old Schoolmaster at Huntingdon; a grave, speculative, theological old gentleman, seemingly,—and on a level with the latest news from Town. Of poor Dr. Alablaster there may be found some indistinct, and instantly forgettable particulars in Wood’s Athenæ. Paul’s Cross, of which I have seen old Prints, was a kind of Stone Tent, ‘with leaden roof,’ at the north-east corner of Paul’s Cathedral, where Sermons were still, and had long been, preached in the open air; crowded devout congregations gathering there, with forms to sit on, if you came early. Queen Elizabeth used to ‘tune her pulpits,’ she said, when there was any great thing on hand; as Governing Persons now strive to tune their Morning Newspapers. Paul’s Cross, a kind of Times Newspaper, but edited partly by Heaven itself, was then a most important entity! Alablaster, to the horror of mankind, was heard preaching ‘flat Popery’ there,—‘prostituting our columns,’ in that scandalous manner! And Neile had forbidden him to preach against it: ‘what are we to expect?’
The record of this world-famous utterance of Oliver still lies in manuscript in the British Museum, in Mr. Crewe’s Notebook, or another’s: it was first printed in a wretched old Book called Ephemeris Parliamentaria, professing to be compiled by Thomas Fuller; and actually containing a
- ↑ Parliamentary History (London, 1763), viii. 289.
