Character of Dr. Homily and his Friends.

IT is high time that we make our readers better acquainted with the master of the house. Many are of opinion, that Homily was not his real name, ³⁰ but assumed by him for concealment. He was undoubtedly of a respectable family in Lancashire, where he once held considerable preferment in the church; but abandoned it and his country, on account / of his principles, which would not permit him to take the oaths required at the Revolution. To be plain, his father had been a rigid nonjuror; and if report err not, derived full episcopal authority from Archbishop Sancrost; and the son (our worthy host) had similar powers and principles. ³¹ He was a zealous advocate for jure divino, ³² and the indefeasible and unbroken succession of bishops and kings; and lamented greatly the decay of primitive discipline, and of the magnificence and solemnity of public worship. Bishop Laud’s memory was dear to him, as well as that of the five bishops; and he never omitted a strict observance of the fasts and festivals, particularly the martyrdom of King Charles, and the restoration of his son. ³³ He had a particular fondness for Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, Thomas à Kempis, Stanhope, Nelson, the Snake in the Grass, and Butler’s Hudi-bras. ³⁴ Though he did not approve of the government, his implicit belief of / the indispensable duty of passive obedience and non-resistance would not permit his conspiring against its peace. In spite of his voluntary exile, he was a trueborn Englishman, and thought nothing comparable to England, or to its soil, productions, constitution, or whatever belonged to it. His furniture, clothes, beer, salt-beef, and potatoes, his cheese, and coals, nay even his tobacco and pipes, were imported from England. His pictures consisted of the portraits of the Charles’s, Laud, Strafford, the five Bishops, Lord Clarendon, and the Duke of Montrose; Bishops Atterbury and Berkeley; ³⁵ and of views of London and Westminster, Oxford, Manchester, and other capital cities and towns of England; with the most beautiful British landscapes, and plates of the ancient colleges, cathedrals, and churches.