Thomas Fuller

Thomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian, baptised on 19 June 1608 and dead by 16 August 1661. He belonged to a learned clerical world shaped by universities, church offices, sermons, patronage, and then by the violence of the English Civil War. He is now remembered chiefly for his writings, especially Worthies of England, published in 1662, the year after his death. Fuller was also a prolific author, and among the first English writers able to live by his pen, helped by his many patrons.

He was born at the rectory of Aldwinkle St Peter’s, Northamptonshire, the eldest son of Thomas Fuller, the rector there. His uncle and godfather was Dr John Davenant, bishop of Salisbury. According to John Aubrey, Fuller was “a boy of pregnant wit,” and his education bore that out. At thirteen he entered Queens’ College, Cambridge, then presided over by Davenant. He took his B.A. in Lent 1624–1625 and his M.A. in July 1628, when he was only twenty. After being passed over for a fellowship at Queens’, he moved to Sidney Sussex College. In 1630 he received the curacy of St Bene’t’s, Cambridge.

Fuller’s gift for speaking soon drew notice. In 1631 his uncle gave him a prebend in Salisbury, where his father already held a canonry. In 1634 he became rector of Broadwindsor in Dorset, and in 1635 he received the degree of Bachelor of Divinity from Sidney Sussex College. In 1640 he was elected proctor for Bristol in the Convocation of Canterbury, which met with the Short Parliament. When that Parliament was suddenly dissolved, Fuller supported those who wanted the convocation dissolved as well. The assembly continued by royal writ, and Fuller later wrote a valuable account of its proceedings in his Church History, though he was fined £200 for remaining.

The Civil War years tested Fuller’s moderation and his safety. At Broadwindsor in 1641, he and others certified that their parish had taken the Protestation ordered by the speaker of the Long Parliament. He later relinquished his Broadwindsor living and Salisbury prebend. In London he preached successfully at the Inns of Court and then at the chapel of St Mary Savoy, where his audiences spilled into the chapel-yard. One sermon examined the obstacles to peace and urged petitions to both king and parliament. In 1643 he was part of a deputation carrying a petition to the king; the party was stopped, searched, and briefly imprisoned, though the petition reached the king and was published with the royal reply.

Fuller joined the king at Oxford in August 1643. He preached before Charles I and Prince Charles at St Mary’s, Oxford, in 1644, but his calm and moderate tone displeased high royalists. To answer criticism, he became chaplain to Sir Ralph Hopton’s regiment. War left him little chance to write, as he later said he had “little list or leisure,” fearing to become part of history himself. After Hopton’s defeat at Cheriton Down, Fuller retreated to Basing House and took an active part in its defence. In 1645, at Exeter, he compiled Good Thoughts in Bad Times, a small book of prayers and meditations printed in the besieged city.

His writing grew directly from pressure, danger, loss, and public division. After Exeter surrendered, Fuller made his composition with the government in London, his “delinquency” being that he had been present in the king’s garrisons. He published Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician in 1646, Good Thoughts in Worse Times in 1647, and, grieving the loss of his library and manuscripts as well as the sufferings of the country, wrote The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience. His saying, “A danger foreseen is half avoided,” fits a life spent reading events closely, trying to speak wisely before harm became ruin.