what the majority of the clergy felt. The storm burst at once, and the storm raged for months. 'I have had,' wrote Eachard in one of his many rejoinders, 'as many several names as the Grand Seignior has titles of honour; for setting aside the vulgar and familiar ones of Rogue, Rascal, Dog, and Thief (which may be taken by way of endearment as well as out of prejudice and offence), as also those of more certain signification, as Malicious Rogue, Ill-Natured Rascal, Lay Dog, and Spiteful Thief.' He had also, he said, been called Rebel, Traitor, Scot, Sadducee, and Socinian. Among the most elaborate replies to his work were: _An Answer to a Letter of Enquiry into the Ground, _etc.. 1671; _A Vindication of the Clergy from the Contempt imposed upon them, By the author of the Grounds_ etc., 1672; _Hieragonisticon, or Corah's Doom, being an Answer to_, etc., 1672; _An Answer to two Letters of T.B._, etc., 1673. The occasional references to it in the theological literature of these times are indeed innumerable. Many affected to treat him as a mere buffoon--the concoctor, as one bitterly put it, of 'a pretty fardle of tales bundled together, and they have had the hap to fall into such hands as had rather lose a friend, not to say their country, than a jest.' Anthony Wood, writing at the time of its appearance, classes it with 'the fooleries, playes, poems, and drolling books,' with which, as he bitterly complains, people were 'taken with' coupling with it Marvell's _Rehearsal Transposed_ and Butler's _Hudibras_.[4] To some of his opponents Eachard replied. Of his method of conducting controversy, in which it is clear that he perfectly revelled, I give a short specimen. It is from his letter to the author of _Hieragonisticon_:-- 'You may possibly think, sir, that I have read your book, but if you do you are most mistaken. For as long as I can get Tolambu's _History of Mustard_, Frederigo _Devastation of Pepper, The Dragon_, with cuts, Mandringo's _Pismires rebuffeted_ and _retro-confounded, Is qui me dubitat, or a flap against the Maggot of Heresie, Efflorescentina Flosculorum_, or a choice collection of F. (_sic_) Withers _Poems_ or the like, I do not intend to meddle with it. Alas, sir, I am as unlikely to read your book that I can't get down the title no more than a duck can swallow a yoked heifer'--and then follows an imitation of gulps straining at the divided syllables of Hieragonisticon. There is no reason to suspect the sincerity of Eachard, or to doubt that he was, in his own words, an honest and hearty wisher that 'the best of the clergy might for ever continue, as they are, rich and learned, and that the rest might be very useful and well esteemed in their profession.' To describe the work as 'a series of jocose caricatures--as Churchill Babington in his animadversions on Macaulay's _History_ does--is absurd. Eachard was evidently a man of strong common sense, of much shrewdness, a close observer, and one who had acquainted himself exactly and extensively with the subject which he treats. But he was a humorist, and, like Swift, sometimes gave the reins to his humour. It must be remembered that his remarks apply only to the inferior clergy, and there can be no doubt that since the Reformation they had, as a body,