Fuller, Thomas

Fuller, Thomas divine, historian, genius, and wit, was a son of the Reverend T. Fuller, minister of Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, at which place he was born in June, 1608. He was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, and removed to Sidney College, of which he became fellow in 1631. In 1632 he was appointed minister of St. Bennet's parish, Cambridge, and acquired great popularity as a pulpit orator. He obtained, in the same year, the prebend of Salisbury, and afterwards the rectory of Broad Windsor, of both of which he was deprived during the Civil War, in consequence of his activity on the side of the monarch. Between 1640 and 1656 he published nearly the whole of his works. In 1648 he obtained the living of Waltham, in Essex, which in 1658 he quitted for that of Cranford, in Middlesex. At the Restoration he recovered the prebend of Salisbury, was made D.D. and king's chaplain, and was looking forward to a mitre, when his prospects were closed by death, August 15, 1661. Fuller possessed a remarkably tenacious memory. He had also a large share of wit and quaint humor, which he sometimes allowed to run riot in his writings. Among his chief works are, A History of the Holy War (Camb. 1640, 2d edit. fol.): — The Church History of Britain (new edit, edited by Nichols, Lond. 1837, 3 volumes, 8vo): — The History of the University of Cambridge (new edit. Lond. 1840, 8vo): — The History of the Worthies of England (new ed. by Nuttall, Lond. 1840, 3 volumes, 8vo): — Pisgah Sight of Palestine, a History of the Old and New Test. (Lond. 1662, fol.). Coleridge says that "Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer, and yet, in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is scarcely too much to say that you will hardly find a page in which some one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for itself as a motto or as a maxim." See Russell, Memorials of the Life and Works of Fuller (Lond. 1844, sm. 8vo); Rogers, Fuller's Life and Writings (Edinb. Rev. 74:328).