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262
Hereditary Genius
15. Well connected.—Oecolampadius, Zuinglius, Capito, Farel,
Jones, Bugenhagius, Bullinger, Sandys, Featley, Dod, Fulke, Pool,
Baxter, Griffith Jones, Davies.
23. Professional,—Melancthon and Toplady, officers in army;
Gataker, Usher, and Saurin, legal; seventeen were ministers (see list
already given); Davenant, merchant.
6. In Trade—Two Abbots, weaver; Twisse, clothier; Bunyan,
tinker; Watts, boarding-school; Doddridge, oilman.
4. Poor.—Huss, Ball, Grynaeus, Fagius, Latimer.
6. Very poor.—Luther, Pellican, Musculus, Cox, Andreas,
Prideaux.
There is, therefore, nothing anomalous in the parentage of the
Divines; if is what we should expect to have found among secular
scholars, born within the same periods of our history.
The Divines are not founders of influential families. Poverty was
not always the reason of this, because we read of many whose
means were considerable. W. Gouge left a fair fortune to his son T.
Gouge, wherewith he supported Welsh and other charities. Evans had
considerable wealth, which he wholly lost by speculations in the South
Sea Bubble; and others are mentioned who were highly connected,
and therefore more or less well off. The only families that produced
men of importance are those of Saurin, whose descendant was the
famous Attorney-General of Ireland; of Archbishop Sandys, whose
descendant after several generations became the 1st Lord Sandys;
and of Hooker, who is ancestor of the eminent botanists, the late and
present Directors of the Kew Botanical Gardens. The Divines, as a
whole, have had hardly any appreciable influence in founding the
governing families of England, or in producing our judges, statesmen,
commanders, men of literature and science, poets or artists.
The Divines are but moderately prolific. Judging from
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