Note 382 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 2)

Now Bishop of Llandaff, one of the poorest Bishopricks in this kingdom. His Lordship has written with much zeal to show the propriety of equalizing the revenues of Bishops. He has informed us that he has burnt all his chemical papers. The friends of our excellent constitution, now assailed on every side by innovators and levellers, would have less regretted the suppression of some of this Lordship's other writings. BOSWELL. Boswell refers to A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury by Richard, Lord Bishop of Landaff, 1782. If the revenues were made more equal, 'the poorer Bishops,' the Bishop writes, 'would be freed from the necessity of holding ecclesiastical preferments in commendam with their Bishopricks,' p. 8.