Note 53 — CONTROVERSY BETWEEN DRYDEN AND STILLINGFLEET, CONCERNING THE DUCHESS OF YORK’S PAPER.

Morley, bishop of Winchester, who, as presently will be noticed, was chaplain in the family of Sir Edward Hyde during the usurpation, tells us, “that the duchess, (then Miss Hyde,) as she was the eldest, so was she the forwardest, and most capable to receive instruction; for God having given her an extraordinary good understanding for one of her sex and years, so he had given her an extraordinary good inclination to the exercises of piety and devotion; so that, when she was not, as I remember, above twelve years of age, I did think her every way fit to be admitted to the receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which she did then, and always afterwards, with very great devotion, so long as she and I staid together in her father’s house at Antwerp.”—Preface to Bishop Morley’s Treatise, p. vi.