Posterity
By his will, according to the epitaph on his monument in St. Andrew's parish church, Wildman directed:
"that if his executors should think fit there should be some stone of small price set near to his ashes, to signify, without foolish flattery, to his posterity, that in that age there lived a man who spent the best part of his days in prisons, without crimes, being conscious of no offence towards man, for that he so loved his God that he could serve no man's will, and wished the liberty and happiness of his country and all mankind".
Baron Macaulay was less favourable. After describing a fanatical hatred to monarchy as the mainspring of Wildman's career, he adds:
"With Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care for his own safety. He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. … Such was his cunning, that though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two generations of his accomplices die on the gallows".
There is an engraved portrait of Wildman by William Faithorne, with the motto "Nil Admirari".
Read more about this topic: John Wildman
Famous quotes containing the word posterity:
“To avoid the consequences of posterity the mulattos give the blacks a first class letting alone. There is a frantic stampede white-ward to escape from Jamaica’s black mass.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)