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:
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet.... All the pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on the forest floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)