May-poles, morrices, dancing, &c. He had a select congregation out of his parish, of those that were to be saved, who frequently met to pray in the vicarage-house; which, if he had stayed a year longer or more, would have destroyed all that were to be saved, by falling upon them: for he was a great dilapidator; suffered some of the offices, stable, and wood-house to fall; made hay-lofts of the chambers, and suffered one side of the hall, the assembling-room, to drop down: insomuch that Dr. Edward Fulham, who succeeded him at the King's restoration, was forced to build it up in the first month he had it; and Mr. Francis Carswell, in short time succeeding Dr. Fulham, spent about £150 to make the house habitable. He [Woodward] received his maintenance out of the then Augmentation-Court, neglecting his tithes; and put whims into the people's heads that they were Romish and antichristian, and only pleased himself in taking presents of the people's free-will offering, as most becoming the Gospel! By these courses he had almost ruined a good vicarage: for there are but few there now but what are so principled, that they think it a piece of service to the established religion to cheat or rob the Church; and an age is scarce able to repair that mischief which he hath done there, as other saints elsewhere. I have been informed from that place by a very good hand, that he was a man very censorious, and ready to damn all those that did not comply with him in his fancies: also that he always denied to pay, and cheated the wife of Mr. Farindon, his predecessor in the vicarage, of her fifths, or fifth part of the revenues of the said vicarage, which by law he was to pay and she to receive; and he thought it a sin to pay her, being a wife of one of the antichristian crew of the Church of England, though she lived near him, and he knew full well that she had five or six small children ready to starve, and her husband a learned man. He would not administer the sacrament in the church to his parishioners, nor baptize their children, unless they were of his private church; and would not so much as keep company with, or come near, those that were not of his mind. He hath left an ill name behind him, and none there have any esteem for his memory, only Anabaptists, Quakers, or such as tend that way. In this course he continued till His Majesty's restoration A.D. 1660; and then, leaving the place to prevent ejection, he retired to Uxbridge, where he carried on the trade among the brethren, either more or less, to the time of his death."

Dr. Edward Calamy, junior, was by far the ablest of the Nonconformist historians; and exhibited, beyond any man of that age, two qualifications which are of essential service to a party-writer: these were ingenuity and ingenuousness. For the completion of his Account of the ejected and silenced Ministers, being a Continuation of his Abridgment of Baxter's Life and Times, he collected from every available source the best materials, in addition to those which had been accumulating in his own family upwards of seventy years; his grandfather, after whom he was named, having been the chief author of the attack on Episcopacy by Smectymnuus, to which Bishop Hall wrote a reply. Of those whose fame and piety the younger Calamy undertook to defend in that work, the greater portion were excellent men, and deserving of all the commendations which he has bestowed. The main reason why they are in bad repute with their opponents is, because they strenuously and successfully contended for their own right, which they were among the first to assume and to exercise, of choosing that profession of Christianity which best accorded with their peculiar views and inclinations, whether the form was that of Presbyterianism,

Independency, Episcopacy, or any other. It is true that those who first asserted this privilege in England, claimed it solely for themselves; and when they had not power to maintain it in their own behalf by persecution, they slowly but reluctantly abandoned this exclusiveness; till by degrees it has become one of our national immunities, and is carefully cherished as the unalienable birth-right of every Briton. In chronicling worthy men of this description, Calamy appears to have been in his congenial element. But it was only when he had to deal with the dubious characters of his party, that his two useful qualifications were conspicuous. Whenever he finds an extenuating circumstance respecting one of these culprits, he calls into play his accustomed ingenuity, by working it most skilfully to produce the best effect. But when his utmost research fails to obtain the requisite pabulum for his ingenuity, he contrives to render his ingenuousness quite as effective, by generously leaving the man to his fate, or by assisting to throw him overboard; yet always with a shrewd proviso-that the man, how bad soever he might have been, was not quite so bad as had been represented. I subjoin his account of Woodward, as a fair specimen of his ingenuousness, and leave it to make what impression it may upon the reader :

"BRAY: Mr. Thomas Woodward. Dr. Walker's Attempt' (pt. ii., 240) says, that he succeeded in this living (which was worth £120 a year) Mr. Anthony Farindon: and adds, that he was a violent Independent, and Chaplain to Oliver. And yet it does not follow but he might be very hardly used upon the taking place of the Act of Uniformity. He has a very ill character also given of him by Wood the Oxonian, who gives him the name of Hezekiah Woodward and if half what he says of him be true, I should not have a word to say in his favour. He preached in private, after the Restoration, at Uxbridge, where he died, March 29, 1675.” *

Had any of the facts relating to Farindon been untrue, or exaggerated by Dr. Walker or Anthony Wood, they would not have been left without exposure and refutation by Calamy in his brief but significant dismissal of Woodward. From Wood's uncontradicted account already quoted, it is tolerably clear, that Farindon was ejected from the vicarage of Bray towards the close of 1643, or in the beginning of the following year; that his successor was Brice; that in 1649 the latter was succeeded by Woodward, who received that appointment through Cromwell's interest, and refused to pay Farindon's wife her lawful fifths.

War, even in its mildest form, is a dreadful evil; but that evil is terribly aggravated in a civil war, in which one brother or neighbour lifts his arm against another. Soon after the commencement of hostilities between the King and Parliament, several of the Puritan Clergy, being driven from their cures and plundered by the army of the Royalists, fled with their families to London; and, in great distress, represented their case to the Parliament. The House of Commons in December, 1642, appointed a Committee to consider the best means for "the relief of such godly and wellaffected Ministers as have been plundered ;" and to inquire" what malignant Clergymen have benefices in and about the town, whose benefices being sequestered may be supplied by others, who may receive their profits.' The persons invested with this authority were called "the Committee for plundered Ministers." In July, 1643, they were empowered to receive information against scandalous Ministers, and to deprive them of their

* Calamy's "Continuation of the Account of the ejected and silenced Ministers," &c., vol. i., p. 133.

livings, though no malignancy in regard to the Parliament were proved against them. Thus the warriors on both sides had a pretext afforded to them for adopting the law of retaliation towards those of the Clergy who were not of their party; and among the Royalists Farindon was one of the first victims of this species of recrimination. Either in virtue of the powers granted to this Committee, or without waiting for its authority, Ireton expelled Farindon from his living under the circumstances which have been already described, and seized on his books and papers. This must have been a most complete military clearance; for, of all those luminous discourses which are mentioned with the highest admiration, and are said to have entranced the most learned auditories in the University, not a fragment can be identified in the three folio volumes of his sermons. The first and second profess to contain his parochial discourses at St. Mary Magdalene's, Milk-street; but the title-page of the third volume promises such as were preached in that church and elsewhere. It is difficult, however, to discover those which were delivered elsewhere, except an Assize Sermon before the Judges at Northampton. Some persons indeed have imagined, that the sermons in that volume, from the 95th to the 110th, (both inclusive,) had been preached at Bray; but, after a careful perusal of them, it will be allowed that the allusions to the passing events and common principles of those times may all have been appropriately made in Milk-street.

VI. HALES BEFRIENDS FARINDON, WHO, THROUGH THE INFLUENCE OF ALDERMAN ROBINSON, IS APPOINTED MINISTER OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE IN MILK-STREET. HIS SERMONS ON THE LORD'S PRAYER ARE SEIZED. HE OUTLIVES THE ENGAGEMENT; BY WHICH HALES 18 EXPELLED FROM HIS FELLOWSHIP OF ETON.

WHEN Farindon was ejected from his vicarage and Divinity-Readership, his friend Hales was in a better condition to relieve his necessities than he would have been at any time during the two preceding years. On the first appeal to arms, Berkshire had become the scene of fierce contest between the Royalists and Parliamentarians; and in every fresh skirmish, whichever of the parties obtained the victory, they seized on all available property, ostensibly to prevent its falling into the power of their enemies, and furnishing them with the sinews of war; but, in reality, to provide themselves with the means of paying their own troops. Though previously deprived of his canonry of Windsor, Hales retained his Fellowship of Eton, and at that time held the office of Treasurer of the College; in which capacity he was justly afraid of each of the needy belligerents, and was compelled from a deep sense of duty to secrete himself. The circumstances attending his retreat are thus quaintly related by honest Izaak Walton :-" He was Bursar about that time wherein the contest began betwixt the King and Parliament. Both parties had sequestered the College-rents; so that he could not get money to pay wages to the servants, or for victuals for the scholars. But after nine weeks' hiding himself, to preserve the College writings and keys, he was forced to appear. At the end of which time, the old woman that concealed him demanded but six-pence a week for his brown bread and beer, which was all his meat; and he would give her twelve-pence. This concealment was so near the College or highway, that he said after, pleasantly, those that searched for him might have smelt him, if he had eaten garlick." One who was thus disinterested in trying to

* Fulman's Manuscripts.

preserve inviolate the property of that noble institution with the custody of which he was intrusted, must have insured the respect even of his enemies; and we accordingly find, greatly to the honour of the ultimately dominant party, that though he refused to take the covenant, he was not on that account molested in his Fellowship, but enjoyed it about eight years longer, gratifying the generosity of his disposition by applying his income to the relief of his ejected friend Farindon and his family, and others of his order who were in a similar state of destitution.

A consideration of collateral events would incline one to believe, what is affirmed by his contemporaries, that, on his retirement from the scene of his pastoral charge, Farindon derived his principal support from Hales, assisted by a few other friends who had the heart as well as the ability to be bountiful. His great worth and unmerited sufferings were ultimately made known to John Robinson, Esq., an eminent merchant in London, to whom Farindon dedicated the first volume of his "Sermons," and whose influence with "many other noble and religious gentlemen" procured him in the days of his deprivation substantial succour, for which he expresses his "deep obligations." * This gentleman was son of the Rev. William Robinson, D.D.; who, though the elder brother of Archbishop Laud on his mother's side, received no higher preferment in the Church than that of Archdeacon of Nottingham and Prebendary of Westminster. At the Restoration in 1660, “John Robinson, Esq., Alderman of the City of London," was created a Baronet by King Charles II., and appointed His Majesty's Lieutenant of the Tower of London. He was the founder of a highly respectable and flourishing House; and his descendants have intermarried with some of the best families in the kingdom. He was a successful merchant, and, during the Interregnum, contributed largely "of his abundance" towards the maintenance of the loyal episcopal Clergy. Through his influence and that of other wealthy citizens, Farindon was at length, probably in 1647, chosen to be Minister of the parish-church in which Robinson worshipped, St. Mary Magdalene, in Milk-street; and, through similar interest, his friend, the Rev. John Pearson, A.M., (afterwards D.D. and Bishop of Chester,) was elected Minister of St. Clement's, East-Cheap.

After the most strenuous efforts on the part of the Presbyterians to procure uniformity of discipline in the national Church by the adoption of their platform, they were only partially successful. But their failure was most apparent in the metropolis, where a liberty, unknown in the rest of the kingdom, of choosing Lecturers after their own hearts, had been claimed and allowed in the strictest days of Protestant episcopacy. In a new age of professed liberty, therefore, it was not to be imagined that the citizens of London would willingly resign any of their ancient privileges; and it proved to be a happy circumstance for the nation generally, that the ruling statesmen, Erastians in principle as most of them were, discountenanced the curtailment of this important privilege, but rather connived at its early assumption, and encouraged its extension to every part of the country. The arrangement was one very favourable both to the Independents and Episcopalians; and many pious and learned men were in this way protected in the peaceful exercise of their ministry, who would otherwise have been silenced and impoverished through Presbyterian intolerance.

In the faithful discharge of his ministerial functions in Milk-street,

* Dedication to his "Sermons," vol. i.

Farindon is supposed to have continued upwards of three years, from 1647 to 1651. We have no account of the manner in which he escaped the effects of the "Engagement" in 1649; by which every person in an official situation, civil and ecclesiastical, was required to swear fidelity to "the Commonwealth of England, as established without a King or House of Lords." To some persons in office, known to be loyalists, that oath was never tendered; while the refusal of others to take it was not always visited with the threatened punishment, through the discreet forbearance of those who were intrusted with its enforcement. During his residence at Bray, he had preached a course of sermons on the Lord's Prayer, the valuable fragments of which form the concluding portion of the fourth volume of the present edition. Having subsequently polished them, and adapted them to recent occurrences and opinions, he is supposed to have preached a part of them at least, in their improved state, to his congregation in London. The subsequent history of them is thus briefly related by Marriott his publisher, in his address "to the reader :" "The sermons on the Lord's Prayer our author did, many years since, finish; but had the great misfortune, in the time of the late troubles, to lose his notes, they being by a hand then in power forcibly taken from him." That hand is generally believed to have been the hand of Ireton, his former pupil, prior to his departure to Ireland in 1649, where he soon afterwards died. More important matters than the seizure and perusal of a poor Clergyman's notes soon occupied the cares of Ireton and his father-in-law; and the persecuted Tutor was not doomed to further personal annoyance from that quarter.

Farindon outlived the "Engagement," and retained his church a little longer; but his friend Hales was, in consequence of his refusal to take that oath, deprived of his Fellowship, and ejected from Eton-College, early in 1650. He then retired to widow Dickenson's house he had not been long there when "one of the Sedleian family of Kent did invite him to live in his family, with an allowance of a hundred pounds per annum, the keeping of two horses, and a servant's diet; but he, being wedded to a retired and studious life, refused to accept of that generous offer. Yet about that time he accepted of a quarter of that salary, with his diet, in the family of one Madam Salter, (sister, if I mistake not, to Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Sarum, who lived near Eton,) purposely that he should instruct her son, William Salter." * "Mr. Hales went to the Lady Salter's some time after Bishop King, and about a year after his ejection from the College." + “Dr. King, the suffering Bishop of Chichester, together with several of his relations, retiring to the house of this gentlewoman, they made a sort of college there, and had the prayers, sacraments, &c., according to the orders of the Church of England; in which Mr. Hales officiated as their Chaplain." "Afterwards, [in 1651,] a Declaration issuing out, prohibiting all persons from harbouring Malignants, that is, Royalists, he left that family, notwithstanding the lady desired him to the contrary, telling him that she would undergo all danger that might ensue by harbouring him; and, retiring to Eton, he took up his quarters and sojourned in a house next to the Christopher inn, belonging then to Hannah, the widow of John Dickenson, (a servant from his youth to our author Hales,) and afterwards the wife and widow of one Simon Powney which Hannah was very careful of and respectful to him,

* Wood's Athena Oxon., vol. ii., p. 124.

+ Dr. N. Ingelo, in the "General Dictionary," vol. viii., p. 236. Walker's "Attempt," part. ii., p. 94.