[173] The title of Saint is carefully dropped.

[174] Some portions of the minutes of meetings held at Sion College are preserved in Dr. Williams's Library. From them we extract the following:—

"Die Lunæ, Dec. 30, 1650.

"Present, Mr. Bedford. The first proposition.—'The ministers that undertook this not yet met.'

"The second proposition.—'None met of this company.'

"Present, Mr. Drake, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Watson. The third proposition.—'Something prepared, but the company have not yet met.'

"Present, Mr. Sheffield, Taylor, Blackwell, Wickens, Blackmer. The fourth proposition papers delivered upon this question.

"Present, Dr. Seaman, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Tawler, Mr. Poole. Fifth proposition.—'One paper delivered about this question.'

"Two papers brought in concerning the fourth proposition at this meeting.

"The paper delivered in about the fourth proposition was read."

These notes seem to refer to heads of debate, prepared at a committee, December the 4th, 1650.

"1. That there is an office of the ministry instituted by Christ.

"2. That this office is perpetual.

"3. That Christ hath appointed in His word the way of separating men to the office of the ministry.

"4. That election and ordination is that way of Christ.

"5. That this ordination——"

Here the MS. abruptly breaks off.

References to these propositions in subsequent minutes are of frequent occurrence.

[175] The county of Essex was formally divided into classes; and the particular arrangement of them, with the names of the ministers as approved by the Committee of Lords and Commons, still exists, but beyond that, I am ignorant of what was done.

The document entitled, The Division of the County of Essex into Several Classes, &c., 1648, is printed at length, with numerous curious annotations in David's Annals of Evangelical Nonconformity in the County of Essex.

[176] See Johnson's English Canons, Oxford Edit., ii. 325.

[177] Coleridge's remark is worth remembering in connection with the Presbyterian endeavours after discipline: "With regard to the discipline attempted by the Antiprelatic Episcopalian (?) clergy, let it not be forgotten that the Church of England has solemnly expressed and recorded her regret that the evil of the times had prevented its establishment, and bequeaths the undertaking as a sacred trust to a more gracious age.—Notes on Southey's Life of Wesley, i. 199. But is discipline a possible thing in a State-established Church.

Keble, in his Life of Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, speaks of the "nation's general hatred of ecclesiastical discipline;" and after giving an account of the ecclesiastical courts in the Isle of Man, says: It was a reality there "for years after it had come to be a shadow in the whole Anglican Church elsewhere," p. 140. He justly remarks that the Manx code implies faith on the part of the people. Some of the laws are curious enough, (see i. 204), and present a chapter in ecclesiastical history worth studying. The sanction and enforcement of such a scheme by the civil power is utterly opposed to the principle of toleration.

[178] See accounts of this church in Strype's Stow, i. 583. Stow mentions as hung up in the cloisters a gigantic shank-bone of a man.

[179] Account of the Ejected, p. 5.

[180] A copy of this is entered in the MS. volume of minutes of the London Synod, Sion College Library.

[181] Strype's Stow, i. 381.

[182] Howe's Works, vi. 298.

[183] Clarke's Lives, preface, p. 8.

[184] See Howe's Funeral Sermon (Works, vi. 349), in which he speaks of Vink as endowed with singular parts.

[185] All this and much more is said to his honour by Calamy in his funeral sermon.

[186] "In Worcestershire," says Baxter, "they attempted and agreed upon an association, in which Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, and the disengaged, consented to terms of love and concord in the practising so much of discipline in the parishes, as all the parties were agreed in (which was drawn up) and forbearing each other in the rest. Westmoreland, and Cumberland, and Essex, and Hampshire, and Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, quickly imitated them, and made the like association, and it was going on, and likely to have been commonly practised, till the return of the bishops after brake it." This is taken from a paper among the Baxter MSS. (Red Cross-street), vol. ii., No. 28.

When Baxter became acquainted with Ussher, he treated with him about terms of union "between Episcopalians and Presbyterians and other Nonconformists."

[187] "This magnificent structure, sharing the common calamity of civil war, the west part thereof was converted into a stable, and the stately new portico into shops for milliners and others, with rooms over them for the convenience of lodging: at the erecting of which the magnificent columns were piteously mangled, being obliged to make way for the ends of beams which penetrated their centres."—Maitland's London, vol. ii. 1165.

[188] Vain Religion of the Formal Hypocrite.—Baxter's Works, xvii. 80.

The authorities for our account of Baxter are his Life and Times, and the MSS. in Dr. Williams' Library.

[189] Swinnock's Life of Wilson.

[190] Gataker's remarkable book, On the Nature and Use of Different Kinds of Lots, 1619 (in which he maintains that lots are regulated by natural laws) abounds in out of the way learning.

[191] A Discourse Apologetical, wherein Lilies' Lies in his Merlin, or Pasquil for 1654, are laid open.

[192] Gataker's Discours Apologetical, 33-49.—In this amusing history he tells the following story:

"A gentleman being missed at chapel by some of those that used there to meet him, and coming late into the hall at dinner, and being thereupon demanded by one of them where he had been straying abroad, 'I have been,' quoth he, 'at Paul's Cross.' 'Thou wentest thither sure to hear some news,' said the other. 'No, truly,' replied he, 'I went upon another occasion, but I learned that indeed there, which I never heard of before; how the ass came by his long ears. For the preacher there told us a story out of a Jewish rabbin, that Adam, after he had named the creatures, called them one day again before him to try whether they remembered the names that he had given them; and having by name cited the lion, the lion drew near to him, and the horse likewise; but then calling to the ass in like manner, the ass having forgotten his name, like an ass, stood still; whereupon Adam, having beckoned to him with his hand, so soon as he came within his reach, caught him with both hands by the ears, and plucked him by them so shrewdly, that for his short wit he gave him a long pair of ears. Upon this story being told them, one of them told him he was well enough served for his gadding abroad; he might have heard better and more useful matter had he kept himself at home."

[193] This seems an imitation of the mediæval joke, "Although Canterbury had the highest rack, yet Winchester had the better manger."—Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury, iv. 198.

[194] Life and Times, p. ii. 363.

[195] This sermon contains a touching account of the character and death of the young nobleman.

Gauden, in 1659, published The Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England, setting forth her former Constitution, compared with her present Condition; also the Visible Causes and Probable Cures of her Distempers.

[196] Memorials of Fuller, by Russell, 220, 163.

At the same time Fuller animadverts on the Presbyterians and the Sectaries, 222.

[197] The authority for this story is Calamy, in his Life of Howe.

Fuller had a marvellous memory; and Pepys tells a story of his dictating, in Latin, to four persons together, faster than they could write.—Diary, 22nd January, 1660-1.

[198] Lyson's Environs, iv. 530.

[199] Whitaker's Hist., p. 7.

[200] This notice of the appointment of a pastor is founded upon an entry in the Church Book at Bury St. Edmunds, which, on account of the rare occurrence of such a record, we shall give at length in the Appendix. It should be remembered that this was not an ordination to preach, but simply an ordination to the exercise of pastoral authority in a particular Church. Ordinations and recognition services amongst Independents are not conducted in the present day after the manner just described.

[201] There are letters and resolutions on this subject in the Norwich and Yarmouth Church Books, but they are too long to be inserted here.

[202] These illustrations are chiefly taken from the Yarmouth Church Book.

[203] In some cases loans were sought to meet expenses connected with religious worship. In the Corporation Books at Norwich, it is ordered "that the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen should every of them lend forty shillings a man, and every of the common council twenty shillings a man, for the building of the seats in the Dutch chapel for the corporation and their wives." It is naïvely added—"If any man will give half, rather than lend the whole, let it be accepted."

[204] The use in some cases of parochial edifices for church-meetings could hardly be considered an exception to this rule. In the Canterbury Church Book this passage occurs:—"The 5th day of the fifth month, this day the Church did unanimously agree to break bread in the Sermon-house, and ordered that henceforth it should be there."—Timpson's Church Hist. of Kent, 307.

The Sermon-house was in the crypt where Henry II. did penance after the assassination of Thomas à Becket. It was granted to the French and Flemish refugees by Elizabeth, in 1561. It is still used for French worship. The long table is that at which the worshippers sit to receive the Sacrament.

[205] He had been minister of St. Laurence, Poultry, London, whence he removed to Aston. He held religious meetings at Nottingham after the Restoration, and was imprisoned for it. Mr. McAll, formerly pastor of Castle Gate, Nottingham, in a sermon he preached on the Bicentenary Celebration of the Church there, in 1862, distinguishes between this Thomas Palmer and the Thomas Palmer at Nottingham, who is described as a military chaplain by Lucy Hutchinson.—Bicentenary of Castle Gate Meeting, p. 73.

[206] His Lordship on another occasion, when on the Western Circuit, remarked in a charge which he delivered to the jury:—"That in case any ministers did not do the duties of their office, as particularly to baptize their children, and to administer the Sacrament to all but such as were ignorant and scandalous, they might refuse to pay them their dues, and they should present such ministers, which was agreeable to the law, and if they were by them presented, they should be dealt withal."

The same Judge also observed that the payment of tithes was in return for the performance of religious service by the minister, and if he did not perform his duty he could not claim his rights. The ministry, he said, in many places now dealt worse with the people than did the Popish priests. They gave the laity one element, but these would not allow them bread or water.

These documents are in the State Paper Office, Dom. Interreg., petitions, &c., vol. xiv., p. 313. Connected with them is a petition to Oliver Cromwell from several ministers, complaining that they had been presented at the assizes for not administering the Lord's Supper, and praying for protection.

[207] The notice which some Congregational societies took of public affairs under the Commonwealth, particularly on days of special humiliation, appears from entries in their records. When, for example, in the year 1652, Admiral Blake met with a defeat in the Downs, and Van Tromp, with a broom at his topmast, vauntingly threatened to sweep the seas of the British flag, the Independents at Yarmouth (who probably had relatives on board Blake's ships, and who had often, on the sands, watched the flotilla which just then was freighted with the hopes of England, as it sailed through Yarmouth Roads)—agreed on the 7th of December, that on the following Thursday, "at ten of the clock, the Church should meet to seek God for the navy at sea." Again, on the 5th of December, 1656, "being appointed by the Governors of this land for a day of fasting and humiliation—to be humbled for the rebuke the Lord gave this nation at Domingo, and that the Lord would discover the cause of that stroke, that every one might find out the plague of his own heart, and that the increase and kingdom of Christ might be promoted, and that our Governors might be faithful in all that is committed to them—the Church hereupon agreed to take the opportunity to seek the Lord upon the forementioned grounds." Threatenings of the plague, breaches and divisions in Churches, brought these earnest Independents together for special intercession.

[208] Poor Churches craved help from sister communities in better circumstances, and did so with signal success. Whilst the spirit of brotherly affection was seen in the bestowment of liberal contributions to the necessitous, it was shewn also in the considerate manner of dismissing members from one neighbourhood to another. We find the following quaint record in the Yarmouth Church Book.

Upon "Brother Staffe" desiring his dismission through "Brother Gideney," "the brethren desired rather that he would come down, for they had something to communicate unto him, and that our parting might not be with bare paper."

[209] Commentary on Ezekiel, p. xii.

[210] Works of Howe, vi. 340.

Thomas Brooks was a Divine, endowed richly with that quaint and curious kind of learning which sparkles so brilliantly in the writings of Jeremy Taylor; and though inferior to his great Church contemporary in point of diction he surpassed him far in the sympathetic and loving exhibition of those sentiments which are most distinctive of the Gospel. After being minister of the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, he became Rector of St. Margaret's, Fish Street Hill; where, according to Calamy, he gathered a Congregational Church, against which proceeding some of his parishioners presented a petition. But it appears that this is a mistake, and that he did not form an Independent Society until after the Restoration.—Brooks's Complete Works, vol. i.—Memoir by Grosart.

[211] Roger's Life of Howe, 18. This interesting book is our authority for what follows.

[212] Lord Broghill, in a letter to the Protector, Edinburgh, Feb. the 26th, 1655, speaks of "putting no small confidence in Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Levingstone."—Thurloe, iv. 558.

[213] Caldewood, Spalding, Whitelocke, and Sewel.—Orme's Life of Owen, 404-406.

[214] Preface to Death of Christ. Dublin Castle, December 20th, 1649.

"How is it that Jesus Christ is in Ireland only as a lion staining all His garments with the blood of His enemies, and none to hold Him forth as a Lamb sprinkled with His own blood for His friends?"—Owen's Sermon before Parliament, February 28th, 1650.

[215] Quoted in Urwick's Independency in Dublin in the Olden Time, 12.

[216] Dr. Winter speaks of Murcot in strong terms as "an earthly angel," and "a heavenly mortal," and his funeral shewed the estimation in which he was held. "Great was the confluence of people who attended the corpse to the grave. The Lord Deputy Fleetwood followed the body; after him the Council, then the Lord Mayor, &c. Dr. Winter preached his funeral sermon on Hebrews xiii. 7. Upon the face of the whole congregation sat a black cloud of sorrow and disconsolation. The body being brought unto the place of burial, the saddened spectators and standers-by sighed him into his grave, and mingling his dust with their tears, departed and left him in his bed of rest." Quoted from Moses in the Mount.—Urwick's Independency in Dublin, 15.

[217] Orme's Life of Owen, 403.

[218] "I wish I could as truly tell you that the Independents are not dissatisfied. It may be some of them thought they should ride, when they had thrown the Anabaptist out of the saddle."—Thurloe, vii. 161, see also 199.

[219] The following items are extracted from a minute book of Commissioners preserved in Sion College:—

"March 12th, 1650-1. £200 to Mr. Lewis Stewkley, this day approved by this Committee for his preaching in Exeter Cathedral.

"Hereford Cathedral. £50 granted to three ministers out of the revenues of the Dean and Chapter for their preaching in the cathedral. Mr. Ralph London, approved by this committee upon a good testimony, ordered that the sum be paid him, Mr. Smith, the same.

"£200 was voted to the Divinity Lecturer in Canterbury Cathedral."

July, 1656. There was a dispute about the use of Wells Cathedral. It had been ordered that the cathedral should be used for public worship by the inhabitants of the parish of St. Cuthbert, but this was impeded by Dr. Cornelius Burgess, who had got himself into the actual possession of the church, locking and barring the doors, so that no entrance could be obtained; in consequence of which many gentlemen had refused to pay subscriptions promised for the repair of the cathedral.—State Papers Dom. Interreg. Council Book.

[220] Arrangements made with regard to Westminster Abbey at an earlier period appear in the first volume. There are entries in the minute book of the Parliamentary Committee preserved in Sion College Library, relating to the appointment of Obadiah Sedgwick, December, 1649, in the room of Mr. Marshall; to the payment of arrears of salary to Nye as Sunday morning Lecturer, Term Lecturer, and Weekly morning Lecturer, and to Mr. Strong as minister of the abbey. It is to be remembered that Owen, Goodwin, and Baxter preached on certain occasions in the same edifice.

[221] Foxe.

[222] Strype's Annals, iii., part ii. 106.

[223] Ivimey's History of the Baptists, i. 109.

[224] Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, ii. 24, 51.

[225] I have introduced this letter, and other particulars, from the "Yarmouth Corporation Records," because, so far as I am aware, they have never before been published.

[226] Mr. Gould, in the introduction to his Report of St. Mary's Chapel Case, supplies an interesting instance in his account of the Church at Norwich. See p. xv.

[227] Helwisse, (or Helwys), the author of this document, was at the time living in Holland. Soon afterwards, Crosby tells us he and his Church left Amsterdam, and removed to London.—History of English Baptists, i. 272. They are believed to have constituted the first Arminian or general Baptist Church in England.—Evan's Early English Baptists, i. 225. These persons do not appear to have regarded immersion as the proper and only mode of administering the ordinance. Robinson's Works, iii. 461. Two sorts of Baptists are alluded to in the Mercurius Rusticus, the Aspersi and the Immersi.—Evans, ii. 53.

[228] Crosby, vol. i., appendix 7, gives 1646 as the date, but at p. 66 he says it was published in 1644. A second edition appeared in 1646, from which, probably, Crosby took his copy.

[229] The Scottish Dove (November, 1646), relates the commitment of an Anabaptist at Coventry, for preaching up and down the country, and dipping scores of men and women.

[230] "Whereas, at the entreaty of Mr. Calamy and other ministers, as it was represented unto me by certain citizens, I did lately give an allowance to them to meet and dispute with certain Anabaptists; and whence, I understand you, in pursuance of that allowance, there is a public dispute intended on Wednesday next, December 3rd, in the church of Aldermanbury, and there is likely to be an extraordinary concourse of people from all parts of the city, and from other places; and that in these times of distraction there may be hazard of the disturbance of the public peace, I have therefore thought fit, upon serious consideration, for prevention of the inconveniences that may happen thereby, to forbid the same meeting upon Wednesday next, or at any other time, in a public way before I shall receive the pleasure of the honourable House of Parliament touching the same, which, with all conveniency, I shall endeavour to know.

"Thomas Adams,

"Dec. 1st, 1645.  Lord Mayor."

Placard in the British Museum.

[231] Bayle's Article on Anabaptists is worth reading.

Bossuet remarks that Socinians and Anabaptists were the only persons who disputed the right of the magistrate to punish men for religious error.—Variations Protestantes, liv. x., c. 56.

Socinus and Zuinglius, besides the Anabaptists, were the principal, if not the only apostles of religious liberty, at the time of the Reformation.

[232] So he is described by Crosby and Palmer. We may presume Allhallows Staining, Fenchurch Street, is meant.

[233] Crosby's History of the English Baptists, i. 288, 289.

[234] Crosby, i. 312-314.

[235] The following is a list of Baptist ministers who were in possession of livings at the Restoration of Charles II:—

Henry Jessey, A.M.

Thomas Ewins. Bristol.

Edward Bagshawe, A.M. Ambrosden, Oxfordshire. Died in prison, December 28th, 1671.

John Tombes, B.D. Leominster, Herefordshire.

George Fownes, A.M. High Wycombe, Bucks. Afterwards pastor of the Church in Broadmead, Bristol. Died in Gloucester jail, November 25th, 1686.

Jeremiah Marsden. Ardesley Chapel, near Wakefield, Yorkshire.

Robert Browne. White-Lady Aston, Worcestershire.

Daniel Dyke, A.M. Hadham Magna, Herts. He was one of the "Triers." In 1668 he became co-pastor, with the celebrated William Kiffin, of the Church in Devonshire Square, London. He died in 1688.

Richard Adams. Humberstone, Leicestershire. He succeeded Mr. Dyke at Devonshire Square, and lived to a very great age, being disabled from preaching for several years before his death, which took place in 1716.

Thomas Quarrel. Some place in Shropshire. Died in 1709.

William Dell, A.M. Yeldon, Bedfordshire, and Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Paul Hobson. Chaplain of Eton College.

Thomas Jennings. Brimsfield, Gloucestershire.

Paul Frewen. Kempley, Gloucestershire.

Joshua Head. Some place in Gloucestershire.

John Smith. Wanlip, Leicestershire.

Thomas Ellis. Lopham, Norfolk.

Thomas Evans. Maesmynys, Brecknockshire.

Thomas Proud. Cheriton, Glamorganshire.

John Miles. Ilston, Glamorganshire.

Thomas Joseph. Llangyner, Glamorganshire.

Morgan Jones. Llanmodock, Glamorganshire.

—— Abbot, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.

William Woodward. Probably of Southwold, Suffolk.

Gabriel Camelford. Stavely Chapel, Westmoreland.

John Skinner. Weston, Herefordshire.

John Donne. Pertenhall, Bedfordshire. He was a fellow-prisoner with John Bunyan.

John Gibbs. Newport Pagnell, Bucks.

Walter Prossor, William Millman, Watkin Jones, Morgan Jones, Jenkin Jones, Ellis Rowland, and Roderick Thomas, were ministers in various parts of Wales.

The following ministers, whose names are inserted by Mr. Ivimey in his list of ejected Baptists (History of Baptists, i. 328), did not become Baptists till after their ejectment; viz., Francis Bamfield, A.M., John Gosnold, Thomas Hardcastle, Laurence Wise, and Thomas Paxford.—The Great Ejectment of 1662, by Dr. Cramp.

[236] Not exactly the same controversy as that about open and strict communion.

[237] These statements are made on the authority of a speech delivered before the Master of the Rolls, in the important case reported in a volume compiled by the Rev. George Gould, and entitled Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich. This book is full of curious information.

[238] For a vindication of Vavasour Powell's religious character—who, with all his extravagant opinions on prophecy, seems to have been a most disinterested and zealous man—see Rees' Nonconformity in Wales, and the authorities to which he refers, 114.

[239] Evan's Early English Baptists, ii. 183.

[240] Burnet's Own Times, i. 58.

[241] Perfect Diurnal. Oct. 25th, 1652.

[242] Whitelocke. A. D. 1652, p. 553.

See Evan's Early English Baptists, ii. 215.

[243] Hanbury's Memorials, iii. 475.

The voluntary principle had been clearly laid down during the civil wars, and in addition to proofs of this already adduced, we may add the following:—

Henry Burton, in his Vindication of the Independent Churches, written in 1644, observed:—"What serveth the magistrate and the laws of a civil State for but to keep the peace? And as for parishes, will you allow no churches but parishes? or are parishes originally any other but of humane, politic, and civil constitution, and for civil ends? Or can you say that so many as inhabit in every parish respectively shall be a Church? Should such Churches and parishes then necessarily be Churches of God's calling and gathering? Are they not congregations of man's collection, constitution, and coaction merely? What Churches, then? And as for tithes, what tithes, I pray you, had the Apostles? Such as be faithful and painful ministers of Christ, He will certainly provide for them; as when He sent forth His disciples without any purse or provision, He asked them, 'Lacked you anything?' They said, 'Nothing.' Surely the labourer is worthy of his hire." And as for ministers' maintenance by tithes, Robert Baillie stated in his account of the Independents in 1646:

"The ancient way of maintenance by tithes, or lands, or set stipends, they do refuse, and require here the reduction to the apostolic practice. They count it necessary that all the Church officers should live upon the charge of the congregation,—the ruling elders and deacons, as well as the pastors and doctors; but all they will have them to receive is a mere alms, a voluntary contribution, laid down as an offering at the deacon's feet every Lord's Day, and by him distributed to all the officers and the poor of the congregation as they have need."

A series of propositions is contained in a document presented to the Parliament in the year 1647 (Hanbury, iii. 247) and one of the propositions is to the effect that the officers of the Church ought to be maintained by the free contributions of the people. The same opinion is expressed in Hooker and Cotton's Survey of Church Discipline, a publication reprinted in London in the year 1648. Though, under the Protectorate, times had changed, and the political relations of the Independents and Baptists had changed too, it cannot be doubted that many throughout the Commonwealth maintained the principle expressed in the extracts just given.

[244] From a MS. Life of Owen in the possession of the late Dr. Raffles.

[245] The Oxford Vice-Chancellors, though they hold office for four years, are re-elected each year of the four, and at each re-election make an official speech.

[246] Oratio ii.—Owen's Works, xxi. 581.

[247] Oratio v.—Owens Works, xxi. 611.

[248] Cromwell's Speeches, Carlyle, ii. 559.

[249] See Baxter's Life and Times, i. 70.

[250] Oxoniana, iv. 206.

[251] With respect to regulations of this sort in 1650, before Owen's Vice-Chancellorship, it is said, Oxoniana iv. 210, "Gowns also had now lost their usual fashion, by others introduced by the Cantabrigians, especially that belonging to a bachelor of arts, the sleeves of which were wider than those of surplices, and so continued in fashion not only till the Restoration of Charles II., but the Vice-Chancellorship of Dr. John Fell."

[252] Athen. Oxon., ii. 738.

[253] See Grainger's Biographical History, iii. 302.

[254] Owen was the other.

[255] Howe became minister of Torrington about the year 1650. Goodwin was appointed President of Magdalen in the January of that year. We know that Howe was a Fellow after Goodwin's appointment, from the circumstance of his joining the religious society which the President established in the College. At first Howe objected to unite, because he thought too much stress was laid upon indifferent things. Afterwards he joined upon "Catholic terms."

[256] Preface to De Divinia Justitia, Works, ix., 339. It contains a defence of what he called "his darling university." Burnet, in the History of his own Time, (i. 192.) says, learning was then high at Oxford, chiefly the study of the Oriental tongues, much raised by the study of the Polyglott Bible. They read the Fathers; and mathematics, and the new philosophy, were in great esteem.

[257] Ath. Ox., ii. 562.

[258] "July 11, 1654, Oxford:—After dinner I visited that miracle of a youth, Mr. Christopher Wren."—Evelyn's Diary, i. 306.

[259] "Oxoniana," edited by the Rev. John Walker, vol. i. 98.

[260] For many particulars and sources of information on the subject of Oxford University, I am indebted to Mr. Orme's Memoir of Owen, chap. vii.; but Wood's Athen. Oxon. is the principal authority.