Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

MINISTERS EJECTED OR SILENCED

IN

HEREFORDSHIRE.

A

SHTON. Mr. J. BARSTON. Of Oxford university. Born in this county. He was an Israelite indeed; a good scholar; an able, solid divine; a judicious, methodical, practical preacher, and a good casuist. He was also a man of exemplary conversation; a great pattern of self-denial, humility, submission, resignation and patience under all his afflictions, of which he had a large share. He was esteemed by all that knew him for his learning and piety, especially by that ornament and support of religion Sir Edward Harley. Nothing could be objected against him by his enemies, but his Nonconformity. He had a small estate, which he spent, as he did himself, in the service of his Master. He had but very little from the poor people among whom he laboured; but he laid by a tenth part of all his income for charitable uses. He died pastor of a congregation in Ledbury, A. D. 1701.

ASTON. Mr. FARRINGTON. Too well known about London, for the scandal he brought upon religion by his immoralities.

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL. Mr. WILLIAM VOYLE, Mr. WILLIAM LOW, Mr. GEORGE PRIMROSE, and SAMUEL SMITH, sen. M. A. These four were all joint pastors, who administered the Lord's-supper by turns. They lived in great peace among themselves, and with great unanimity carried on the work of the gospel in that city. They ordained many ministers both for England and Wales, in the cathedral. Four mornings in every week they publicly expounded in same place, beginning between seven and eight o'clo

VOL. II-NO.XVII.

U

T

They also kept up a constant weekly lecture on Tuesdays, with the assistance of the most eminent ministers in the county, and stemm'd the tide against the sectaries of those times, till the Restoration, when they were all cast out.-Mr. SMITH, after his ejectment here, had a living in Berkshire, and was cast out by the Act of uniformity in 1662, and silenced at Stamford-Dingley, where Dr. Pordage had been before. He afterwards mostly resided in Gloucestershire. After the turn of the times, he met with great unkindness from several of the episcopal party, whom he before had screened, and to whom he had shewn great kindness.—He died in Herefordshire in 1681.

Mr. PRIMROSE had his education in Scotland. His mother was nurse to prince Henry. He studied also at Saumur, in France. He was an excellent scholar, and a judicious, successful preacher. He was of a grave, even, and composed temper. Once as he was discoursing with Bp. Crofts, after he had been released from imprisonment, the Bishop attempted to persuade him to conform; but when he heard his objections, his lordship told him, He wished the churchdoors had been wider. He retired for some time from Hereford, but preached constantly about the country; and when K. James gave liberty, he returned to Hereford again. But his growing weakness forced him back into the country, and

there he died.

LITTLE-HEREFORD [V.] Mr. GARNONS.

LANTWARDINE [100l.] RICHARD HAWES, M. A. Of Camb. University. His father, a religious man, dying when he was very young, his mother soon after married a man wholly carnal, intent upon nothing but the profits of this world, and utterly negligent about instilling the principles of religion into his family, who remained grossly ignorant of God and his will. However, he put this youth to school, when he was about nine years of age, at Ipswich; where he happened to hear the famous Mr. Ward, on a lecture-day, and was so affected, as to request leave from his master constantly to attend that lecture, which he was permitted to do; and by this means he received lively impressions of religion in that early age. Having a very strong memory, he was able to repeat good part of the sermon, which he commonly did to his father-in-law's mother, with whom he lodged at Ipswich ;. and this happily proved the means of her conversion.

Being determined upon the work of the ministry, he went to Cambridge, where he studied some years, but lost that deep

4

sense

sense of religion which he possessed in his childhood, which he did not recover for a great while after he left the university. When he finished his studies, a living of considerable value fell void, the advowson of which his father-in-law laid claim to, who would have put him into it, and contested it in a law-suit, with the then Lord-keeper (Coventry), who pretended it to be in the King's gift, and consequently at his disposal. But Mr. Hawes, chusing rather to rest satisfied in the Lord-keeper's promise of presenting him to the next living in the king's gift which should become void, so disobliged his father-in-law, that he cast him off. After this, he was for a while reduced to such straits, that his life became a burden to him; so that he would sometimes go, in the close of the evenings, to places where robberies and murders were wont to be committed, in hope of having an end put to his misery. But God extricated him out of his difficulties, by opening a door for his settlement at Humber in this county, to which the Lord keeper presented him; from whence he soon removed to Kenchurch in the same county.

For many years after he entered into the ministry, he continued much addicted to vain company, and was sometimes guilty of excessive drinking. But it pleased God to rouze him out of this security, by bringing him into some hazard of his life. For Hereford being garrisoned by the king's forces, he was, upon a false and malicious accusation, presented to the governor, fetched away a prisoner thither, and a council of war ordered to try him for his life; which was by an extraordinary providence secured, by the removal of the governor, a man of a violent temper, and the substitution of another; who being a person of more sobriety and candour, upon examination, discovered the prosecution to be wholly grounded on malice, and courteously dismissed him. From this time there was an observable alteration in his behaviour, and such an air of seriousness appeared in him, as procured the respect of all pious persons that knew him; and he became a plain, earnest, and useful preacher.

During the civil war, he had his house frequently plundered, and received many abuses from soldiers, particularly from one Burk an Irishman, who forced him to walk thro' the dirt by his horse's side, holding his pole-ax over his head, and locked him up in a gentleman's house in the parish, designing after he had done plundering there, to carry him away; but on going off, he forgot him, and left him behind. -About a year before the Restoration, he was presented, by

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

the truly religious Sir Edward Harley, to Lantwardine: which he was the rather induced to accept, on account of the small success of his labours for twenty years, at Kenchurch, a Paganish and brutish place. Shortly after the Restoration, upon the noise of plots, he was made a prisoner at Hereford, and very much threatened by Sir Henry Lingen, a fierce royalist, with severe usage upon his return from London, whither he was then going; but he died at Gloucester, on his way home.

When the Bartholomew-act came out, such was Mr. Hawes's moderation, that some apprehended he would have conformed; particularly one of his neighbour ministers, Mr. Cy, of We, who complained that he himself was likely to stand alone, on that side of the country, and professed to be so resolved against yielding to any of the terms required, tho' it were but to read some small part of the Popish Mass-book (as he termed the Common-prayer) that he would sooner suffer himself to be torn in pieces. However when they both went together to the Bishop, this man, (having been importuned by his wife) soon yielded; tho' to his death he detested what, for lucre-sake, he practised, always declaimed against it, and never thrived afterwards.t But Mr. Hawes maintained his ground in a conference with the Bishop, who civilly allowed him to preach a month after Bartholomew-day, and professed it to be contrary to his inclination to have such men as he removed, saying, the Law that turned him out, and not he." After this Mr. Hawes boarded, as long as he lived, with his son-in-law and daughter Billingsley; first at Webley, then at Abergavenny, and lastly at Awre. During his abode at the second of these places, the Bp. of Landaff (Dr. Hugh Lloyd, a very moderate man) allowed him to preach in public without subscribing; which licence he made use of occasionally, and to his death enjoyed the same liberty, upon his removal into another diocese, by the connivance of Dr. Nicholson, Bp. of Gloucester.

"It was

In his last sickness (occasioned by a journey to Kidderminster, for Mr. Hieron) he seemed not be uneasy at any. thing, but his disability to preach God's word, which he said he hungered after as a hungry man after his food, and

A relation of his, however, assured Dr. Calamy, that the above reflec tion was unmerited, and that Mr. W. was a great and worthy man ; but he did not give the Dr. such a satisfactory account of him as he desired, with a view to publication. Contin, p. 523.

complained

complained that he was then more useless than the stones in the street. He died in Dec. 1668, in the 65th year of his age, in the comfortable sense of God's favour, and the assurance that he was going to the enjoyment of him in glory. His countenance was most composed and chearful. He expressed, in his last hours, great satisfaction in his Nonconformity; declaring that if he had complied, he should have been afraid to die; whereas, he said, as the case now stood, he no more dreaded to die, than to go out at the door; and that, were the thing to be done again, he would rather chuse to suffer the greatest hardships, than to yield to what was required. His last words were those of the apostle, ' We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have---'. He could say no more, but instantly expired, He desired that nothing might be said of him by way of commendation, in his funeral sermon, and that if he were spoken of at all, it might be only as a great sinner, who had obtained great mercy which request was scarcely complied with by the preacher, Mr. Jordan, a worthy conformist, who highly esteemed him, and who did not long survive him. His text. was Psalm xxxvii. 37.

*

* LEOMINSTER [V.] JOHN TOMBES, B. D. Of Magd. Hall, Oxf. Born at Bewdley, in Worcestershire, 1603. His parents designed and educated him for the ministry. Such was his proficiency in grammar-learning, that he was fit for the university at the age of fifteen, where he was under the famous Mr. William Pemble, and soon gained a reputation for incomparable abilities and learning; so that upon the decease of his tutor, in 1624, he was chosen to succeed him in the catechetical lecture in this hall. He held his office about seven years, with great reputation, and then went to Worcester, where he was very popular as a preacher; but it doth not appear that he had any settlement there. was soon after possessed of the living at Leominster, which he enjoyed several years. Tho' the parish was large, the income was very small; but Lord Viscount Scudamore, from his great respect for him, made an addition to it.

He

Mr. Tombes was among the first of the clergy of these times who endeavoured a reformation in the church, by purging the worship of God of human inventions. He preached a sermon on the subject, which was afterwards printed by an order of the House of Commons. This exposed him to the rage of the church party, so that, at the beginning

[ocr errors]
« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »