*

livered as they were written, however they may have charmed the ears of Lord Carbery's cultivated family, they must have astonished beyond measure the Welsh villagers who formed the rest of the auditory, though it is not impossible that they, too, may have been attracted by the preacher's sweet voice and impressive manner, even without understanding his words. The collection of prayers to which Taylor gave the name of 'Golden Grove,' led to his imprisonment. Contrary to his wont, he had mingled with his panegyric on the Church of England an invective against Puritan preachers, and the authorities were perhaps rendered suspicious by the dedication to so well-known a royalist as Lord Carbery. We learn from a letter of John Evelyn's that he was in prison in February, 1654-5; but in April of the same year we find him at large and preaching in the little church of St. Gregory, by St. Paul's, where the use of the Common Prayer was still permitted. He returned to Wales, but in April, 1656, we find him dining with Evelyn at Says Court, in company with Boyle and Wilkins. In July he is again in Wales, much troubled by his narrow circumstances-a trouble which, to his honour be it said, Evelyn lightened so far as lay in his power tand longing for the society and the libraries which were to be found in the 'voysinage' of London. His home in Wales was very sorrowful, for he had just lost a little boy,' that lately made him very glad;' and again, in February, 1656-7, he speaks of small-pox and fever having broken out in his household, and of having buried 'two sweet hopeful boys.' He had then but one son left, and perhaps began to desire to leave a scene associated with so much grief. He seems generally to have visited London once in the year, and always found friends to welcome him, especially Evelyn, the Mæcenas-or ought we rather to say, the Gaius?-of distressed churchmen of those days. On one of these visits he was sent to the Tower, because his publisher had prefixed to his Collection of Offices' an engraving of our Lord in the attitude of prayer-a representation which some of the authorities in those days held to be idolatrous. His imprisonment, however, did not last long; in the spring of 1658, we find him at liberty in London. There Lord Conway, a great Irish landowner, offered him a lectureship at Lisburn, in the neighbourhood of his own estates, the tenantry on which he hoped would be benefited by the ministrations of so excellent a man. Of Lord Conway's kindness and Taylor's gratitude we have evidence

in the letter given below, which is now printed for the first time. from the autograph in the possession of Mr. Murray :

'MY VERY GOOD LORD,

April 17, 1658. 'I have till now deferred to write to your Lordship, because I could not sooner give an account of the time when I could attend your Lordship at Ragley; but now that my wife is well laid and in a hopeful condition, I hope I shall not be hindered to begin my journey to my Lady Chaworth on the 26th of this month, and from thence by the grace of God I will be coming the third of May towards Ragley, unless your affairs call your Lordship from thence before that time; but if they are like to do so, and I have intimation of it from your Lordship, I will begin my journey that way and from thence go on to Nottinghamshire. My Lord, I suppose by the first return of the carrier you will receive those pieces of Thom. Nash which I received by your Lordship's command to put into order and to make as complete as I could. Upon the view of them, and comparing them with what I had, I found I had but one to add, which I have caused to be bound up with the rest: but I have as yet failed of getting that piece of Castalio against Beza which your Lordship wished to have, but I shall make a greater search as soon as it please God I am well; for I write this to your Lordship in my bed, being afflicted with a very great cold, and some fears of an ague; but those fears are going off, because I see my illness settling into a cold. . . . And now, my Lord, having given your Lordship an account of these little impertinencies, my great business, which I shall ever be doing but shall never finish, is to give your Lordship the greatest thanks in a just acknowledgement and publication of your greatest, your freest, your noblest obligations passed upon me; for the day scarce renews so often as your Lordship's favours to me. My Lord, I have from the hand of your excellent Lady received 30l.: for your Ladyship not only provides an excellent country for me, but a viaticum, and manna in the way, that the favour may be as much without charge to me as it is without merit on my part. Truly, my Lord, if your Lordship had done to me as many other worthy persons have, that is, a single favour, or a little one, or something that I had merited, or something for which I might be admitted to pay an equal service, or anything which is not without example, or could possibly be without envy to me, I could have spoken such things as might have given true and proper significations of my thankfulness; but in earnest, my Lord, since I have understood the greatness of the favour you have done and intended to mee-if I had not been also acquainted with the very great nobleness of your disposition, I should have had more wonder than belief; but now, my Lord, I am satisfied with this, that although this conjugation of favours is too great for me to have hoped for from one person, yet it was not too great for your Lordship to give; and I see that in all times, especially in the worst, God is pleased to appoint some heroical examples of virtue, that such extraordinary precedents might highly reprove and in some measure restore the almost lost

worthiness

worthiness of mankind. My Lord, you read my heart, which with the greatest simplicity and ingenuity sends forth some of its perpetual thoughts; but if I can have my option, I shall not receive this heap of favours with so great joyfulness as I shall with earnestness beg this greater favour, that it may be in some measure put into my power to express how much I love, how much I honour, how willingly I would serve so excellent, so dear a person. My good Lord, I am, Your Lordship's most humble,

'most obliged, and most affectionate servant,
'JER. TAYLOR.

I pray, my good Lord, present my humble service to your excellent and pious mother, and to good Mr. Whitby.'

From this interesting document we learn for the first time that Taylor was acquainted with the family of Chaworth of Annesley, so well known in later times from their connexion with another man of very different stamp of genius. It gives us a glimpse of Taylor's book-hunting habits, when we find that his patron employed him to complete his collection of Tom Nash's works-which, though not by any means of a theological character, were already in his own library—and to procure him a copy of Castalio against Beza. The latter was probably of Taylor's own recommending; for he sympathised with him both in his anti-Calvinistic theology and in his desire for freedom of religion. There is no denying that his expressions of gratitude to Lord Conway are, to our notions, hyperbolical and unsuited to the dignity of a great divine. Such expressions are quite in the manner of the time; yet Lord Conway seems to have been a little annoyed at their exuberance, for his manly reply contains something very like a reproof.

This letter makes certain what Heber had already conjectured, that Taylor's letter of May 12, 1658, in which he declines a lectureship offered him by a friend of Evelyn's, on the condition of alternating with a presbyterian, like Castor and Pollux, the one up and the other down,' does not refer to Lord Conway's chaplaincy.

In Lord Conway he had one of the kindest and most considerate of patrons, who did the best to smooth the way for him in his difficulties. Besides giving him the benefit of his own influence, he procured for him introductions to some of the most considerable persons in Ireland, and Dr. Petty,* who had been employed in the survey of Ireland and knew the country well, 'promised to provide him a purchase of land at great advantage.' Moreover, my Lord Protector, who was perhaps not sorry to have so distin

Afterwards Sir William Petty, author of the Political Anatomy of Ireland,' and founder of the English settlement at Kenmare.

guished

guished a royalist removed from London, 'gave him a pass and protection for himself and his family under his sign manual and privy signet.' The letter from which these expressions are taken is dated June 15, 1658, and Taylor had probably left London for Ireland a short time before.

He settled at Portmore, a place,' says Rust, made for study and contemplation,' where he may have seen the round towers of other days' shining in the wave beneath him as he strayed on the banks of Lough Neagh. He evidently enjoyed this 'most charming recess,'† and writes in a tone of great contentment to Lord Conway, to whom a son and heir had just been born: 'since my coming into Ireland, by God's blessing and your lordship's favour, I have had plenty and privacy, opportunities of studying much, and opportunities of doing some little good.' He is endeared with the neighbourhood,' he would count it next to a divorce to be drawn from it;' he 'would fain account himself fixed there during his life;' if his lordship will but come himself to reside on his Irish estates, he may bore Taylor's ear,‡ and make him his slave for ever.§ Yet he confesses, in the same letter, that, in the absence of Major Rawdon, Lord Conway's brother-in-law and agent, there was nothing around him but 'ingens solitudo,' and 'the country like the Nomades, without law and justice.' In truth, the troubles of the time penetrated into his pleasant recess. In June, 1659, he writes to Evelyn:-' a Presbyterian and a madman have informed against me as a dangerous man to their religion and for using the sign of the cross in baptism.' This information led to the issuing of a warrant by the Irish Privy Council, which brought him to Dublin early in 1659-60, 'in the worst of our winter weather,' to the serious detriment of his health. He seems, however, to have obtained an easy acquittal from the Anabaptist commissioners.' April 9, 1659, he writes to Lord Conway¶ that his opus magnum, his great book on cases of conscience, is finished, except two little chapters, and that he has sent a servant to London with the copy; he begs his lordship to forward to him the sheets of his work as they were printed, Lord Conway having no doubt frequent communications with friends who resided on his Irish property.

n

Meantime, Oliver Cromwell was dead, and the reins of government were slipping from the slack hands of his son Richard. In

* Printed in Heber's 'Life,' p. cclxxxvi.

+ Taylor dates his epitaph on Dr. Stearne, 'ex amœnissimo recessu in Portmore;' Heber's 'Life,' p. lxxxvii. Alluding to Exod. xxi. 6.

§ Letter of Feb. 26, 1658-9, in Mr. Murray's possession.
Autograph in Mr. Murray's possession.

Life,' p. lxxxiv.

the

the spring of the momentous year 1660 we find Taylor in London; on April 24 in that year he signed the famous Declaration' to General Monk; in May, Charles landed in England; and in June Taylor dedicated to his restored sovereign the work of many laborious years, his 'Ductor Dubitantium.'

Charles probably did not bestow much attention on the learned work thus offered to him, for his was not a conscience troubled with doubts; but so eminent a royalist as Jeremy Taylor could not be passed over in the distribution of ecclesiastical preferment. In August, 1660, he was appointed to the see of Down and Connor, to which that of Dromore was afterwards added. Various conjectures have been offered to account for his not having been nominated for an English see; as, that the King wished his natural sister, Taylor's wife, to be removed to a distance from the court; a conjecture which seems in the highest degree improbable, even if we grant the fact, not too well attested, that Joanna Bridges was a daughter of Charles I. It is, of course, possible that Taylor was appointed to an Irish see, simply because he had eminent qualifications for it. If we look to the interests of the diocese, we shall hardly find another man so qualified to preside over it; at once learned, able, and conciliatory; already acquainted with the district, and skilled in the controversy both with Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. Lord Conway, too, seems to have used his influence to procure the appointment of his much-esteemed friend-whom he thought the choicest person in England appertaining to the conscience-to the diocese in which he was himself most interested.* Yet we cannot help suspecting that Sheldon, the great manager of ecclesiastical patronage in those days, bore Taylor no good will. He had disliked his appointment at All Souls: he had been offended by what he thought his Pelagian theology, and there was perhaps some other cause of rancour in the background; for Taylor, in a piteous letter to Sheldon,† in which he begs to be translated to England if his Grace does not wish him to 'die immaturely,' says that he had been 'informed by a good hand,' that his Grace had said that he (Taylor) was himself the only hindrance to his being removed to an English bishopric. That which was the hindrance to his being translated to an English bishopric may have been the cause of his being removed from England in the first instance. Whatever the cause of the appointment, we cannot but fear that he left the pleasant society of London, then bubbling with excite

Taylor says (letter to Lord Conway of March 2, 1660-1, in Mr. Murray's possession) that I am here. . I owe to my relations to your Lordship.' † Life,' p. cxix.

ment,