series of autograph letters to and from the bishop; and a "family-book," also in his own handwriting, giving an account of his parentage and the principal events of his life, with comments on many of the public transactions in which he himself, or those connected with him, had borne a share.

But, in the ardour of Mr. Jones's political pursuits, and the frequent pecuniary embarrassments to which those pursuits exposed him, his biographical labours appear to have been often interrupted; and his sudden death, by the overturn of a carriage in the year 1818, cut short all the hopes which his talents and his materials justified. The greater part of his family papers he had, on the sale of Homra to the marquess of Downshire, deposited at Montalto, under the care of the late John, earl of Moira. Their subsequent fate has, unfortunately, not been ascertained. At Donnington, whither all the papers found at Montalto are said to have been transferred, no traces of them remain; and there appears but too much reason to apprehend that they were consumed, together with some other packages belonging to the marquess of Hastings, in the fire which destroyed the London Custom-house. All which the family yet retain consists of some extracts made by Mr. Jones from these documents with a view to his intended work; the marriage settlement of Taylor's youngest daughter; and some traditions respecting himself and his descendants, which have been liberally communicated to me by Mr. Jones's sisters, Mrs. Wray, and Mrs. Mary Jones.

Small as these remains are, the few facts which they disclose are, perhaps, among the most interesting hitherto recovered concerning bishop Taylor's private concerns. From other quarters, indeed, very little was to be gathered which was new, but I have not knowingly neglected any. The Rev. Mr. Bonney, with a kindness to which I am deeply indebted, and which I had the less reason to expect as I was personally unknown to him, has permitted me to make use of an interleaved copy of his able and interesting Life of Taylor, enriched with many valuable manuscript notes and references. To the active and judicious friendship of the Honourable and Reverend J. C. Talbot, I am indebted, not only for my introduction to bishop Taylor's descendants in

Ireland, but for whatever other gleanings of information or tradition respecting him remained in that kingdom. The archives of All Souls were examined by the kindness of the bishop of Oxford, and my friend, Clement Cartwright, Esq.; and the publishers of this edition have been enabled to procure for me, from the Evelyn Papers, the British Museum, and other sources, seventeen manuscript letters of Taylor, fourteen of which are now first printed. But it cannot be concealed, that, notwithstanding these advantages, I have still to lament the scantiness and imperfection of my materials; and that in this, as in most other instances, the biography of an author must consist in the account of his writings rather than his actions or adventures.

JEREMY, third son of Nathaniel and Mary Taylor", was born in Trinity parish, Cambridge, and baptized on the 15th of August, 1613. His father was a barber; an occupation which, united, as it generally was, with the practice of surgery and pharmacy, was, in the days of our ancestors, somewhat less humble than at present, but which was at no time likely to raise its professor or his children to wealth or eminence. The family, however, had originally held a respectable rank among the smaller gentry of Gloucestershire, where they had possessed, for many generations, an estate in the parish of Frampton on Severn; and Nathaniel was the lineal descendant of Dr. Rowland Taylor, rector of Hadleigh, in the county of Suffolk, and chaplain to archbishop Cranmer b.

Of Rowland Taylor, neither the name nor the misfortunes are obscure. He was distinguished among the divines of the Reformation for his abilities, his learning, and piety; and he suffered death at the stake on Aldham Common, near Hadleigh, in the third year of queen Mary, amid the blessings and lamentations of his parishioners, and with a courageous and kindly cheerfulness which has scarcely its parallel, even in those days of religious heroism.

Dr. Taylor was of sufficient consequence, as an advocate of the new religion, to have excited against himself, without any additional or private motives, the fiercest hostility of the

• See Note (A.)

b Letter from Lady Wray to William Todd, Esq. of Castlemartin, dated May 31, 1732, quoted in the MS, of Mr. Todd Jones.

Romish prelates. We are told, however, that Gardiner, by whose warrant as lord chancellor he was first apprehended, was stimulated in this instance by feelings of avarice, as well as bigotry; that he was desirous of appropriating to himself the family estate at Frampton; that, I know not on what pretence, he succeeded in his object after Dr. Taylor's death, and that he had begun to build a mansion on the property, which, at his own decease, he left unfinished.

The family of the martyr were thus reduced to poverty, from which they had the less prospect of emerging by any help or favour of government, inasmuch as, in common with many of those who had most severely felt the iron hand of the Romish hierarchy, they were suspected, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, of an inclination to the rising sect of the Puritans. Yet their poverty cannot have been excessive, since we find Nathaniel Taylor serving as churchwarden; an office which, in most parishes, is filled by the wealthiest and most respectable in the middle ranks of life. And it may be mentioned to their honour, that, after two generations of comparative distress, the father of Jeremy Taylor was spoken of by his son, in a letter to his old tutor, Bachcroft, as "reasonably learned," and as having himself "solely grounded his children in grammar and the mathematics "."

I have already taken notice of the unfortunate loss of the documents on which this account chiefly depends. For the fact of their having once existed, the authority of Mr. Jones is sufficient; and though the testimony of lady Wray is exposed to that degree of doubt which almost always attaches to family tradition, it is as satisfactory a voucher as could be looked for under similar circumstances, and more than sufficient to obtain belief for an account which, in itself, is far from improbable. That Jeremy Taylor had, indeed, some pretensions to gentle blood, may be, to a certain extent, inferred from the armorial bearings which, in an age when such distinctions were less boldly assumed than at present, and when the Heralds' College still retained some vestiges of their ancient authority, were engraved on his seal, still preserved by the Marsh family, and which

Mr. Jones's MS.

(with some degree of harmless ostentation) are almost uniformly appended to his portraits". In his works nothing occurs which can either confirm or disprove the traditions of his descendants; though he speaks of Rowland Taylor with deserved commendation in one of his polemical writings, and appeals to his authority in behalf of the Book of Common Prayer with something like a filial fondness. I am aware, indeed, that the question is, after all, of no great importance, and that the character of bishop Taylor could derive no additional lustre from a pedigree far more distinguished than that which I have assigned him. But the natural prejudices of mankind incline them to attach a certain degree of weight to the inheritance of talents and virtues; and I was not sorry to discover that the author of the Liberty of Prophesying was a descendant of one whose character and sufferings I had long been accustomed to contemplate with veneration.

There is nothing, indeed, more beautiful in the whole beautiful Book of Martyrs, than the account which Fox has given of Rowland Taylor, whether in the discharge of his duty as a parish priest, or in the more arduous moments when he was called on to bear his cross in the cause of religion. His warmth of heart, his simplicity of manners, the total absence of the false stimulants of enthusiasm or pride, and the abundant overflow of better and holier feelings, are delineated, no less than his courage in death, and the buoyant cheerfulness with which he encountered it, with a spirit only inferior to the eloquence and dignity of the Phædon. Something, indeed, must be allowed for the manners of the age, before we can be reconciled to the coarse vigour of his pleasantry, his jocose menace to Bonner, and his jests with the sheriff on his own stature and corpulency. But nothing can be more delightfully told than his refusal to fly from the lord chancellor's officers; his dignified, yet modest determination to await death in the discharge of his duty; and his affectionate and courageous parting with his wife and children. His recollection, when led to the stake, of the blind man and woman," his pensioners, is

d Note (B.)

Preface to the Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy, vol. vii. p. 304, of this Edition.

of the same delightful character; nor has Plato any thing. more touching than the lamentation of his parishioners over his dishonoured head and long white beard, and his own meek rebuke to the wretch who drew blood from that venerable countenance. Let not my readers blame me for this digression. They will have cause to thank me, if it induces them to refer to a history, which few men have ever read without its making them "sadder and betterf."

At three years of age, Jeremy Taylor is said to have been sent to the grammar school then recently founded in Cambridge under the will of Dr. Stephen Perse, and kept by one Lovering. The profit, however, which he derived from Lovering's instructions cannot have been great, if, as Taylor himself wrote to the head of Caius, he was "solely grounded in grammar and mathematics" by his father. And it is so unusual a thing in his class of life, or, indeed, in any class, to send an infant of three years old to a public grammar school, that I am tempted exceedingly to doubt a fact which rests on a single, and, as it appears in another instance, an inaccurate memorandum in the admission book of Caius. If, which is certainly not improbable, he attended Lovering's school at all, he can hardly have remained at it so long as he is there stated to have done.

When thirteen years old, on the 18th of August, 1626, he was entered at Caius College as a sizar, or poor scholar; an order of students who then were what the "servitors" still continue to be in some colleges in Oxford, and what the "lay brethren" are in the convents of the Romish church. This was an institution which, however it may be now at variance with the feelings and manners of the world, was, in its original, very far from deserving the reprobation which has been sometimes cast on it, and owed, indeed, its beginning to a zeal for the education of the poor, as well directed as it was humane and Christian. In the time of our ancestors, the interval between the domestics and the other members of a family was by no means so great, nor fenced with so harsh and impenetrable a barrier, as in the present days of luxury and excessive refinement. As the highest rank of subjects was elevated then at a greater height than they h Note (D.)

Note (C.)

Bonney, Life, p. 3.