he could not travel to any place where the required oaths to government were administered, it was with difficulty he was persuaded to desist from preaching (though his son supplied for him) till some of the justices, in compassion to his age, and zeal to King George, condescended to adjourn the court to his house, where he took the oaths to the present government, sincerely and heartily, without equivocation or mental reservation."

WORKS. The Cursed Family: a Treatise on the Evil of neglecting Family-Prayer. Mr. Howe wrote a Preface to it, in which he gave some account of the author.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

Mr. FRANCIS JOHNSON, Master. He was one of Oliver Cromwell's chaplains. He was a man of learning and ability, but had not a good elocution. He took no charge upon him after his ejectment, but lived many years in one of his own houses in Gray's-Inn-Lane, London; and there died a Nonconformist, Oct. 9. 1677. Mr. Lloyd preached his funeral sermon, in which he says of him, "That he was a learned man, and well read in the controversies, but modest to a fault. His life was made up of a variety of trials. He formerly enjoyed an affluence of this world's good, but was afterwards greatly reduced. He was encompassed with Job's afflictions; and among the rest, with the noise of a foolish woman; but he patiently bore all, with a mind unmoved as if in the greatest prosperity."

EJECTED OR SILENCED MINISTERS, &c.

IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

CAIUS COLLEGE..

W do in Bedfordshire. He was a very peculiar and unsettled man; challenged for three contradictions. 1. For being professedly against Infant-baptism, and yet having his own children baptized. 2. For preaching against universities, when he held the headship of a college. 3. For being against tithes, and yet taking 2007. per ann. at his living in Feldon. It was not however for these things that he was ejected, but for his nonconformity. Such is the account of Dr. Calamy. To this was subjoined, in the first edition of the Noncon. Mem. p. 225, the following Note.-A vindication of him from the inconsistencies here charged upon him may be seen in Crosby's Hist. Bapt. Vol. I. p. 332. He might be somewhat tinctured with the enthusiasm of the times, but he was a man of substantial learning, of real piety, and a noble defender of the rights of conscience. He was at first satisfied with episcopacy and the ceremonies; but when the change of the state led to a reformation in the church, he was one of the most zealous to promote it, and would have carried it further than many others designed or would allow. He exclaimed against making a whole kingdom a church; he thought that no power belonged to the clergy but what is spiritual; that blending the civil and ecclesiastical power together has been constantly the method of setting up a spiritual tyranny; that all persons ought to have liberty to worship God in the manner they think most agreeable to his word; and that the imposition of uniformity, and all compulsion in matters of religion, is antichristian. These principles led him to oppose the Presbyterians, in their attempts to get the civil power entirely to themselves, and establish their articles of faith and Directory for worship and discipline, to the suppres

TILLIAM DELL, M. A. He had the living of Yel

sion of all others. With this view in 1645 he became chaplain to the army, and attended Sir T. Fairfax at the headquarters. A sermon at Marston occasioned him much trouble; and another on a Fast-day before the H. of Commons led him into a controversy with Mr. C. Love, (who opposed him in the afternoon of the same day,) and both were the means of greatly propagating his notions of civil and religious. liberty. His zeal and success herein occasioned him many enemies, and account for the contemptuous manner in which he was spoken of by the rigid Presbyterians *.

WORKS. Besides the above sermons, he published some other pieces on the same subject, and one on Baptism; § a small piece entitled, The Doctrine of Baptisms; which has been in much repute among the Quakers. An Antipodobaptist correspondent is of opinion, that Mr. Dell should rather be ranked among the Qua kers than the Baptists. He was however ejected for Nonconfor mity.

CLARE HALL.

FRANCIS HOLCROFT, M. A. Fellow. His father was a knight, and lived at West-Ham, near London. He was a pupil to Mr. David Clarkson, and chamber-fellow with Dr. Tillotson, afterwards Abp. of Canterbury. [He here embraced the puritanical principles, and became a communicant with Mr. Jephcot, of Swaffham-prior, eleven miles from Cambridge. His chamber being over the college-gate, he often observed a horse waiting a long time on a Lord's-day morning, for one of the fellows to go to preach at Littlington, a village thirteen miles distant, and often returning without the preacher, who was much given to intemperance and debauchery. Touched with compassion for the souls of the

* Mr. Orton, on reading the above, writes thus: "I question the truth of "Crosby's account of Dell. Mr. Baxter, who was no stiff Presbyterian, gives "a very different account of him in his own Life. But he might be preju"judiced one way, as well as the Baptists another. I have seen a great deal "of this prejudice and partiality in persons of different parties, in favour of "such as were of their own."-It may not be amiss here to subjoin Mr. Baxter's words. Having said, that "abundance of nonsense had been uttered by "the sectaries, which may partly be seen in Edward's Gangrena," he adds, "Saltmarsh and Dell were the two great preachers at the head quarters." (B. i. p. 56.) And again, p. 64. "Mr. Vines and many more were put out of their headships in the universities, and Mr. Sidrach Simpson, Mr. Jo. "Sadler, and such others put in; yea such a man as Mr. Dell, the chaplain of "the army, who I think neither understood himself, nor was understood by "others, any further than to be one who took Reason, Sound Doctrine, Order and "Concord to be intolerable maladies of church and state, because they were "the greatest strangers to his mind."

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neglected country people, and ashamed of continuing idle in the college, when preaching was so much wanted, he offered to supply that parish. The offer was accepted, and his ministry was very much succeeded there, to the conversion and edification of many souls. About the year 1655 he accepted the living at Bassing bourn, where he laboured in season and out of season,' on Lord's days and holidays, great multitudes following him.] Having been acquainted with some who were of the congregational judgment, he fell in with it, and he was much esteemed in that capacity, and became very. zealous for it, so that he formed a church upon that plan, and was very much against holding communion with the parishchurches. Many of the members of his church living in several distant villages, he and Mr. Oddy, his assistant, [after their ejectment went and preached at many of these places, and at one or other of them administered the sacrament every Lord's-day.

The truth of the matter, (as Mr. Robinson writes,) was as follows: After the ejectment, Mr. Holcroft considered himself as being still pastor of his flock; and as they could not all meet in one place, he determined to preach and administer the ordinances to them in separate bodies, at the different towns where they lived. But as this would have been too much for one man, he assembled his people at Eversden to consider the matter, and they chose Mr. Joseph Oddy, Mr. S. Corbyn, Mr. J. Waite, and Mr. Beare, elders*. These all laboured in the same work, till the next year, 1663, when Mr. Holcroft was imprisoned in Cambridge castle, by Sir Thomas Chickley, for preaching at Great Eversden. Mr. Oddy, for preaching at Meldreth, Mr. Corbyn and Mr. White, shared the same fate, and Mr. Beare escaped only by flight. While the pastors and elders were thus separated from their flock, the people continued to meet together, and spent their time in prayer and reading the scriptures. Sometimes some of the ejected ministers preached to them privately, and now and then the jailor allowed Mr. Holcroft to go out in the night to preach to them, and administer the Lord's Supper. They had also letters from him, one of which was printed, 1688, entitled, A Word to the Saints from the Watch-Tower.

Mr. Holcroft was indicted at the assizes upon the 35 Eliz. and was sentenced to abjure the realm in three months, or

*Sec mention made of these two last persons in the Letter to the church at Hitchin, p. 107. Mr. Robinson writes the latter name Bard.

suffer

suffer death as a felon. The earl of Anglesea represented his case to K. Charles, and obtained a reprieve for him. But he continued in Cambridge Castle almost twelve years. Upon the Indulgence in 1672 he had his liberty, when he immediately returned to his preaching, and was soon seized on and imprisoned again. A like indictment with the former being intended, a certiorari was procured for him on the account of a debt, which brought him up to the Fleet; from whence, upon discharging it, he was soon released. In this and his former troubles he experienced great kindness from his old friend Dr. Tillotson. [Both Mr. Holcroft and Mr. Oddy, upon their enlargement, prosecuted their plan with greater vigour than ever, preaching at Cambridge, in spite of a drum which the gownsmen beat in their meeting, and all over the country; being followed by such multitudes, that they were often forced to preach abroad.

Mr. Holcroft was considered as the pastor of all the churches in the country, till soon after Mr. Oddy's death, viz. in 1689, when these congregations became separate churches; for which encouragement was given by the Act of Toleration, and which was rendered necessary by Mr. Holcroft's illness, first brought on by colds caught after excessive heat in preaching, particularly in the Fleet, where great crowds resorted to hear him. This ended in melancholy, which was promoted by grief for the headiness of some of his people who turned preachers, or encouraged such as did so. He continued to decline till 1692, when on Jan. 6, he died at Triplow; his tomb-stone says, in his 59th year; his funeral sermon in his 63d. His courage and spirits returned before his death, and he departed with great joy, uttering these words: For I know that if my earthly house of this tabernacle be * dissolved, I have a building of God, an house not made with ▲ hands, eternal in the heavens.' His funeral sermon was preached by Mr. Milway, then of Bury, on Zech. i. 5, 6. in which, (among other things,) he says of his preaching,--“ It ❝ appeared to me truly apostolical, primitive and divine.” He seems (continues Mr. Robinson) to have been one of those uncommon men in whom the excellencies of several centered. His learning was enough to have gained him an ample reputation, but his knowledge of the gospel of Christ was astonishing. His preaching was less methodical than that of his cotemporaries, but then it was more useful.]

Dr. Calamy says, He preached often and fervently, and was instrumental in turning many from darkness to light,

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