of that same year, a number of persons were arrested at the Saracen's Head at Islington, where, under the guise of seeing a play, many artizans and traders, with one or two ministers, had assembled to receive the communion according to the mode in use in the latter days of King Edward VI. On the 22nd of December, ten days only after the arrest, John Rough, the minister, perished in the flames at Smithfield. In the spring of the following year (1558), Fox tells us, a certain company of godly and innocent persons, to the number of forty men and women, assembled secretly in a back close in the field by the town of Islington, and while sitting together at prayer and virtuously occupied in the meditation of God's holy word, were pounced on by the constable, and twenty-two of them were haled to Newgate, of whom thirteen bore their testimony to the truth in the flames of martyrdom. Some of these sufferers found before their death that there were dungeons worse than those of Newgate; for they were transferred to the palace at Fulham and immured in the "coal-house" of the Bishop. One of them, Stephen Cotton by name, was twice scourged by the Bishop's own hands. A letter of Bonner's to Cardinal Pole relating to this man and his companions exists in the Petyt MSS. preserved in the Inner Temple,* and, without any other evidence, is enough to make us despise the modern pleas of Maitland and others in behalf of the savage persecutor. We cannot forbear a single extract, in which the Bishop talks of the death of his victims in the style in which a farmer would speak of a part of his stock destined for the nearest market or shambles:

"Further may it please your Grace concernyng these obstinate heretikes that doe remaine in my house, pestering the same and doyng much hurte many wayes, some order may be taken with theym; and in myn opinion, as I shewed your Grace and my Lord Chanceler, it should doe well to have them brent (burnt) in Hammersmythe, a myle from my house here; for then can I giff sentence agaynst theym here in the parish churche very quietly and without tumult; and having the shireff present, as I can have hym, he without busynes or stirre [can] put theym to execution in the saide place, when otherwise the thinge [will need a] day in Paule's, and with moor comberance then now it nedeth.-July, 1558."

Passing on to the religious history of Stoke Newington a century later, we find the pulpit of the parish church occupied by the celebrated Dr. Thomas Manton. He was presented to the living by the Hon. Col. Popham, in whom and in his lady he found generous friends. His labours at Stoke Newington continued for seven years, and so strong was the feeling of respect

* First published, with some admirable remarks by John Bruce, Esq., in the Athenæum, Oct. 27, 1855; more recently reprinted by the late Mr. Gorham in his valuable collection entitled, "Reformation Gleanings," pp. 374-378.

and confidence which he excited towards himself, that his counsels and example guided the religious course of many of his people long after his pastoral relation to them had ceased.

The love of religious liberty and the habit of Nonconformity had become settled principles in the minds of many of the residents of Islington and the adjacent hamlets, so that when the Act of Uniformity drove the Two THOUSAND from their livings, there were many in Newington Green and elsewhere to side with and befriend the ejected clergy, and to listen, as occasion served, to their preaching. The whole district around Newington Green was resorted to by several of the ministers whom the National Church, with singular want of wisdom, had driven from its communion. Here they were able with comparative safety to establish academies for the education both of ministers and the laity. Among the eminent instructors we may name Mr. Doolittle, Mr. Thos. Vincent, Theophilus Gale, Mr. Wickins, Mr. Rowe and Mr. Charles Morton; and among their more illustrious pupils, Matthew Henry, John Shower, Thomas Emlyn, Edmund Calamy

and Daniel Defoe.

Newington Green was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a very secluded spot, lying quite off the high road to Ware, surrounded by meadows and gardens, and the whole of the district abounding in forest trees of the largest size. It preserved till about 1750 some of the characteristics of a wilderness, -remarkable enough when its vicinity to the great city is remembered.

Too often the early history of our Presbyterian houses of prayer is shrouded in impenetrable obscurity. When the constable and apparitors were constantly hunting up evidences of Nonconformity to bring those inclined to it under the lash of persecuting laws, no records would be preserved and no minutes would be made. It is only from faint traditions and casual and slight expressions in contemporary letters and diaries that we can learn the names of the brave and pious men whom we honour as our religious ancestors, or the places where they were wont, in defiance of the law against conventicles, to assemble at midnight or at the dawn of day, and at other times when the lynx eye of persecution was closed, or the pastors from whom they received spiritual instruction.

One effect of persecution was to make its victims forget their differences, and during the twenty-eight dreary years of disappointment, wrong and perfidy to which the Nonconformists were exposed after the Restoration, Independents and Presbyterians often lost sight of their lines of demarcation, put aside their jealousies, and joined with pious unanimity in the same religious services, receiving with an eager spiritual hunger the bread of life indifferently from ministers of the one denomination or of the other. In the slight notices of early Nonconformist worship

at Newington Green, we find traces of both Presbyterian and Congregational influence. Private houses were of necessity the places of meeting when the persecution was hottest. Sometimes worship was celebrated in the house of Mr. Morton, sometimes at that of Mrs. Mogat or Major Thompson, Mr. Barksdale and Mr. Hewling. The last name has been familiarized to the reading public of England by the pathetic account given by Lord Macaulay of the Jeffries' butcheries in the West. And as Defoe names (State of Parties, p. 320, quoted by Walter Wilson, Life of Defoe, I. 22) Hewling and others of the Western martyrs as having been the companions of his studies at Newington Green, we may conclude that the Mr. Hewling who opened his house for Nonconformist worship there was the head of the family of that name to which the victims at Taunton belonged. Defoe says that these unfortunate persons would, had they lived, have proved "extraordinary men of their kind."

Secluded as Newington Green and parts of Islington were, the Nonconformists of the seventeenth century who had sought refuge there were, like their predecessors in godliness of the previous century, tracked and harried by the agents of the ecclesiastical powers of the day. One pastor and tutor was compelled to break up his establishment and fly to a different part of the suburbs of London, and another to quit his country altogether.

Dr. Calamy states that the early congregation at Newington Green was chiefly composed "of such as had been hearers of Dr. Manton at Stoke Newington and could not fall in with the ecclesiastical establishment.' (Continuation, p. 104.) Eventually two distinct societies were formed, one at Stoke Newington, which was carried on by the Independents, and this at Newington Green, which belonged to the Presbyterians. Of the Stoke Newington congregation we will only remark, that it long enjoyed the services of Mr. Joseph Cawthorn, the ejected minister of Stamford, and who was the associate and intimate friend of the then minister of Newington Green.

We shall now give a few particulars of the early ministers of Newington Green, following for the most part the order of their succession as given by Mr. Walter Wilson.

The first name is James Ashurst, a graduate of Oxford, who suffered ejectment from a fellowship in Magdalen College. Born of a respectable family and possessed of a competent estate, he devoted himself to study, and had through life the retired habits of the student. His attainments in ecclesiastical history were considerable, and attracted the notice and praise of his neighbour, Mr. Charles Morton. Settling at Newington Green, he willingly, as the times gave him opportunity, preached to his Nonconformist neighbours. He is characterized by Calamy as a serious and

• See Walter Wilson's MSS.

good man, a judicious divine, a methodical and profitable preacher, and who, though less known by his contemporaries than he deserved to be, was a considerable man. The year of his death is not specified, and no works bearing his name have come down to us. It is not improbable that he was kinsman to Sir Henry Ashurst, the friend of Richard Baxter.

The next name is also one of the noble Two THOUSAND. Samuel Lee was descended from the ancient family of Lee in Cheshire. The son of a wealthy citizen of London, he enjoyed the best advantages for education, studying first under Dr. Gale at St. Paul's School, and afterwards at Wadham College, Oxford. He was elected to a fellowship in his College, and was Proctor of the University in 1650, Dr. John Owen being then Vicechancellor. On leaving Oxford, he was appointed, as Anthony Wood says, "without any orders from a Bishop, by Oliver to the ministry of St. Botolph's church, Bishopsgate, but ejected afterwards thence by the Rump Parliament." He was next appointed to the lectureship at Great St. Helen's church in London. The same author states that he did not lose any preferment on the passing of the Act of Uniformity, "because he had none to lose.' He settled on his own estate at Bicester in Oxfordshire, and opened his house as a place of worship. He was rather Independent than Presbyterian, but joined neither party exclusively. In 1678, he removed to Newington Green, where Anthony Wood states he carried on his profession for some years. In that year he published two discourses, of which we have in vain sought a sight, entitled, "Ecclesia Gemens-the Mournful State of the Church, with a Prospect of her Dawning Glory." He also united in that same year with Dr. Giles Fletcher in a publication respecting the ancient and successive state of the Jews, with some scripture evidences of their future conversion and establishment in their own land. He had previously printed, in an appendix to the "Vale Royal of England," the "Chronicon Cestrense-an Exact Chronology of all the Rulers and Governors of Cheshire and Chester," &c.; and the University of Oxford had published his elaborate work on Solomon's Temple, which he entitled, "Orbis Miraculum" (Lond. 1659, folio). When in the reign of James II. the political and religious horizon became so dark, Mr. Lee, fearing the destruction of English liberty and the introduction of Popery, resolved to emigrate to New England. This he effected with his family in 1686. He was received by the friends of religion and learning in America with respect and almost enthusiasm. These are the glowing words of Cotton Mather respecting him, in his "Magnalia Christi Americana:" "If learning ever merited a statue, this great man has as rich an one due to him as can be erected, for it must be granted that hardly ever a more universally learned person trod the American strand. Live, oh rare Lee, live, if not in our works, yet in thy

own; ten or twelve of which, which have seen the light, will immortalize thee. But above all, thy book, De Excidio AntiChristi, shall survive and assist the funeral of the monster whose nativity is therein with such exquisite study calculated; and thy book entituled Orbis Miraculum, or the Temple of Solomon, shall proclaim thee to be a miracle for thy vast knowledge, and a pillar in the temple of thy God."

He was chosen pastor of a congregation at New Bristol, but his heart was in his native land; and when tidings crossed the Atlantic of the happy Revolution, and a call came to him from a congregation in England, he hastened to return. The sequel shall be told in the words of Anthony Wood: "At length this learned Nonconformist, returning with his family to Old England, they were, with the ship wherein they were harboured, taken with a French privateer near their journey's end, in the month of November, 1691; so that, they being all conveyed to St. Maloe's, a sea-port town in Upper Bretaigne, in France, our author Lee was so much overwhelmed with grief for his captivity and loss of his money and goods, that he died in a manner heartbroken; whereupon being denied Christian burial, because he refused to die in the faith of the Roman see, was obscurely buried about Christmas following in a poor piece of ground joyning to a river's side near to that city, where we shall leave him to expect the last trump, unless any of his relatives will hereafter remove his body to his native country of England." Calamy explains that grief at being separated from his wife and child, who were shipped to England while he was detained a prisoner, brought on a fever, under which he sunk, in the 64th year of his age. Some years after his death there was published a little practical work entitled, "Contemplations upon Mortality." A copy of this very rare book is before us. It is dedicated to his father, in an Epistle bearing date July 30, 1669. The testimony it contains to his father's watchful parental love is interesting.

"My testimony respects a gratefull acknowledgment of your singular goodness, unwearied kindness and tender love from my birth upward. When reason budded, your wholsome and godly counsels ever dropt as rain, your speech as dew, as smal rain upon the tender herb, and as showres upon the grass. The warmth of your affection cherisht me under the divine influence into a flower: your wisdome then transplanted me into the nurseries of grace and learning, and at length to the Muses garden at Oxford. It was ever your pious care to place me under the shadow of holy Tutors. I magnifie God and thankfully acknowledge your prudence and love. My body indeed was ever but tender and weak: your affections strong and vigorous, your charges great, your sollicitous thoughts were ever wakefull, that no unkind storm might blow upon me. I prosper'd, for God was with you, your prayers went up, his blessing came down, and lo, by the grace of God I hope your labour hath not been altogether in vain in the Lord."