his tutor at Christ's College. In 1592 he was in London and imprisoned there for acts of nonconformity. He was for some time at Lincoln before he settled at Gainsborough. But I must content myself with referring for these and other particulars to Mr. Brook's valuable work and the authors cited by him in the margin. In the Appendix to this volume I may give a specimen of his writings illustrative of the spirit which he perhaps knew not that he was of. The writings of Crosby and Hanbury may also be consulted with advantage.

nard.

Another very zealous Puritan minister in these parts was RICHARD BERNARD, who had Richard Berthe misfortune to fall under the displeasure of Mr. Smith for not going to the same excess of riot in his nonconformity, and for this he pours the vials of his wrath upon him in terms which find no counterpart, it is to be hoped, in modern controversy. Bernard was a man of gentle and yet determined spirit; and so decided were his objections to the ceremonies, that he was silenced by the archbishop at Worksop, where he was the vicar. But he never went into the way of separation, though his preaching must have contributed to lead others to do so. Brad

ford's notice of him is very slight. He speaks of him only as one who had been "hotly persecuted by the prelates."22 I shall add a few dates and particulars, as of a man who has received less notice than he deserves at the hands of the dispensers of posthumous honours. He was born in 1566 or 1567, according to the inscription on his engraved portrait, which states that he was 74 at the time of his death, 1641. While very young he fell under the notice of two ladies, daughters of Sir Christopher Wray, lord chief justice of England, who were among the most eminent of those times for piety and Christian zeal. One of them was the wife successively of Godfrey Foljambe, Esquire; Sir William Bowes, of Walton, near Chesterfield; and of John, the good Lord Darcy of Aston. The other married Sir George Saint Paul, of Lincolnshire; and afterwards, the Earl of Warwick. They sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge, where it seems that he might be contemporary with Smith. They were probably in other respects his benefactors, since in the dedication of his first printed work he speaks of them as those to whom next to God and nature he owed all that he had.

22 Young, p. 422.

The work to which this dedication is prefixed is not such a work as we should expect to find as the first-fruits of a young Puritan minister's studies, for it is a translation of the plays of Terence, a small quarto, printed by John Legate, at Cambridge, in 1598. We collect from it that Bernard was then residing at Epworth, in the Isle of Axholm, a place not far distant from Scrooby, from whence issued a family which originated a more formidable separation from the Church than that in which Bernard was an agent. Not long after the publication of this volume he was removed from Epworth, having been presented by Richard Whalley to the vicarage of Worksop, where he received institution on the 19th of June, 1601.

Here he was for several years the very zealous minister, carrying to an extreme length the Puritan scruples, going to the very verge of separation; and joining himself even to those of his Puritan brethren, who thought themselves qualified to go through the work of exorcism. At length when Smith, and doubtless other persons, when they saw him silenced by the archbishop, were expecting that he would break from all church authority, he began to consider more fully the question of conformity; and when this consideration issued in

an approval of a National Church, if one could be constituted in a manner conformable to the intimations on that subject to be found in scripture, as preferable to an entire withdrawal from communion with it, he was restored to the exercise of his ministry, determined thenceforth to be more forbearing in his demands and more submissive to authority; and for this it is that Smith heaps upon him terms of the grossest abuse, Apostate, Deceiver, Worldly Man: "I do proclaim you to the whole world to be one of the most fearful apostates of the whole nation: that excepting White and Clapham you have no superior."23 A similar passage is valuable for the historical facts it contains:

"Maister Bernard, I have sufficient reasons that have moved me to break silence in respect of you, and by this letter to attempt a further trial of your pretended zeal for the truth and faith of Christ. I have long time observed the applause yielded you by the multitude. Likewise I have taken notice of your forwardness in leading to a Reformation by public proclamations in several pulpits, as if you had meant, contrary to the king's mind, to have carried all the

23 Smith's Parallels, Censures, and Observations, 4to, 1609, p. 5.

people of the country after you against the ceremonies and subscription. Afterward, having lost your vicarage of Worksop for refusing subscription or conformity, I have observed how you revolted back, and upon subscription made to the Prelate of York, have re-entered upon your vicarage. Again, I have noted. vehement desire to the parsonage of Sawenby, your extreme indignation when you were defeated of it; further, your earnest desire to have been vicar of Gainsborough, and all this after your subscription : besides, I have carefully weighed with myself your steadiness to embrace the truth we profess."

your

and

While at Worksop, Bernard printed several controversial writings and his Faithful Shepherd, a treatise on the duties of ministers, quarto, 1607. This is dedicated to Dr. Montagu, Dean of the Chapel Royal, an offering of thankfulness for many past favours.

He witnessed the formation of the Scrooby Church and its departure to Holland, during the time of his residence at Worksop. He ceded the living in 1612 or 1613, on his appointment to another in a distant county, the rectory of Batcombe, in Somersetshire. It was bestowed upon him by a private patron as to