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the same so long as she doth live. Item, I give unto my son Nicholas Farrar my house at Hertford called the Bell, to him and his heirs from and after the decease of his mother, who I will (during her life) shall enjoy the same. Item, I give unto my dear and well beloved wife Mary Farrar one third part of all my goods, which is her due by custom1. And I give her no more in regard I have formerly estated upon her the value of £200 per ann. And one other third of my goods I do give unto my sons Nicholas and Richard Farrar; and the other third of my own remaining (my debts paid, my legacies and all other things discharged) I do give unto my three sons, John, Nicholas and Richard Farrar, to be equally divided amongst them. Item, I do forgive and release unto my son Nicholas Farrar all such sums of money which he hath received in part of his portion. And I do will that my son Richard shall enjoy and receive to his own use all those debts and specialties that I have given him which his mother knows of; and further my will and mind is, that when it shall please God to take me forth of this mortal world, that there shall be no black given for me unto any of my friends, but unto my sons and daughter and her children: but to the poor three score and fifteen gowns, which is my age; whereof I would have [twenty] given to twenty poor men free of the worshipful company of skinners, and ten unto ten poor men in Hertford where I was born, the others at my wife's discretion, where she shall think good, and those of my servants that will remain one year at the least with my wife, if she will entertain them, the men-servants clothes and the maidservants gowns of broad cloth; and to no other. And I will my body to be committed to the grave, which is the way of all flesh, in decent and comely order, and no other ways,

1 The same custom appears in the will of John Donne, citizen and ironmonger of London, whose will bearing date 16 Jan, 1575-6, and proved 8 Feb., orders that his property "according to the laudable custom of that city of London," be divided into three portions, one of which is to be given his wife, one to his children in equal shares, &c.

which I do refer the same to the discretion of my most dear and loving wife, who hath been most loving and careful over me always. And of this my last will and testament I do ordain and make my son Nicholas Farrar my full and sole executor, and my dearly beloved wife Mary Farrar and my son John Farrar overseers to see the same faithfully and truly performed; and I do utterly revoke and disannul all and every former will and testament by me before made, and I will that this my last will now made, together with all my legacies, bequests, and executor, by me here made and named, shall stand remain and abide for my last will and testament and executor, and no other. In witness whereof I have hereunder set my hand and seal the day and year above-written NIO. FARRAR sealed and delivered in the presence of us THOME SHEPHEARD, MARYE COLLETT, RICHARDE FARRAR. Proved at London before Edmund

Pope L.L.D. surrogate, April

4. 1620.

Page 67. line 8. whereat. and whereat. MS.

15. never. supplied by Baker.

Page 68. line 10. from foot. he preached there. "His second and particular visitation made amends for the former, at Little Gidding in the same county: where he found a congregation of saints, not walking after the flesh, but after the spirit. Let this history give glory to God in their behalf: shewing in a touch, on what religious grounds their polity was founded: and how uncharitably suspected, and how unhappily dissolved. A family of the Farrars, the mother, with sons and daughters of both sexes in the plural number, other branches of the kindred, with servants fit to be about them, were collected into a house of their own at Gidding aforesaid, purposing and covenanting between themselves to live in as strict a way, according to the gospel of Christ, as good rules could chalk out, and human infirmity undergo. This pious design was proposed, and persuaded to them by the eldest son, in holy orders, bred in Clare Hall in Cambridge,

an humble, diligent, devout servant of God, learned in the theory, more in the practice of divinity. Their house, fit for their contemplation, stood alone. All were single persons in it, to the best I could learn. The church was so near, that it was next to the pale of their yard: the easier for them that frequented it so often. The whole village of Gidding had been depopulated: or I am misinformed: the house which contained them remaining for an whole parish. The tithes had been impropriated: but were restored back again by the mother, to the use of the rector then, her own son; and to the succeeding rectors by a firm deed, as law could make, which in its time shall be declared. They kept much at home their turns of prayer, and watching, which they observed, required it. Yet visits, perhaps once a month, they made abroad: but shunning such diversions, as much as they could, which rob us of a great part of the employment of our life. 'Non horam tecum esse potes: non otia recte-Ponere:' as an heathen complained, Horat. Serm. ii. 7. 112. Strangers that came to them were fairly received: all the tribe was meek and courteous, and did let none depart, before they gave them an account of their conversation, if they asked it. And withal offered to read to them, what was written in a table hanging up in their parlour, as followeth :

He that [&c. as in Lenton's letter in the preface.]

Their apparel had nothing in it of fashion, but that which was common, yet plain: and much of it for linen and woollen spun at home; such as modest Christians thought to be the best habit. Fateor vobis de pretiosa veste erubesco,' says St. Austin. Inter. Serm. de Diver. They gave no entertainment but to the poor, whom they instructed first, and then relieved, not with fragments, but with the best they had: and having sufficiency did abound to every good work, 2 Cor. xi. 8. Their business was, either they were at prayer, or at work; nothing came between: the devil had the less power to tempt them, that he never found them idle. They had the more leisure for work, because they fasted so much: and their diet at their meals was soon drest; beside, their daily temperance was such,

as they sat not long at them. It was not by fits, but by constancy, that they subdued their bodies by sobriety. Their bread was coarse, their drink small, and of ill relish to the taste: that it was sure they strived for nothing, that a dainty appetite might long for: as alms and fasting were frequent with them, so prayers and watching, with reading and singing psalms, were continually in their practice. Note the word continually for there was no intermission, day nor night. Four times every day they offered up their supplications to God, twice in the words of the Common-Prayer in the church: twice in their family, with several petitions for their own needs, and for such as desired, upon some special occasions, to be remembered by them to God. At all times one, or more, by their constitutions were drawn aside to some private holy exercise. By night they kept watch in the house of the Lord, and two by turns did supply the office for the rest, from whence they departed not till the morning. Their scope was to be ready like wise virgins with oil in their lamps, when the bridegroom came. This was the hardest part of their discipline, that they kept sentinel at all hours and seasons, to expect the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Archbishop Spotswood tells us of the like, Anno 510, p. 11. That St. Mungo founded a monastery in Wales, and took order that the monks had day and night divided among them, one company succeeding another: so that there were some always in the church praying, and praising God. In which, and in all the rest, what was there offensive? Nay, what not to be admired? To leave it off, or to lessen it for the girds of lavish tongues, were like the man in the Dutch epigram, that would eat nothing but spoon-meat for fear of wearing out his teeth. God be glorified for such, whose prayers were powerful and incessant to pierce the heavens. The whole land was the better for their sanctity. They fasted, that famine might not be inflicted upon our common gluttony. They abridged themselves of all pleasures, that vengeance might not come down upon the voluptuousness of this riotous age. They kept their vigils all night, that the day of the Lord might not come upon us

like a thief unawares, that sleep in security. The whole world was the better for their contempt of the world. As Philostratus says of the Hylobii, [of the Brachmanes. Apoll. iii. ¡15. § 1], οἰκοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, οὐχ ἀπ' αὐτῆς. They were in the world, not of the world. All their practice was heavenly; a great deal of it had some singularity, by the custom of our corrupt ways, who do not strive to enter in at the strait gate, to come to blessedness.

The fame of the dispensations of this worthy family, the further it was heard abroad, the more it sounded like popery. Envy or ignorance could guess no better at it, but that it was a casa professa, a convent packed together of some superstitious order beyond seas, or a nunnery, and that the sufferance of it looked towards a change in religion. After the sentence of Sallust (C.7. §2), 'Boni quam mali suspectiores sunt: semperque aliena virtus formidolosa est,' a crew of bawds and gamesters might have set up a standing with less prejudice than these devotionaries. But God help us, if the best Protestants (for these may be called so) do look like papists. Had they been hired with gold, that so mistook them, they could not have done more credit and honour to our adversaries. Speak sir Censurer, we the true children of the Church of England, were we not, without departing from our own station, capable of mortification? of vowing ourselves to God? of renouncing the world? of fasting? of vigils? of prayer limited to canons, and hours, as any that say, and do not, that call themselves from St. Basil, St. Bennet, or such other institution? Not our reformation, but our slothfulness doth indispose us, that we let others run faster than we, in temperance, in chastity, in scleragogy, as it was called. The diocesan, and their neighbour to this family in a few miles, was ashamed at these scandals, which he knew to be spiteful and temerarious. He knew the occurrences of his precincts; as Apelles was wont to sit behind the pictures hung up in his shop, to hear what passengers that went to and fro did approve, or discommend. These were known to the bishop by right information, from the time that they sealed a charter among themselves, as it

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