|
Transcription of
the hand written document:-
Dr John Conant
Rector of All Saints in the town of Northampton during the dreadful fire in
1675 was born at Yeaton town Devonshire 18th Oct 1608 - He was the eldest son
of Robert Conant - Robert was son of Richard Conant who lived at Budley near
Yeatonton - Richard was the son of John Conant Descended from Conants of
Gittisham near Honiton where Ancestors had been fixed there for many
generations but there originally of French extraction.
Dr John Conant, was
chiefly educated by his uncle John Conant, who was fellow of Exeter College
Oxford from 1611 to 1620 - which he resigned for the Rectory of ????ington in
Somersetshire - In 1626 he, Dr John, was admitted of Exeter College Oxford, his
tutor Mr Bodley nephew to the founder of the famous library - In 1632 he was
chosen probationer and in 1633 was admitted Fellow - He then became a
celebrated tutor.
In 1642 he was
driven from the College by the Civil Wars and lost all his valuable books - He
was next appointed domestick Chaplain to the Duke of Chandos he resigned his
Fellowship at Oxford in 1647 - He was appointed to the Rectory of Exeter
College in 1649 - In 1657 he was admitted to the degree of Dr in Divinity, he
also accepted the living of Abergeley near St Asaph in Denbishire - In 1657 he
was admitted Vice Chancellor Of Oxford, in this he continued till 1660 - On the
Restoration Of Charles 2nd Dr. Conant waited on his majesty with The address of
the University, his own speech in Latin was much thought of - In consequence of
his not complying with the Bartholomew Act (Note
1), when the Commons Prayer book was revised, he vacated his Vice
Chancellorship the Rectory in 1662
He conformed in
1670, and was ordained by Vr Reynolds Bishop of Norwich and the same year was
inducted to the vicarage of ???? in Northampton, which he never could be
prevailed upon to quit for higher preferment, his parsonage house in Gold
Street escaped the ravages of the fire (Note 2),
the houses on each side were burnt, this, added to the circumstance of his
having that day preached a very impressive sermon, on the destruction of Sodom
and Gomorrah, and exhorting his congregation to repent and avoid the dreadful
wrath of God, made a great and lasting impression on many of them.
He was inducted to
the Archdeaconry of Norwich in 1676 by Dr Reynolds then Bishop - In 1681 he was
by the favour of the King installed a prebendary of Worcester - In 1651 - he
married Eliza youngest Daughter of the Bishop of Norwich by whom he had 6 sons
and 6 daughters - He died 12th March 1693 in the 86th year of his age and was
interred in his own parish church of All Saints. At the East end there is
erected a neat monument with a Latin inscription
Note
1
The Bartholomew Act 1662
(from "Chambers Book of
Days")
When High Church
had the upper hand in the reign of Charles I, it did not scruple to pillory the
Puritans, excise their ears, and banish them. When the Puritans got the
ascendancy afterwards, they treated high-churchmen with an equally
conscientious severity. At the Restoration, all the reforming plans of the last
twenty years were found utterly worn out of public favour, and the public
submitted very quietly to a reconstitution of the church under what was called
the Act of Uniformity, which made things very unpleasant once more for the
Puritans. By its provisions, every clergyman was to be expelled from his charge
on the 24th of August 1662, if, by that time, he did not declare his assent to
everything contained in the revised Book of Common Prayer; every clergy-man
who, during the period of the Commonwealth, had been unable to obtain episcopal
ordination, was commanded now to obtain that kind of sanction; all were to take
an oath of canonical obedience; all were to give up the theory on which the old
'Solemn League and Covenant' had been based; and all were to accept the
doctrine of the king's supremacy over the church. The result was, that two
thousand of the clergy signalised this Bartholomew Day by coming out of the
church. Baxter, Alleyne, Calamy, Owen, and Bates, were among them; while
Milton, Banyan, and Andrew Marvell, were among the laymen who adhered to their
cause.
The act became the
more harsh from its coming into operation just before one whole year's tithes
were due. Two thousand families, hitherto dependent on stipends for support,
were driven hither and thither in the search for a livelihood; and this was
rendered more and more difficult by a number of subordinate statutes passed in
rapid succession. The ejected ministers were not allowed to exercise, even in
private houses, the religious functions to which they had been accustomed.
Their books could not be published without episcopal sanction, previously
applied for and obtained. A statute, called the 'Conventicle Act,' punished
with fine, imprisonment, or transportation, every one present in any private
house where religious worship was carried on-if the total number exceeded by
more than five the regular members of the household. Another, called the
'Oxford Act,' imposed on these unfortunate ministers an oath of passive
obedience and non-resistance; and if they refused to take it, they were
prohibited from living within five miles of any place where they had ever
resided, or of any corporate town, and from eking out their scanty incomes by
keeping schools, or taking in boarders. A second and stricter version of the
Conventicle Act deprived the ministers of the right of trial by jury, and
empowered any justice of the peace to convict them on the oath of a single
informer, who was to be rewarded with one-third of the fines levied; no flaw in
the legal document, called the mittimus, was allowed to vitiate it; and the
'benefit of the doubt,' in any uncertain cases, was to be given to the
accusers, not to the accused.
Writers who take
opposite sides on this subject naturally differ as to the causes and
justification to be assigned for the ejection; but there is very little
difference of opinion as to the misery suffered during the years intervening
between 1662 and 1688. Those who, in one way or other, suffered homelessness,
hunger, and penury on account of the Act of Uniformity and the ejection that
followed it, have been estimated at 60,000 persons, and the amount of pecuniary
loss at twelve or fourteen millions sterling. Defoe, Penn, and other
contemporary writers, set down up-wards of 5000 Nonconformists as the number
who perished within the walls of prisons; and many, like Baxter, were hunted
from house to house, from chapel to chapel, by informers, whose only motive was
to obtain a portion of the fines levied for infringement of numerous
statutes.
Considered as a
historical fact, dissent may be said to have begun in England on this 24th
August 1662, when the Puritans, who had before formed a body within the church,
now ranged themselves as a dissenting or Nonconformist sect outside
it.
Note
2
The Fire of Northampton in September 20th 1675.
(Northampton Mercury Sept' 25 1875.)
The late Mr de
Wilde, writing in the "Northampton Mercury" on September 25th 1875, says:
September 20th 1675` - perhaps the most memorable day in the history of
Northampton - was a blistering autumn day, with a fierce wind blowing from the
West. We can imagine that the industrious trade folk were not tempted out much
but preferred - those that were in the leather trade to stay at home and apply
their skill to the manufacture of leathern bottles and the immense pliant
folding-top boots of the period, the women plying their bobbins and thread.
Towards 12 o'clock,
however, when, perhaps dinner was occupying the attention of most, the news
spread that a fire had broken out in a hovel near the castle, and had extended
to some adjoining tenements. Some run down to the scene of the disaster, to
look or assist in extinguishing the flames, while others deemed it the wiser
and more comfortable thing to make sure of a good dinner while it was good,
designing to stroll down afterwards and see what was to be done. Little did
they think, those who were thus nonchalant, that the fire was coming to them to
save them the trouble of going to it. But such it was and with terrible speed.
The bells of All
Hallows had scarcely chimed the hour of noon, when say an eyewitness they
"began to jangle a different tune." Dinner was then forgotten and boots and
leathern bottles and lace, and everything save personal safety, for fanned and
fostered by the fierce west wind, it was making it's way with terrific speed to
the centre of town, literally licking everything up in it's course. It
commenced in a cottage at the upper end of St Mary's Street near the castle. As
to it's origin, it is said that a poor woman ("an infamous and common woman."
says one writer), having some clothes boiling on the fire, got some straw and
put it under the pan, and having kindled "to a great wisp" of it, the sudden
blaze set the chimney on fire. The flames quickly communicated themselves to
the thatched roof, and from that spread to the adjoining tenements. Another
account says that the woman had gone into a neighbour's to gossip, leaving her
child alone in the house, and that on returning to fetch her child she found
the house on fire," and ran out, and away, crying "I shall be hanged, I shall
be hanged." The account adds: She is not yet returned, nor found to tell us
what she did." It is evident however, that the precise mode in which the
conflagration commenced is not known.
John Conant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This entry was last modified in Wikipedia on 29 August 2009.
Reverend John
Conant BA, MA, DD (18 October 1608 – 12 March 1694) was a clergyman and
Vice Chancellor of Oxford University.
Life
He was born at Yettington, Bicton, in southeast
Devon, the eldest son of Robert Conant and his wife, Elizabeth Morris. He was
educated first in the free school at Ilchester, Somerset, and then under the
instruction of the schoolmaster Thomas Branker, with additional instruction by
his uncle John, rector of Limington in Somerset. Taken by his uncle to Oxford
in 1627, he was enrolled on 18 February as a commoner of Exeter College. There
he was tutored by Lawrence Bodley, nephew of the benefactor of the Bodleian
Library. Conant quickly gained a mastery of Greek, debating publicly in that
language, and also excelled in Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. His potential was
recognised by John Prideaux, the anti-Arminian rector of Exeter, who commented
that he found nothing difficult. John Conant graduated BA on 26 May 1631, and
MA on 12 January 1634; on 30 June 1632 he was chosen a probationer of Exeter
College, and on 3 July 1633 made a fellow. He was ordained deacon and tutored
pupils until 1642, when the disruption of Oxford by the Civil War forced him to
depart, abandoning valuable books which he never regained.
With plans to join
his uncle at Limington, Conant found by the time he arrived, his uncle, a
supporter of the parliamentary cause, had gone to London. There his uncle
preached to the House of Commons on 26 July 1643, calling on it to reform the
church, and was a member of the Westminster assembly (not the nephew, as some
sources incorrectly assert). Remaining for a while at Limington, Conant
preached and carried out parish duties, until so menaced by royalist troops
that he joined his uncle in London and began to assist him in the parish of St
Botolph, Aldersgate, but he soon took up residence with the family of Lord and
Lady Chandos at Harefield, Middlesex, whom he served as chaplain. Lady Chandos,
the daughter of Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester, was his patron, awarding him
an annual stipend of £80, much of which he used to relieve the poor and
needy of the parish, and provide them with bibles and schooling.
Meanwhile, he gave
a weekday lecture for several years at nearby Uxbridge. On 20 December 1645 the
committee for plundered ministers offered him the rectory of Whimple, Devon,
but Conant refused it. When in 1647 subscription to the Solemn League and
Covenant was required of college fellows, Conant refused to take it, writing a
letter from Harefield dated 27 September 1647, resigning his fellowship at
Exeter.
In 1649 when the
rector of Exeter died, a majority of the fellows wanted Conant's uncle for the
position, but the elder Conant, wishing to remain at the parish of St Thomas,
Salisbury, urged his nephew for the post; the nephew was duly elected on 7 June
1649, and admitted to the office on 29 June 1649. Confronted with the question
of affirming his loyalty to the parliamentary government by taking the
engagement, which in October 1649 was made mandatory for members of colleges,
Conant took it, but declared to the commissioners that in doing so he was not
abridging his liberty to declare allegiance to any other future power that God
might put over him, and did not necessarily approve of all that the government
had done.
Taking up his
duties with alacrity, Conant was an ideal choice for rector. He found the
college deficient in discipline and deeply in debt, and remedied both,
enforcing strict observance of the college statutes. He also attended the
academic exercises and daily prayers of the college and catechized the college
servants. Refuting Socinianism and Roman Catholicism in weekly instruction to
the undergraduates, he drew on such standard works of reformed scholasticism as
Johannes Wollebius's Compendium theologiae Christianae and Johannes Piscator's
Aphorismi doctrinae Christianae. For more advanced students he led a study of
biblical prophecy, using Thomas Parker's The Visions and Prophecies of Daniel
Expounded (1646), a book by a New England minister which asserted that the pope
was the antichrist. Conant's style of leadership at Exeter attracted large
numbers of students, including some from abroad. He was awarded the DD on 31
May 1654.
During his time as
rector of Exeter, John Conant preached regularly at three nearby parishes: he
preached every Friday morning at seven o'clock at All Saints' for more than ten
years, developing a complete body of divinity for his auditors; he preached
almost every Sunday for several years at St Michael's; and he preached at St
Mary Magdalen's every other Sunday for half of each year. As vicar of
Kidlington, near Oxford, which was annexed to the rectory of Exeter, he also
preached frequently, although he declined the rectory of Ewelme in Oxfordshire,
which was also attached to the college.
In August 1651 he
married Elizabeth Reynolds (d. 1707), youngest daughter of Edward Reynolds,
then rector of Braunston, Northamptonshire; the couple had six sons and six
daughters.
Conant was
presbyterially ordained to the ministry at Salisbury in October 1652, and in
September 1654 he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He
lectured twice a week in order to fulfil the duties of that office, basing his
lectures on the biblical annotations of Hugo Grotius, whose philological
scholarship was much admired even by those who rejected his Arminianism. In
1657 as compensation for the sequestered income of his divinity chair, Conant
was awarded by Oliver Cromwell the income from the rectory of Abergele,
Denbighshire, returning much of which to its resident vicar and to the poor of
the parish. None of his theological lectures were ever published, and Conant
later destroyed his notes for them.
Shortly after
Richard Cromwell succeeded his father as chancellor of Oxford University, he
named John Conant as vice-chancellor, on 9 October 1657. Prior to this the
bursars' accounts of Jesus College show him handling payments to the university
by 1654. While vice-chancellor Conant restored many traditions, such as the
wearing of caps and hoods, which his predecessor John Owen had considered
popish. He went to London in 1659 with Seth Ward and John Wilkins to help
thwart the grant of a university charter to Durham College. And he now sought
to enforce discipline in the whole university just as he had in Exeter College.
In 1659 he was instrumental in procuring the enormous library of John Selden
for the Bodleian.
Described by his
contemporaries as thin and short in stature, Conant became completely blind in
1686. He died on 12 March 1694 and was buried in the rebuilt All Saints'
Church, Northampton, where he is commemorated by a monument and Latin
epitaph.
|
