Jeremy Taylor
Jeremy Taylor | |
---|---|
Bishop of Down and Connor | |
Church | Church of Ireland |
Diocese | Down and Connor |
In office | 1661–1667 |
Predecessor | Henry Leslie |
Successor | Roger Boyle |
Orders | |
Ordination | 1633 |
Consecration | 27 January 1661 by John Bramhall |
Personal details | |
Born | before 15 August 1613 |
Died | 13 August 1667 | (aged 53–54)
Nationality | English |
Denomination | Anglicanism |
Education | The Perse School |
Alma mater | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge |
Sainthood | |
Feast day | 13 August |
Venerated in | Anglican Communion |
Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) was a cleric in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression, and he is frequently cited as one of the greatest prose writers in the English language.[1][2]
Taylor was under the patronage of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. He went on to become chaplain in ordinary to King Charles I as a result of Laud's sponsorship. This made him politically suspect when Laud was tried by Parliament and executed in January 1644/5 during the English Civil War. After the parliamentary victory over the King, he was briefly imprisoned several times.
Eventually, he was allowed to live quietly in Wales, where he became the private chaplain of the Earl of Carbery. After the
He is remembered in the liturgical calendars of the Church of England and other Anglican churches.
Early life
Taylor was born in
The best evidence of his diligence as a student is the enormous learning of which he showed so easy a command in later years. In 1633, although still below the canonical age, he took holy orders, and accepted the invitation of Thomas Risden, a former fellow student, to supply his place for a short time as lecturer at St Paul's Cathedral.
Career under Laud
Archbishop William Laud sent for Taylor to preach in his presence at Lambeth, and took the young man under his wing. Taylor did not vacate his fellowship at Cambridge before 1636, but he spent, apparently, much of his time in London, for Laud desired that his considerable talents should receive better opportunities for study and improvement than the obligations of constant preaching would permit. In November 1635 he had been nominated by Laud to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford,[6] where, says Antony Wood,[7] love and admiration still waited on him. He seems, however, to have spent little time there. He became chaplain to his patron the archbishop, and chaplain in ordinary to Charles I.[8]
At Oxford, William Chillingworth was then busy with his magnum opus, The Religion of Protestants, and it is possible that through his discussions with Chillingworth Taylor may have been turned towards the liberal movement of his age. After two years in Oxford, he was presented, in March 1638, by William Juxon, Bishop of London, to the rectory of Uppingham in Rutland. There he settled down to the work of a country priest.
In the next year he married Phoebe Langsdale, by whom he had six children: William (d.1642), George (?), Richard (the last two died c.1656/7), Charles, Phoebe and Mary.
Royalist prisoner
During the next fifteen years, Taylor's movements are not easily traced. He seems to have been in London during the last weeks of Charles I in 1649, from whom he is said to have received his watch and some jewels which had ornamented the ebony case in which he kept his Bible. He had been taken prisoner with other Royalists in the siege of
Writings
Bishop in Ireland at the Restoration
He probably left
At the
Of the university he wrote:
I found all things in a perfect disorder ... a heap of men and boys, but no body of a college, no one member, either fellow or scholar, having any legal title to his place, but thrust in by tyranny or chance.
Accordingly, he set himself vigorously to the task of framing and enforcing regulations for the admission and conduct of members of the university, and also of establishing lectureships. His episcopal labours were still more arduous. There were, at the date of the Restoration, about seventy Presbyterian ministers in the north of Ireland, and most of these were from the west of Scotland, with a dislike for
This was Taylor's golden opportunity to show the wise toleration he had earlier advocated, but the new bishop had nothing to offer the Presbyterian clergy but the alternative of submission to episcopal ordination and jurisdiction or deprivation. Consequently, at his first visitation, he declared thirty-six churches to be vacant; and repossession was secured on his orders. At the same time, many of the gentry were apparently won over by his undoubted sincerity and devotedness as well as by his eloquence. With the Roman Catholic element of the population he was less successful. Not knowing the English language, and firmly attached to their traditional forms of worship, they were nonetheless compelled to attend a service they considered profane, conducted in a language they could not understand.
As Reginald Heber says:
No part of the administration of Ireland by the English crown has been more extraordinary and more unfortunate than the system pursued for the introduction of the Reformed religion. At the instance of the Irish bishops Taylor undertook his last great work, the Dissuasive from Popery (in two parts, 1664 and 1667), but, as he himself seemed partly conscious, he might have more effectually gained his end by adopting the methods of Ussher and William Bedell, and inducing his clergy to acquire the Irish language.
During this period, he was married a second time to Joanna Brydges, supposedly a natural daughter of Charles I.[citation needed] From this marriage, two daughters were born: Mary, who went on to marry Archbishop Francis Marsh and had issue and Joanna, who married Edward Harrison, MP for Lisburn, and had issue. From his father-in-law, Marsh inherited a silver watch, said to have been a gift from Charles I; this watch remained in the family of his great-grandson, Francis Marsh, barrister-at-law.[11]
Taylor died at Lisburn on 13 August 1667. He was buried at Dromore Cathedral where an apsidal chancel was built in 1870 over the crypt where he was laid to rest.
Jeremy Taylor is honoured in the
Family
Jeremy Taylor is said to have been a lineal descendant of Rowland Taylor, but the assertion has not been proved.[14] Through his daughter, Mary, who married Archbishop Francis Marsh, he had numerous descendants.[15]
Principal publications
- A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying (1646), a famous plea for toleration published decades before John Locke's Letters Concerning Toleration.
- Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy against the Pretence of the Spirit (1649)
- Great Exemplar … a History of … Jesus Christ (1649), inspired, its author tells us, by his earlier intercourse with the earl of Northampton
- The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) | eBook
- The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651) | eBook
- Twenty-seven Sermons Preached at Golden Grove, for the Summer Half-year … (1651)
- Twenty-five Sermons Preached at Golden Grove, for the Winter Half-year … (1653)
- Clerus Domini: or, A Discourse of the Divine Institution, Necessity, Sacrednesse, and Separation of the Office Ministerial (1651)
- The Real Presence and Spirituall of Christ in the Blessed Statement Proved Against the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. (1654)
- Golden Grove; or a Manuall of Daily Prayers and Letanies … (1655)
- Unum Necessarium (1655), on the doctrine of repentance, perceived Pelagianism gave great offence to Presbyterians.
- Discourse of the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship (1657)
- Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience … (1660)
- The Worthy Communicant; or a Discourse of the Nature, Effects, and Blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lords Supper … (1660)
- Contemplations of the state of man in this life and in that which is to come (1684)[16]
Secondary literature and posthumous editions
- Antoine, Sister Mary Salome. The Rhetoric of Jeremy Taylor's Prose: Ornament of the Sunday Sermons. PhD Dissertation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1946.
- Bonney, Henry Kaye. The Life of ... Jeremy Taylor ... Lord Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore. London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1815.
- Brown, W. J. Jeremy Taylor. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1925.
- Carroll, Thomas K., ed. Jeremy Taylor: Selected Works. Preface by John Booty. The Classics of Western Spirituality Series. New York City: Paulist Press, 1990.
- de Ricci Albrecht, Sister Mary Catherine. The Exemplum in the Sermons of Jeremy Taylor. M.A. dissertation. District of Columbia: Catholic University of America, 1947.
- Duyckinck, George L. The Life of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore. New York: 1860.
- Gosse, Edmund. Jeremy Taylor. The English Men of Letters Series. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1904.
- Grosart, A.B., ed. The Poems and Verse Translations of Jeremy Taylor. Fuller Worthies’ Library. 1870.
- Gathorne-Hardy, Robert. A Bibliography of the Writings of Jeremy Taylor to 1700. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University, 1971.
- Heber, Reginald, ed. The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor […], with a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of His Writings, in Ten Volumes. Revised and corrected by Charles Page Eden. London: Longman, Green, and Longmans, 1848.
- Herndon, S. Jeremy Taylor's Use of the Bible. PhD. dissertation. New York: New York University, 1949.
- Hughes, H. Trevor. The Piety of Jeremy Taylor. London: Macmillan, 1960.
- Huntley, Frank L. Jeremy Taylor and the Great Rebellion: A Study of His Mind and Temper in Controversy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970.
- Jackson, Robert S. The Meditative Life of Christ: A Study of the Background and Structure of Jeremy Taylor's "The Great Exemplar." PhD. dissertation. Ann Arbor: U of MI, 1959.
- Peterson, Raymond A. The Theology of Jeremy Taylor: An Investigation of the Temper of Caroline Anglicanism. PhD. dissertation. New York: Union Theological Seminary, 1961.
- Stranks, Charles James. The Life and Writings of Jeremy Taylor. London: Church Historical Society, 1952.
- Streatfield, K.M. A Critical Edition of Six Occasional Sermons by Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). PhD Dissertation. University of Edinburgh, 1988.
- Wheeldon, John. The Life of Bishop Taylor, and the Pure Spirit of his Writings, Extracted and Exhibited for General Benefit. London: George Bigg, 1793.
- Williamson, Hugh Ross. Jeremy Taylor. London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1952.
- Worley, G. Jeremy Taylor: A Sketch of His Life & Times, with a Popular Exposition of His Works. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904.
See also
Notes
- ^ Saintsbury, George (1919). A First Book of English Literature. London: Macmillan. p. 121.
- ^ Gosse, Edmund (1903). Jeremy Taylor. London: Macmillan. p. 218.
- ^ a b Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
- ^ Cambridge News (The Perse School 400-year anniversary supplement) 16 September 2015, p. 34.
- ^ "Tailor, Jeremy (TLR626J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c "Jeremy Taylor", CCEL
- ^ Athenae Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), iii. 781
- ^ Kiefer, James E., "Jeremy Taylor, Bishop and Theologian", Biographical Sketches of memorable Christians of the past
- ^ Edmund Gosse, 'Jeremy Taylor', 1904.
- ^ J. Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 86–88.
- Sir Henry Marsh, Baronet
- ^ "The Calendar". The Church of England. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
- ISBN 978-1-64065-235-4.
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ Burke's Peerage, 1857, p.664: Sir Henry Marsh, Baronet; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1871, Vol. II, p. 888, Marsh of Springmount
- ^ Dromore.), Jeremy TAYLOR (Bishop of Down and Connor, and of (1684). Contemplations of the state of man in this life and in that which is to come. [An abridgment of a Spanish work by J. E. Nieremberg, entitled, "De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno."]. John Kidgell.
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References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Taylor, Jeremy". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Quotations related to Jeremy Taylor at Wikiquote
- Works by or about Jeremy Taylor at Internet Archive
- Works by Jeremy Taylor at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Dictionary of National Biography. 1885–1900. .
- Brief Biography of Jeremy Taylor (Archive of 13 August 2006)
- Works of Jeremy Taylor online
- Church of Ireland Prayers