Roger Brereley

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Roger Brereley (Brearley, Brierley etc.) (1586–1637) was an English clergyman, known as the founder of the

Calvinistic orthodoxy, not a sectary, and he censures Jacobus Arminius
.

Life

He was born on 4 August 1586, at

puritan. He took orders and became perpetual curate of Grindleton Chapel, in the parish of Mitton in Craven; Grindleton is about two miles north of Clitheroe. He held (in 1626) a close in Castleton
, in the manor of Rochdale, which had belonged to his grandfather. His preaching was simple and spiritual, and his followers soon became distinguished as a group. Brereley himself, in his piece Of True Christian Liberty, writes:

And now men say, I'm deeply drown'd in schism,
Retyr'd from God's grace unto Grindletonism.

Some fifty charges were exhibited against Brereley at York by direction of the high commission, in his first appearance in 1617. This trial was one of two such occasions

York Cathedral. In 1631 Brereley was instituted to the living of Burnley, Lancashire
. He died in June 1637, and was buried 13 June. He married Ann Hardman in 1615 and left six children - Alice, Thomas, Mary, John, Roger & Abel. John and Roger were both ordained and served in different parishes in Lancashire; Abel died in 1696, when he is described as a chapman (trader). Alice kept her father's sermon notes, which she later showed to Josias Collier, who edited and published them.

Works

His literary remains are:

Grindletonians and their reputation

Main article: Grindletonians

Brereley had a local following, attracting worshippers from the nearby Giggleswick parish of Christopher Shute, but became more widely known after the proceedings against him. In 1618 the diarist Nicholas Assheton records the burial of one John Swinglehurst as of a follower of 'Brierley'. Thomas Shephard knew of him in 1622.[2]

In a sermon preached at

Ephraim Pagitt in his Heresiography (2nd ed. 1645, p. 89), and glanced at by Alexander Ross, Πανσεβεια (2nd ed. 1655, p. 365). In 1635 John Webster, curate at Kildwick, was before a church court charged with being a Grindletonian, and simultaneously in New England John Winthrop thought that Anne Hutchinson was one.[2] The last known Grindletonian died in the 1680s.[1]

In Fiction

A fictional portrayal of Brereley is found in Farmer's Son (2018) by Walter King [4] This takes Brereley's story from his arrival in Gisburne in 1613 as assistant to the vicar, Rev. Henry Hoyle, through his founding of the congregation in a redundant chapel at Grindleton, to his return from imprisonment in York, where he faced charges of heterodoxy, in October 1617.

Notes

  1. ^ a b Francis J. Bremer, Tom Webster, Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia (2006), p. 31.
  2. ^ a b c Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (1972), pp. 81-4.
  3. ^ "Chetham's Library MS A.2.24". www.chethams.org.uk. Archived from the original on 18 August 2002.
  4. ISBN 9781728944067

References

Further reading

  • Nigel Smith, Elegy for a Grindletonian: poetry and heresy in northern England, 1615-1640. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 33:2 (2003), 335-52.
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