ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



• a very kind welcome, both from the gentry, as a gentleman, and other good 

 Christians of inferior rank, as a minister of Jesus Christ.' " He preached 

 publicly there and elsewhere, apparently in the parish churches, until 1662, 

 when ' his wife now labouring under some weaknesses, and being weary with 

 the burden of household affairs, he retired to a chamber or two in a private 

 Family some miles distant. . . As long as he lived there, there was a church 

 always in that house.' ^* He afterwards moved to the neighbourhood of 

 St. Albans, and later to Bovingdon, being ' led thither by the invitation of a 

 religious and very kind Gentleman, freely accommodating him, with all the 

 conveniences of an habitation of his in that place.' '' ' Seeing he could not 

 preach in a church to many, he would preach in a chamber to a few,' '"' and 

 Bovingdon became the centre of a work which extended through all the 

 villages about. A regular meeting was established before 1669 at the house 

 of a Mrs. Bachelor in ' the Abbey parish ' of St. Albans, and here Staunton, 

 William Jenkyn of King's Langley,"^ and Isaac LoefFs, late rector of Shenley, 

 preached Sunday by Sunday to a congregation of a hundred persons.''^ 

 Staunton and LoefFs also preached regularly at Codicote, where there was a 

 meeting of a similar size.*' At Ridge conventicles were held at the house 

 of John Clarke, gentleman, and of John NichoUs, a rich yeoman, and the 

 Presbyterians had the support of Mr. Lomax, an attorney. Here, too, 

 the preachers were Staunton and LoeflFs.''* At Theobalds in the parish of 

 Cheshunt there was a congregation whose ministers were Thomas Wads- 

 worth and a Mr. Bragge." Staunton died in 1671,^^ and it may be that with 

 his death the congregations at Codicote and Ridge dispersed, for no licence 

 was asked for either of these places under the Declaration of Indulgence in 

 the following year. When driven away from Acton in 1669 Richard 

 Baxter and his wife settled at Totteridge, where they lived until 1672, and 

 here he preached in his own house.'*^ It was in Hertfordshire in 1 676 that 

 Baxter first preached publicly after his ejection. He had still an old licence 

 of the bishop and preached first at Rickmansworth and after that at the 

 churches of Sarratt, of King's Langley, and of various places in Buckingham- 

 shire.**' While at Rickmansworth he had a great discussion with William 

 Pcnn, the Quaker, and they ' continued speaking to Two Rooms full of People 

 (Fasting) from Ten a Clock till Five (One Lord and Two Knights, and Four 

 Conformable Ministers, besides others, being present, some all the Time and 

 some part),' for 'the neighbourhood of Rickmansworth abounded with 

 Quakers.' '' Presbyterianism, indeed, at this time seems to have been chiefly 

 in the east and in the extreme south of the county with the exceptions of 

 St. Paul's Walden and Ashwell.^" Licences were issued for meeting-houses 

 at Bishop's Stortford, Sawbridgeworth, and Little Hadham in the east, and at 

 Watford, Garston, Chipping Barnet, Little Berkhampstead and Abbot's 

 Langley in the south." Only two Presbyterian congregations — at St. Albans 

 and 'Bloxam' (? Broxbourne) — are mentioned in the return of 1715,^'' and 



" Mayo, Life and Death of Edmund Staunton, 19. '^ Ibid. 22. " Ibid. 23. ^o n,i(j_ j^, 



21 He had been ejected from Christ Church, Newgate Street, London, in 1662 (Hennessy, Novum 

 Repert. 126). 22 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf i, 92. ^^ Ibid. 93. "* Ibid. 94. 



25 Ibid. 95 ; Urwick, op. cit. 509. ^^ Salmon, op. cit. 117. 



2' Reliquiae Baxterianae (ed. Sylvester), pt. iii, 60, 103. ^^ ibjd. 174. 29 Ibid. 



30 Turner, Orig. Rec. of Early Nonconf. i, 215. " gatg^ Declaration of Indulgence, App. vii, p. xxxi. 

 32 Add. MS. 3 20 5 7, fol. U. 



4. 353 45 



