Volume II 1603-1660 - The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

INTRODUCTION. ciii
king.' In May of this year (1642) Mr. Sleigh, M.A., the curate of the
society, having petitioned for preferment, the benchers recommended p. 266
him to the lord keeper, and he left the inn. Mr. Hugh Cressey
then became preacher at a salary of £4o per annum, and so remained
p. 266
for about a year. He had a somewhat remarkable career. The son
of a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, he became in 1630-3 I M.A. and fellow
of Merton College, Oxford. Before the outbreak of the troubles he
was designated for a canonry at Windsor and a deanery in Ireland,
neither of which appointments, owing to the action of Parliament,
was he able to occupy. He appears, about 1642-44, to have been in
London without employment, and during that period to have temporarily
held the post of lecturer and preacher at the Temple church.
Some time after leaving the Temple he determined to alter his faith,
and in 1646 he made at Rome a public recantation of the protestant
heresy. He then became a Benedictine monk, and being in some
distress in Paris was assisted by the Oueen Henrietta Maria. After
the restoration he was domestic chaplain to the Carryls of West
Grinstead, in Sussex, an old catholic family, who were subsequently
ennobled by King James II. after his flight and during his residence
in France. Mr. Cressey afterwards returned to London, and became
chaplain to Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles 11.2 He was succeeded
in 1643 by the Rev. — Newton, who was appointed by the
house of commons, on the 28th June,3 " to be lecturer there." He
received a salary of ,‘4o a year. The Rev. Geo. Newton, of Exeter P. 269
College, Oxford, a celebrated nonconformist divine, formerly of
Taunton, Somerset, seems to be the person referred to.' The P. 274
evening reader was the Rev. John Lock. The mastership, however,
was vacant, and for over two years the society was left without
anyone in Dr. Littleton's place. In 1644 the house of commons
resolved ' that, Dr. Littleton having deserted his post, and being with
the king, Dr. Richard Vines, a well-known preacher, and one of the
assembly of divines at Westminster, should be master of the New
At some time between 1646 and 1648 Mistress Littleton was paid Z2 los. as p. 285
compensation for certain presses left in the minister's house. Dr. Littleton was buried
under the communion table in the Temple Church in January, 1657-8. p. 367
" Athenx Oxon.," voL iii., p. 528 ; " Dict. Nat. Biography," vol. xiii., p. 74.
3 " Co m mo ns' Journals," vol. iii., p. 148.
" Diet. Nat. Biography," voL xL, p. 367.
' " Commons' Journals," vol. iii., p. 597- A. 1644.