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aske your pardon for the liberty I have taken to trouble you ; I know you love & value things that come
from the heart ; I hope these are such . That you may long live to build in the temple is the earnest prayer of Your hearty friend & servant ,
ROB . BEAKE , Whitehall , 16 th Oct . 1657 . I am for the tyirre at London ; if I can serve you in any thing I pray command mee .
Two Letters from John Rawlet to Richard Baxter . [ The name of Rawlet is new to us , but these letters are not uninteresting
as they discover the temper of the times and the disposition of such men as Wilkins , the Bishop of Chester referred to , and Dr . Tillotson , afterwards the Archbishop . The following extracts from Baxter ' s Life and Times
will explain more fully the passages In these letters relating to Baxter ' s rumoured conformity ( his nonconformity is still matter of wonder ); to the state of things at Kidderminster , where it appears , from Baxter ' s own
statement , the most religious people were dissatisfied with his seeming to play fast and loose with the then persecuting Church of England ( Pt . III . pp . 70 and 73 ); and to the character of Mr . Foley . ]
" At the same time , there fell out a case which tended to promote the calumny , " of his taking part with the enemies of godliness and countenancing church-tyranny . "The old reading vicar of . Kiderminster died , about
the day of the date of the Act against Conventicles . Sir Ralph Clare , his friend and my applauder but remover , being dead a little before , the old patron , Col . Jno . Bridges , sold the
patronage to Mr . Thomas Foley , with a condition that he should present me next , If I were capable ? which he promised , as also that he would present no oilier but by my consent . Because I had done so much before to
have continued in that place , and had desired to preach there but as a curate , under the rending vicar , when / refused a bislioprick , and the vicarage was now come to be worth £ 2 QQ per annum , and this falling void at the same time when the Independents had
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filled the land with the report tnat I was writing against thein for canfo r ^ mity ; hereupon the bishops them ^ selves believed it , that the love of Kiderrninster : would make ifte conform : and they concurred in vending
the report , insomuch that one certainly told me , that he came there from a worthy minister , to whom the Archbishop of York [ Sterne ] spake these words t ' Take it on iny word , Mr » Baxter doth conform , and . is gone to his beloved Kiderminster . ' And so l ) o th parties concurred in the false report , though one only raised it . "— -Pfco III . p . 71 .
cc At this time , as is said , the old reading Vicar dying , it was cast on me to chuse the next : but the religious people , who were the main body of the town and parish , would not so much as chuse a man , when they might have had their choice ; no , nor so much as write or send one word to one about it , lest they should seem to consent to his conformity , or to be
obliged to him in his office . Whereupon I also refused to meddle in the choice , and the rather because some of the malignant slanderous prelatists who write of me , as Durel , L'Estrange , and many others have done , would in
likelihood have said , that I contracted for some commodity to myself ; and because Mr . Foley , the patron , was a truly honest religious man , who ., I knew , would make the best choice he could / ' —Pt . III . p . 73 .
" On this occasion I will mention the great mercy of God to that town and country in the raising of one man , Mr . Thomas Foley , who from almost nothing , did get about five thousand pound per annum or more , by iron * works , and that with so just and blameless dealing , that all men that ever he had to do with , that ever I heard of ,-
magnified his great integrity and honesty , which was questioned by none : and being a religious , faithful manp he purchased among other lands , the patronage of several great places , and among the rest of Stourbridge and Kiderminster , and so chose the best conformable ministers to them that ; could be got : and not only so , hut placed his eldest son ' s habitation in Kiderminster , which became a great protection and blessing for the town * having placed two families more eJsewhere of his two other sons , all tbrea
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144 Original Letters from and to Richard B < txte&
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1825, page 144, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2534/page/16/
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