| Description | Grant of the remainder of a 99 years' lease by Rob. Beake, alderman, and Jas. Neale, alderman, of a tenement in Well Street to Joh. Crithlow and Joh. Woolwich, upon payment by grantees of £100 to Joh. Higgenson and Anne, his wife, formerly wife of Tho. Sargenson.
Seals and sign. of Beake, Nailea, John and Anne Higgenson. Witn. (dorso) to sealing, Hen. Jephcott, Mat. Parker, Ric. Chetwinde. To delivery, Will. Rowney, Hob. Marr.
The following deeds complete those of the Commonwealth period. Dr. Bryan (DR0429/212), the famous divine, who was vicar during the Puritan period, survived the Restoration, when he was ejected from the living, some fifteen years, dying in 1675, when his Anglican successor, Dr. Nat. Wanley, preached the funeral sermon, for those times a rare instance of theological amity. Bryan was a scholar and disputant of eminence, being, Wanley said, "as another Saul, higher than his brethren by the head and shoulders, especially in political and polemical divinity." He was something of a religious versifier, too - poet, perhaps, is not the word - and in Colville's "Worthies of Warwickshire" occur some characteristic lines of his on a death-bed repentance:-
"Bed-rid devotion: Chimney prayers, the Name
Of God brought forth in a Phlegmatick cough
And Lord have mercy on me, will be lame
Seeking repentance will not be enough
Though likely signs of truth of grace begin
To shew themselves then, they will be too thin."
I do not know why there seems to have been so much money needed for church repairs (DR0429/214, 215, 217) during this period. |