with a ruby and two diamonds owned by a Mrs. Roberts of New York. This is all possible, but rather unlikely, though of Taylor's personal devotion to Charles there can be no doubt. The King would scarcely bestow such tokens, except as he was looking forward to the end; and though Taylor was probably in London early in 1649, the King was so closely guarded that Taylor would hardly have been of the very few admitted to him.

Later than this, Taylor's unwise use of Golden Grove, the name of his place of relative concealment, as the title of one of his books, in the preface of which he makes an indirect reference apparently to Cromwell as "the son of Zippor," caused his arrest and imprisonment, probably in the Tower, early in 1655, from which Evelyn's intercession procured his release.

Taylor was now in circumstances of very great personal distress, to meet which he seems to have been naturally unfitted. The ejected Episcopal clergy were mostly poor and in hiding and they and their friends were objects of suspicion. For some reason Lord Carberry seems to have withdrawn his support and the shelter of his estate. Taylor poor, suspected, homeless, bereft of wife and some of his children who had died at Golden Grove, was dependent upon the sympathy and bounty of Evelyn. In his extreme poverty he apparently had been helped by a Mrs. Joanna Bridges who, from unsubstantial stories, was thought by Bishop Heber to be a natural child of the King, and who had an estate at Man-di-nam, where she had perhaps cared for Taylor's surviving children. At any rate she became his wife, probably in 1656, and his fortunes began to mend.

Through the influence of Evelyn, Lord Conway, "a pious and active Irish landlord, devoted to the Anglican Church and a convinced, though not fanatical loyalist," who had a magnificent seat at Portmore in "the woods. of Ulster" in the northeastern part of Ireland, invited

Taylor to be assistant lecturer in the parish of Lisburn. There seems to have been a sort of collegiate church there, the vicar of which was an Independent preacher partly supported by Conway. The place was not inviting, but there was no choice. Taylor's difficulties in regard to stipend, serving under an Independent, etc., were partially removed and in 1658 he was installed as lecturer at Lisburn and probably (though it was illegal), as private Chaplain to Conway, who treated him with much consideration. Cromwell had given him a passport and protection for his family, under his sign manual, and he had letters to powerful friends and supporters of the Parliament in Dublin. It is easy to see, however, that his position was extremely uncomfortable. The neighboring parishes were filled with fighting Presbyterian ministers who were in perpetual hostility to the Anabaptists, on the one hand, and the Episcopalians on the other. The death of Cromwell in 1658 gave them greater freedom and much of their wrath fell upon Taylor, who was deprived of his lectureship, arrested and summoned to Dublin. He was shortly released and returned to Portmore, burying himself in his books and longing for England.

At the Restoration Taylor was in England, and on the 29th of May, 1660, took glad part in welcoming Charles II. He was now forty-seven and perhaps the most brilliant writer and preacher, if not one of the most distinguished men among the Episcopal clergy, and there seemed to be every reason to expect his appointment to one of the vacant sees in England. This would have been a fit and happy lot. Why we cannot discover, but he was sent back to Ireland as Bishop of Connor and Down, and later was made-not Bishop but administrator of the adjacent, but temporarily dismantled, diocese of Dromore and ViceChancellor of the University of Dublin. In the last office he was in his element. To the reorganization of the University, whose affairs were in the utmost disorder

through the disasters of the civil war, he gave himself with fervent zeal and conspicuous success. In his work as Bishop it was different. His diocese, today in the wealthiest and most cultivated part of Ireland, was then out of the way, semi-savage and fanatical. His parishes were filled with obstinate and bitter Presbyterians, angry at being disturbed, who denied his authority as Bishop, refused attendance upon his visitations and rejected scornfully all his overtures. He did not understand them, and they tormented him. It was a misfit all round. Like many a really sweet-natured man he seems to have had a vein of obstinacy and even of implacability, when goaded by senseless opposition. Worn out by the resistance of his "dour" Presbyterians, he invoked the secular arm, forced them out of their churches, caused, at least indirectly, their imprisonment and severe handling, and brought from England a colony of Episcopal clergy to take their place. The Bishop had to fight his way to authority. It was a poor use to which to put so fine a tool. Curiously enough his eager intellectual activity, during these distractions, was displayed in the publication of his "Worthy Communicant," one of the best of his devotional books; his "Dissuasive from Popery," really an appeal to the Irish people on behalf of Episcopacy, and his glowing sermon on the death of Archbishop Bramhall.

Meantime he seems to have been deserted, or at least forgotten by his English friends, Thurland, Hatton, Evelyn. They failed to respond to his earnest appeals. He wrote passionately to his old friend Sheldon, once of All Souls, now Archbishop of Canterbury, begging for some appointment in England-some translation to an English see. But it was all in vain. Whether his Irish Episcopal friends thought it was indispensable to have some one of his reputation in Ireland; whether the King for some unknown reason was secretly against him; whether

he had acquired a reputation for vigor in administration and of breadth in theology which was inconvenient-we know not. He found himself irrevocably shut up in barbarous Ireland. In all this his circumstances have a curious likeness to those of Edmund Spenser, near the close of his life. Cultured, sensitive, fond of friends, dependent for doing his best upon a congenial atmosphere, he felt his isolation, lost courage, hope and much of his sweetness, and in a measure ceased to be the Jeremy Taylor of the wonderful sermons of Golden Grove. There is a tradition that, in his distress, he caused his secretary to collect all the copies he could of his "Liberty of Prophesying" and burn them. It may well be true, for the principles of that noble book he had failed in practice to carry out, and though it had passed to a second edition, it is significant that he left it out of the list of his books which he gave to Graham for the library of Dublin University. Under these conditions, his health failed and he died at Lisburn August 13, 1667, just fifty-four years of age, practically a broken-hearted man. A few days before, his only surviving son, Charles, was buried at St. Margaret's, Westminster. Taylor's memory and grave were neglected until 1827, when a tablet to him was erected in the Cathedral Church at Lisburn, and in 1866, among some bones discovered in confusion in the Cathedral of Dromore, a skull larger than usual was found, and this, supposed to be Taylor's, was buried in the choir, and a brass tablet placed above it.

Taylor was a handsome man, of sweet voice, gracious manners, and with a tinge of vanity in his personal appearance. He was profoundly learned-with the learning of his time-in theology, philosophy, history and literature, though far less so in science. Living in a period of the greatest political, ecclesiastical and theological upheaval, he was much of the time comparatively destitute of money, books and home; was harassed, imprisoned, and driven

about; yet such was his genius and facility of work, that his writings, some of them immortal, fill fifteen large octavo volumes, and his is one of the dearest names in English literature.

He was not a deep or original thinker; not a philosopher or theologian of the first order, but, with a natural conservatism, possessed an astonishing insight into the meaning and moral availability of accepted truth. A strict churchman and loyalist he was rather latitudinarian in theology. He was not fond of music; did not believe in sprinkling in baptism; was a supporter of the confessional; thought it right for the unlawful proclamations and edicts of a true prince to be proclaimed by the clergy, and justified the killing of all a master's slaves if the master himself was murdered by one. In character he was ingenuous, pure, unselfish, a passionate lover of truth, full of charity, attached to the old, yet with broad vision and with a genius for religion, or perhaps one might say, for devoutness; for all his writings, even his elaborate prefaces and dedications, and his polemical and casuistical treatises, have a wonderful and marked elevation of spirit, as if the author, though engaged in trivial definitions and controversies, naturally walked with God.

Taylor wrote some poetry, mostly hymns; but cramped by the absurd metres which were the fashion of his time, his verse has relatively no value. His fame rests chiefly on his genius as a writer of resplendent prose, in which he has perhaps only one or two equals in the whole range of English letters.

Here he has unquestionably suffered from his subject matter. He was first of all a clergyman, a preacher, a divine, a bishop, and people do not generally think of divinity as literature, or run to sermons for the pure pleasure of literary thought and expression; even in the Sevenenth Century they did not; still less do they in the

tieth. All the more remarkable is it that Taylor,