passed amid all the inconveniences that result from confined circumstances. He however, obtained from George II. a pension of £40. a year during life; and, in the year 1746, he received a sum of money for performing the part of Tiresias, the blind prophet, in Edipus, which was acted for his benefit at Drurylane Theatre. He afterwards settled at Kilkenny, at the Latin school there. He was the author of three dramatic pieces, and also of a Latin Poem, called "Templum Veneris, sive Amorum Rhapsodia." By the following fragment found among the papers of Mrs. Pilkington, it would seem that poor Clancy was cursed with a termagant wife:

Hapless Clancy! grieve no more,
Socrates was plagu'd before;
Though o'ercast, thy visual ray
Meets no more the light of day,
Yet ev'n here is comfort had,
Good prevailing over bad.

Now thou canst no more behold

The grim aspect of thy scold;

Oh! what raptures wouldst thou find,

Wert thou deaf as well as blind.

AUTHORITIES.

Mrs. Pilkington's Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 151.-Swift's Miscellaneous Works.

THE LIFE

OF

THE REV. JOHN TROUGHTON.

"Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour."

THIS eminent divine lived in the seventeenth century. He was what was then called a Puritan; a poor, despised, persecuted class of men, of whom the world was not worthy. Wood, author of the "Athenæ Oxonienses," although greatly opposed to the Puritans, speaks very favourably of Troughton, and he is also mentioned by Calamy and Palmer, as a man of great learning and talents, and of much moderation. I prefer Wood's account of him, which I shall insert here, to those of the other two.

"John Troughton, son of Nathan Troughton, a clothier, was born in the city of Coventry, and educated in the free-school there, under Samuel Frankland, he became scholar of St. John's College, 1655, and afterwards a Fellow, and Bachelor of Arts. Upon the restoration of King Charles II. he was, however, ejected, to make room for one who had been expelled by the visitors in 1648, and retired to a market town in Oxfordshire, commonly called Bicester; where, living

S

a moderate nonconformist, he read academical learning to young men, and sometimes preached in private, whereby he got a comfortable subsistence. Upon the issuing out of his Majesty's declaration for the toleration of religion, dated 15th of March, 1671, this Mr. Troughton was one of those four, (Dr. Henry Langley, and Thomas Gilbert, and Henry Cornish, Bachelor of Divinity, being the other three,) who were appointed by the principal heads of the brethren, to carry on the work of preaching within the city of Oxford. The place where they held their meetings was in Thames-street, without the north gate, in a house which had been built a little before the civil war began, by Thomas Punn, alias Thomas Aires; where each person endeavouring to shew his parts, this our author Troughton was, by the auditory of scholars, (who came among them merely out of novelty,) held the best, and was by them most applauded. The truth is, though the man had been blind, occasioned by the small-pox, ever since he was four years old, yet he was a good school divine and metaphysician, and was much commended while he was in the University for his disputations. He was not of so busy, turbulent, and furious a spirit, as those of his persuasion commonly are, but very moderate. And although he often preached, as occasions offered themselves, in prohibited assemblies, yet he did not make it his business, by employing all the little tricks and artifices, too frequently practised by other hot-headed zealots of his fraternity, viz. vilifying and railing at the established ordinances of the church, libelling the conformable ministry, keeping their meetings at the

very time when the services and administration of the church are regularly performing, &c.-he did not, I say, by these and such like most unwarrantable contrivances, endeavour to withdraw weaker persons from the sacred bosom of the church, in order to fix and herd them in associated, defying conventicles. He was respected by, and maintained an amicable correspondence with some of the conformable clergy, because of his great knowledge and moderation. He hath written and published, as follows:

"Lutherus Redivivus; or, the Protestant Doctrine of Justification by Faith only, vindicated; and the plausible opinion of justification by faith and obedience, proved to be Arminian and Popish, and to lead unavoidably to Socinianism. Part I. London, 1667. This is reflected on by Thomas Hotchkis, in his preface to the second part of 'A Discourse concerning Imputed Righteousness, &c.' London, 1678.

"Lutherus Redivivus; or, the Protestant Doctrine of Justification by Christ's Righteousness imputed to Believers, explained and vindicated. Part II. London, 1678.

"Letter to a Friend touching God's Providence about sinful actions; in answer to a Letter, entitled, "The Reconcileableness of God's Presence, &c.' and also to a Postscript of that letter. London, 1678. "Popery the Grand Apostasy; being the substance of certain Sermons preached on 2 Thess. ii chap. from verse 1 to 12, on occasion of the desperate plot of the Papists against the King, kingdom, and Protestant Religion. To which is added, a Sermon on Rev. xviii. 4. preached on the 5th. of Nov. 1678. London, 1680

"An Apology for the Nonconformists, shewing their reasons, both for their not conforming, and for their preaching publicly, though forbidden by law. London, 1681, quarto.

"An Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet's Sermon and his Defence of it, so much as concerneth the Nonconformists' preaching. Printed with the Apology.

"This learned and religious person, Mr. John Troughton, died in a house of one of the brethren, situate and being in All-Saint's parish within the city of Oxford, on the 20th of August, 1681, aged 44 years; whereupon his body was carried to Bicester before mentioned, alias Burchester, and buried in the church there. At which time Abraham James, a blind man, master of the free-school at Woodstock, (sometime of Magdalen Hall,) preaching his funeral sermon, did take occasion not only to be lavish in the commendations of the defunct, but to make several glances on the government established by law; so that an auditor there, named Samuel Blackwell, M.A. and vicar of Bicester, (a zealous man for the Church of England,) complaining to the diocesan of him, James was glad to retract what he had said before him, to prevent an ejection from his school, which otherwise would inevitably have come to pass."

AUTHORITY:

Calamy's Life of Baxter-Palmer's Lives of the Nonconformists-Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses.