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Of fiddlers, peddlers, jayle-scap'd slaves,
Of tinkers, turn-coats, tospot-knaves,
Of theeves and scape-thrifts many a one,
With bouncing Besse and jolly Jone,
With idle boyes, and journey-men,
And vagrants that the country run:
Yea, Hobby-horse doth hither prance,
Maid-Marrian, and the Morrice-dance,
My summons fetcheth, far and near,
All that can swagger, roar,
and swear,
All that can dance, and drab, and drink,

They run to mee as to a sink.

These mee for their Commander take

And I do them my black-guard make."

"The honour of the Sabbath-day,

My dancing-greens have ta'en away;

Let preachers prate till they grow wood,
Where I am, they can do no good."

The lines I have just quoted describe the scene witnessed by Hall on many a May-day upon the village green at King's Norton, and it is not wonderful that his indignation should have been aroused by such a spectacle.

The traveller upon the Alcester Road may see the remnant of a May-pole at King's Wood, broken by age and the storms of many winters, but still tall enough to be a land-mark.

No doubt May-games were mischievous, but it was a brave act on the part of the minister to attack a favourite amusement of his people, especially when we take into account the institution of the sports by Royal Decree. It is probable that this little brochure caused the author some trouble, and was the means of increasing his unpopularity with the Royalist section of the parishioners.

In the School-house Library we find many early treatises about Quakers, a sect to which Hall seems to have been as much averse as he was to May-poles. In 1656, Jane Hicks, of Chadwick (a member of the Society of Friends), was "sent to prison at Worcester for having offended the priest at King's Norton ;" and in the year following, John Bissell, for refusing to pay a tithe of 10s., had goods taken from him valued at £1 5s. od. We must remember that the "Quakers" of Hall's time were very unlike the peace-loving and all-respected "Society of Friends" of our own time. The Quakers of the seventeenth century carried lanterns and candles into the Churches in the daytime, for much the same reason assigned by Diogenes for carrying his lantern. They were also given to ask troublesome questions of the minister during the service at church; for instance, in 1659, John Giles was set in the stocks for several hours at Alvechurch "for asking the priest to prove infant

*R. Moor, who wrote "A Pearl in an Oyster-shell," i.e., Thomas Hall's life.

baptism." Probably it was for something of this kind that Thomas Hall committed Jane Hicks to prison.

It is well known that the Curate of King's Norton was one of the two thousand ministers of the Church of England who refused to take the oath commanded by the Act of Uniformity. Charles II. favoured Romanism, and he saw that if the Presbyterian clergy continued in their benefices, they would be determinedly hostile to the Church of Rome, but if the Presbyterians were taught to be amenable to the same laws as the Romanists, and opposed by the same enemies, they must act in concert for a common benefit. With this end in view the Act of Uniformity was framed.. The Act restored all the ceremonies which were intolerable to the Presbyterian clergy; it required assent and consent to all and everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer; this was to be done publicly, before the feast of S. Bartholomew (August 24th), 1662, and the ministers who refused were ipso facto deprived of their benefices.

The rectors and vicars who were driven out were the most learned and the most active of their order. For the first time since the Reformation all orders

save those conferred by the hands of Bishops, were legally disallowed; this was a fresh stumbling-block to men of tender conscience, like Thomas Hall and Richard Baxter; to the unscrupulous it presented no difficulty. By this Act. the Church of England lost many, very many, of her brightest jewels.

The last Sunday (August 17th) before the Act took effect was a sad day in England; the Puritan clergy preached farewell sermons to their weeping congregations. In his diary, Samuel Pepys describes the scene at S. Dunstan's London. Before eight o'clock in the morning the Church was full; at the afternoon service the minister, in a few touching words, bade his flock farewell. A similar scene was taking place at King's Norton, and we can imagine that the people would flock to hear the minister preach his last sermon-the minister who, for thirty years, had been to many of them both spiritual guide and friend. One of the King's Norton books is "England's Remembrancer: Being a Collection of Farewell-Sermons Preached by Divers Non-conformists in the Country: London, 1663." P. vi, + 510. + 78. In the preface the editor remarks that "most of these sermons were preached and heard with sad and mournful hearts."

No provision was made for the ejected clergy, and the ejectment took place at the end of the half-year, just before the tithes became due. Not only was. Hall deprived of his living at a time when his coffers were empty; he was also obliged to refrain from preaching, and had he not died when he did, he would have been deprived of his school, and driven from his home by the "Five-mile Act" of 1665.

"When outward comforts failed, he lived by faith," wrote one of his friends. "During his last illness his stock of money was reduced to sixpence, but he was

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easy, and said, 'It is enough,' and so it proved, for very soon several sealed packets of money were sent to him by unknown friends." And in another place we read, " He was of an holy and unblameable life: very humble and easy of access. His doors and ears were ever open to the poorest and the meanest inhabitant of his parish should as soon have his request granted, if in his power, as the greatest." "He was a plain but fervent preacher, and taught by his life as well as by his doctrine." Moreover, he appears to have been a lively and active man, never cast down or discouraged, and although during the troublous period of the Civil Wars he was often menaced and imprisoned by soldiers, pestered by Quakers and Sectaries of all sorts, and at last ejected from his living and silenced by the Act of Uniformity, yet he was still the same, prepared to do his duty when opportunity offered, even at the risk of his living and his life. Matthew Arnold once said that " Many men live in a sordid dread of two calamities-the loss of their money and the loss of their soul." Thomas Hall feared neither; he cared not for money, and of the welfare of his soul he was assured, therefore he was contented. After his ejection, no doubt, he had a large and secret following, and must have been a thorn in the flesh to his successor in the Curacy, yet we find in the Parish Register of King's Norton :-"Thomas Hall, minister, and faithful preacher of God's Word for many years in King's Norton, who died the 13th of April, and was buried on the 14th of April, 1665."

He was a charitable man who wrote that entry respecting one whom he must have regarded at least as a theological opponent, if not as a political enemy. But the subject of this paper was not an ordinary man, and his successor recognised his merit. His life of upwards of half-a-century is a link connecting two epochs :-Born when James I. was on the throne, and living until the year of the Great Plague, 1665, he was a contemporary of Shakespeare, of Bacon, and of many of the Elizabethan Golden Circle, as also of the men who added glory to the reign of Queen Anne. In the prime of life he was contemporary with Cromwell, Milton, Baxter, Laud, Strafford, and Charles I., and was acquainted with some of them. His books proclaim him, not only a rare classical scholar, a controversialist, and a poet, but also an admirer of the literature of his own country, a sincere Christian, and a gentleman.

In the much-neglected library which he bestowed upon his parish, we find rare editions of Tacitus and Pliny side by side with the "Poems of Lord Stirling" and the "Essays of Sir F. Bacon," together with most of the polemical literature of the seventeenth century, pointing to the donor as a man of rare culture and discernment. We have selected for illustration one of the beautiful wood engravings from a curious work, entitled "Margarita Philosophica," a book which contains treatises on arts and sciences. The author (Burnet says) was

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