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A30945
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Memorials of Alderman Whitmore, Bishop Wilkins, Bishop Reynolds, Alderman Adams ...
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Barksdale, Clement, 1609-1687.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing B798; ESTC R35314
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15,360
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50
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Memorials OF Alderman WHITMORE Bishop WILKINS Bishop REYNOLDS Alderman ADAMS Clemens Romanus Seditio paucorum hominum insolentiâ audaciâ in tantam vesaniam exarsit ut honorificum illustre nomen vestrum ab omnibus amari dignum vehementer blasphemetur Epist ad Cor. p. 2. LONDON Printed by J. Redmayne for John Barksdale Bookseller in Cirencester 1681. To the Reader GOod Reader be pleased to know that the Collector of these Four Memorials chosen out of many hath formerly set forth Four Decads and if this little piece be well accepted i. e. be of quick sale he intendeth to make them up seven Decads to be Printed all together in one fair Volume Wherein you shall receive some of the best Flowers of that sort of History which is esteemed the best of Histories that of Lives In these Four excellent Persons as the present Bishops of the Church and the present Magistrates of the Great City may perhaps vouchsafe to note some things worthy of their Imitation So the People may I hope be excited to a greater reverence both to Magistracy and Episcopacy Faxit Deus C. B. To the Dean of Glocester Bishop Elect. HEalth to the Dean of Glocester Contented with his meaner Chair May he possess the Bishops Throne For publick Good and for his own A good work 's fit for a good Man But this so great a work who can Well manage He that sees the vast Reward the Crown bestow'd at last Take courage Sir and do not fear Your helper the great God is near Long may you live who Gloster please Gloster Nay the whole Diocese We all that to the Church are true Esteem our selves much blest in you But you above all others we may bless Who to so many impart Happiness What Blessed Dostrine have we heard From your Pulpit And when we jarr'd What industry what hast what pain You took to make in one agrin Propagate your sweet violence Through all our Country and from hence To your Aleppo send the Influence Aleppo made more famous by your deeds My Men to tell them neither can nor needs What my Verse wants my vow supplies May you live gratious in Gods eyes May King and People love you still And you Preach unto them Gods will Your Clergy guide with Holy Discipline Make them in life as in their Name Divine Sir G. Whitmore Sometime Lord Major of London obiit 1654. Decemb. 12. From Mr. Anthony Farindon's Sermon on Psalm 119. 19. I am a Stranger in the Earth hide not thy Commandments from me 1. NOw turn your Eyes and Thoughts upon this Pilgrim here this Honored and Worthy Knight who hath passed through the busie Noise and Tumults of this World to his long home and rest In which passage of his he hath so exactly performed the part and Office of a Stranger and Pilgrim that he is followed with the applause of them that knew him And as in his Death he is become an argument to prove the Doctrine which I have taught so in his Life he made himself a great example for them to look upon who are now Travelling and Laboring in the same way 2. Look upon him then in every capacity and relation either as a part of the Common-wealth or a Member of the City or a Father of a Family and you shall discover the Image and fair representation of a Stranger in every one of these Relations For no Man can take this Honor to himself to be a good Common-wealths Man or a good Master of a Family but he who is as David was a Stranger All the ataxy and disorder all the noise we hear and mischief we see in the World are from Men who love it too well and would live and dwell and delight themselves in it for ever 3. For the First I may truly say as Lampridius did of Alexander Severus He was vir bonus reip necessarius a good Man and of necessary use in the Common-wealth He laid all the strength he had to uphold it and preferred the Peace and Welfare of it to his own as well knowing that a private house might sink and fall to the ground and yet the Common-wealth Stand and Flourish but that the Ruin of the whole must necessarily draw with it the other parts and at last bury them in the same grave And here he found as rough a passage as Rufus in Tacitus did in a publick Commotion who was pulled out of his Chariot loaden with Scoffs and Reproaches c. So was this Worthy Knight taken from his Wife whom he entirely loved and from his Children those pledges of his love and conveyed to Ship and by Ship to Prison in a remote City where he found some Friends and then was brought back again from thence to a Prison nearer home where if the Providence of God had not gone along with him and shadowed him he had met the Plague 4. But it may be said what praise is it to suffer all this if he suffer as an evil doer and not for Conscience towards God I come not hither to dispute that but am willing to refer it to the great tryal which shall open every eye to behold that truth which now being dazled with fears and hopes and even blinded with the love of the World it cannot see But if it were an error and not knowledg but mistake that drove him upon these Pricks yet sure it was an error of a fair descent begot in him by looking stedfastly on the truth and by having a steddy Eye on the Oath of God And if here he fell he fell like a Christian who did exercise himself to keep a good Conscience For he that followeth not his Conscience when it erreth will be as far from hearkning to it when it speaks the truth for even error it self sheweth the Face of truth to him that erreth or else he would not err at all And yet I need not fear to say it it is an error of such a nature that it may rather deserve applause than censure even from those who call it by that Name For we do not use to fall willingly into so dangerous vexatious and costly errors errors which will strip us and put a Yoke upon us Errors which will put us in Prison No to fly from these we too oft fly from the truth it self when it is as open as the day and commandeth our Faith though not our Tongue and forceth our assent when we renounce it 5. Again take him in the City in this he bore the highest honor and fitted the greatest place yet was rather an ornament unto it than that unto him For he sat in it as a Stranger and a Pilgrim as a Man going out of the World nor did so much consider his Power as his Duty which lookt forward and had respect to that which cannot be found in this but is the Riches and Glory of another world Therefore this world was never in his Thoughts never came in to
was he only a Man of words his goodness was not only at his Tongues end but at his Fingers ends That of our Saviour concerning himself is in an inferior way verifyed of him My Works testifie of me So that he was not only in respect of his words a sweet and pleasing Voice but of his works a Burning and Shining Light 3. God was pleas'd so far to bless his honest endeavors in that calling wherein his Providence had placed him that he enjoyed a liberal Portion of this Worlds goods nor did he want those honors which were suitable to him Whatsoever honor in the City he was capable of he was chosen to Master of his Company Alderman of a Ward President of St. Thomas Hospital several times Burgess in Parliament though the iniquity of the times would not permit him to sit Sheriff and Lord Major After which he at length became and so continued for some Years the first among the Twenty Six the Eldeâ— Alderman upon the Bench that had served in the Office of Lord Major to whom is given that Honorable Title The Father of the City Nor had he only this Honor from the City but his King also gave him the greatest Honor he was capable of in his Station making him not only a Knight but a Baronet which descends upon Posterity I mention these in as much as they are Instruments of Virtue and so they were to him he being a bountiful Steward of his Riches nor did his Dignities so much Honor him as he them 4. Throughout the Age of his Life he was by God's Providence instated in manifold Relations intrusted with various Offices conversant in several imployments in all which he had no cause to complain with him who said Omnia fui nihil profuit All of them being as so many Channels through which run his several Virtues and Graces 5. I will begin with that which is the beginning of Wisdom the Fear of the Lord. He was eminent for Religion and Devotion That Orthodox Religion which is professed in the Church of England he faithfully adhered to cordially owning Her Doctrine and Discipline Hierarchy and Liturgy and though he lived in an unconstant Age wherein it was the mode to change Religions as Women do Fashions he proved not a Reed or a Willow but an Oak stedfast and immovable Great was his respect to the Orthodox and Orthoprax Clergy Those who were sufferers he charitably relieved Those who were Laborers he bountifully encouraged Schismatical Conventicles he abhorred but duly frequented the Church Assemblies a Judicious Hearer of Gods Word a diligent Receiver of the Lords Supper and though it was an Age wherein irreverence was in Fashion and devotion decryed as Superstition he was exemplary for his reverent behavior in Gods House Nor was he only Religious in the Church but in his Family resolving with Joshua I and my House will serve the Lord and dayly setting apart time for his private Meditations and Prayers beginning and closing up every day with God 6. Thus served he God and no less careful was he to serve the King remembring that Fear the Lord and the King are join'd together He was a strenuous assertor of Monarchical Government nor can I pass by one Argument which he often used upon that account where Almighty God by his Prophet Ezekiel 16. 13. reckoning up the manifold Blessings he had confer'd upon his People Israel mentioneth this among other as none of the least Thou didst prosper into a Kingdom by which is clearly intimated that those Nations are most prosperous which are under Kingly Government nay that Kingly Government is the prosperity to a People 7. Upon the account of his Loyalty to Charles the first of Blessed Memory when Lord Mayor his House was searched by those in Power supposing there to have found the King the Year after he was cast into the Tower and there kept a Prisoner and for several Years put by all Offices and Imployments Upon the account of his Loyalty to Charles the Second during his Exile he hazarded his Estate and Life by sending him considerable Sums of Money beyond Sea and when the Blessed time came of his joyful Return to his Throne though he was in the Seventy Third Year of his Age which might have been a just excuse for his staying at home this Aged Barzillai went not only over Jordan-river but crossed the Sea to attend his Soveraign home 8. Next to God and the King I dare say the City of London was written upon his Heart wherein he spent by far the greatest part of his Life and hath now breathed his last Here through Gods Blessing he got and here he spent a considerable part of his Estate in the Cities Service He was of so publick a Spirit that when his Son in Law brought him the first news of his being chosen Sheriff of London he immediatly dismissed the particular business about which he was and never after personally followed his Trade but gave himself up to the City Concerns It was his Study to know the Customs and Usages the liberties and priviledges of the City and accordingly his endeavor in his several capacities to preserve and maintain them He was not only in Word but in Deed an Assistant a Guardian yea a Pillar of the Company of Drapers He was a Vigilant President of St. Thomas Hospital which probably had been ruin'd before this but that his sagacity and industry discover'd the fraud of an unjust Steward In the Court of Aldermen he was as an Oracle very subservient by his Grave and Prudent Counsels to the Cities Government He was so far from self seeking that when he was Lord Mayor he did not make those advantages which usually are by selling the vacant places Whilst a private Trades-man he was exact so far as I ever heard in Commutative Justice in his Bargains and Contracts of buying and selling and when a Publick Magistrate he was no less Conscientious of Distributive Justice between Man and Man 9. At the Town where he received his first Breath he Built a Free-School endowing it with a considerable maintenance for the Education of Children In the University of Cambridge he erected an Arabic Lecture and setled upon the Lecturer Forty Pounds per annum for his pains in Reading it Nor were these munificent works to bear the date of their beginning from his Death but the one began Twenty and the other Thirty Years ago nor is their maintenance only settled for some term of Years but as we usually express it for ever He was at the charge also at the desire of the Reverend Mr. Wheelook now with God of Printing the Persian Gospels and transmitting them into the Eastern parts of the World By these ways he endeavored to promote the Christian Religion throwing a Stone to use his own Language at the Forehead of Mahomet that grand Impostor 10. His Hands were frequently open whilst he lived upon all occasions and notwithstanding many late great damages to his Estate he hath given considerable Legacies to the Poor of several Parishes to Hospitals to Ministers Widows and such like at his Death 11. To the rest of his Graces and Virtues I add his Patience whereby he served God in Suffering The truth is this good Goat like Joseph's was particolor'd his Wine mixt with Water nay with Gall and Wormwood such Crosses as he could not have born were it not said he for this Book pointing to the Bible which lay before him frequently among others making use of that passage of Job Shall we receive good at the Hands of God and shall we not receive Evil 12. He Dyed of the Stone a Stone so weighty that it exceeded Twenty Five Ounces so grievous that a little before his Death it made him roar but yet not murmur God Graciously sustaining him under the Pain of it And had there not been a Channel by a remarkable Providence cut through the Stone for his Water to pass the stoppage of it must of necesssity have very much added to his smart and lessen'd his days But now he hath taken his leave of this World and I may well say with St. Ambnose In illo uno c. In this one Person there is a manifold loss The King hath lost a loyal Subject the Church a Faithful Son the City a Prudent Senator He is departed from the Inn of this World to the home of his Grave of which he was before mindful frequently saying Solum mihi superest sepulchrum where he shall sleep in the dust till he awake and arise to Glory FINIS