Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/339

Allestree time his health suffered severely, he obtained his release. Having spent a little time among his relations in Shropshire, he designed on his return to visit his friend Dr. Hammond, at Westwood, near Worcester. At the gate of the house he was met by the body of his friend, which was being carried out to burial. As a mark of his esteem, Dr. Hammond had left Allestree his library.

At the Restoration he was made a canon of Christ Church, and on 3 Oct. 1660 took the degree of D.D. He also undertook one of the lectures of the city, declining, however, to receive the salary, which he ordered to be distributed among the poor. In 1663 be became one of the chaplains in ordinary to the king, and in December of the same year was appointed regius professor of divinity. Two years afterwards, on 10 Aug. 1665, he was made provost of Eton College. By careful control of the expenditure he did much to restore the prosperity of the college; and at his own expense he built the west side of the outer court. In 1679, owing to ill-health, he resigned his professorial chair. Wood says of him that ‘he was a good and most affectionate preacher; and for many years, by his prudent presiding in the professor's chair, he did discover perhaps as much learning as any, and much more moderation, as to the five controverted points, than most of his predecessors.’ His biographer, Bishop Fell, observes that ‘few of his time had either a greater compass or a deeper insight into all parts of learning; the modern and learned languages, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, history, antiquity, moral and polemical divinity.’  For several years he was treasurer of Christ Church, and by his skilful administration helped to repair the losses sustained during the civil wars.

Towards the end of his life his eyesight and general health suffered from his close application to study. He died of dropsy in London, on 28 Jan. 1680–81, at the age of sixty-one, and was buried in Eton College chapel, where a monument, with a Latin inscription, was raised to his memory. He left his library to the university, for the use of his successors in the chair of divinity.

Allestree is the author of: 1. ‘The Privileges of the University of Oxford in point of Visitation,’ 1647 (a tract sometimes attributed to Dr. John Fell), which was answered by Prynne in his ‘University of Oxford's Plea refuted.’ 2. ‘A Sermon on Acts xiii. 2,’ 1660. 3. ‘Eighteen Sermons, whereof Fifteen [were] preached before the King, the rest upon publick Occasions,’ fol. 1669. Some of the sermons in this collection (which was printed for the benefit of the author's relative, James Allestry, the bookseller, who had been ruined in the great fire) had previously appeared in pamphlet form. 4. ‘Forty Sermons, whereof Twenty-one are now first published,’ 2 vols. fol. 1684. Prefixed to this collection is a biographical sketch by Dr. John Fell, bishop of Oxford, and a portrait of the author. Allestree joined with Abhraham Woodhead and Obadiah Walker in the composition of ‘A Paraphrase and Annotations upon all the Epistles of St. Paul.’ The first edition, 1702, merely states that the work was ‘done by several eminent men at Oxford;’ the names of the three contributors appear on the title-page of the third edition, 1708. In Bishop Barlow's ‘Cases of Conscience,’ 1692, Allestree's judgment on ‘Mr. Cottington's Case of Divorce’ is recorded. It has by some been supposed that Allestree joined with Bishop Fell in writing the books put forth under the name of the author of the ‘Whole Duty of Man’ (, Literary Anecdotes, ii. 603). Sloane MS. No. 4275 contains an autograph letter from Allestree to Bishop Fell. Allestree's lectures were not published. Bishop Fell, whom he had appointed his literary executor, wrote to ask that they might be presented for publication; but Allestree replied that he was dissatisfied with some of them, and, as he had no time for revision, he could not countenance their publication; that the bishop, however, might make what use he pleased of them, provided they were not issued as an authoritative expression of the writer's views.

A Richard Allestry, of Derby, a kinsman of the divine, was the author of several almanacs, ranging from 1624 to 1643.

[Fell's Preface to the Forty Sermons, 1684; Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, iii. 1269; Fasti, i. 480, 514, ii, 57, 241, 343, 370, 381; Life of Barwick, ed. 1724, pp. 201, 250, &c. There are occasional references to Allestree in the State Papers, 1660–1665.]  ALLESTRY, JACOB (1653–1686), poetical writer, son of James Allestry, a bookseller who lost his property in the great fire, was born in 1653. After being educated at Westminster he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1671; was ‘music-reader in 1679 and terræ filius in 1682.’ He had the ‘chief hand,’ according to Anthony à Wood, in composing the ‘Verses and Pastoral’ spoken in Oxford Theatre on 21 May 1681, before James, duke of York, and published in ‘Examen Poeticum,’ 1693. From the same authority we learn that ‘being exceedingly given to the vices of poets his body was so much macerated and spent by juvenile 