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 friends and clasht the motion’ (Life of Laud, 123). Middlesex was released from the Tower on 28 May 1624, but was not pardoned until 8 April 1625 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 288). In order to obtain his pardon Middlesex was obliged to write a letter of abject penitence and submission to Buckingham (5 Sept. 1624, State Papers, Dom.), and he complained in his letters that Chelsea House was forced from him like Naboth's vineyard, and 5,000l. in addition demanded (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 289). A year or two later, however, he had the satisfaction of seeing his great adversary attacked by parliament and his own merits acknowledged. In 1626, during the debates on Buckingham's impeachment, a member compared the sums received by the duke from the king with those reputed to have been received by Middlesex. Eliot replied that it might be true that Middlesex had received a large sum from the king, ‘but that it was true that Middlesex had merited well of the king and done him that service that few had ever done, but they could find no such matter in the duke’ (ib.) The belief that he had been hardly treated was very general. ‘I spake with few when it was recent that were contented with it, except the members of the house,’ writes Hacket (Life of Williams, 190). During the remainder of his life Middlesex lived in retirement. He was restored to his seat in the House of Lords 4 May 1640. King Charles, according to Goodman, had a great opinion of the wisdom of the Earl of Middlesex, and during the course of the Long parliament ‘did advise with him in some things’ (i. 327). On the outbreak of the war the earl, who was now nearly seventy, endeavoured to remain neutral. In his letters he complains of heavy and unjust taxation from the parliament. Copt Hall was searched for arms; another of his houses, Millcote, was burnt to the ground, and his countess was at one time imprisoned (correspondence in Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep.) Cranfield died on 6 Aug. 1645. His widow survived him till 1670. He was succeeded by his son James (d. 1651), who took the side of the parliament, was imprisoned for acting against the army in 1647, and was one of the negotiators of the treaty of Newport in 1648. With the death of his second son, Lionel, third earl, in 1674, the title of Middlesex in the family of Cranfield became extinct.

[The Parl. or Const. Hist. 24 vols. 8vo, 1751–1762; Goodman's Court of James I; Clarendon's Hist. of Rebellion; Hacket's Life of Williams; Cal. State Papers Dom.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep., Papers of Earl de la Warr; Doyle's Official Baronage; Gardiner's Hist. of Eng.] 

CRANFORD, JAMES (1592?–1657), presbyterian divine, son of James Cranford, master of the free school of Coventry and Dugdale's first instructor, was born at Coventry about 1592. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1617, and proceeded B.A. 17 Oct. 1621, and M.A. 20 June 1624. He took holy orders; became rector of Brookhall or Brockhole,Northamptonshire, and on 16 Jan.1642-3 rector of St. Christopher, London. 'He was a painful preacher,' writes Wood, 'of the doctrine he professed (being a zealous presbyterian), an exact linguist, well acquainted with the fathers, not unknown to the schoolmen, and familiar with the modern divines.' Under the Commonwealth he was a licenser for the press, and prefixed many epistles to the books which he allowed to go to the press. Early in 1652 he held two disputations at the house of Mr. William Webb in Bartholomew Lane, with Dr. Peter Chamberlen, on the questions: '1. Whether or no a private person may preach without ordination? 2. Whether or no the presbyterian ministers be not the true ministers of the gospel?' Cranford argued in the negative on the first question, and in the affirmative on the second. A full and interesting report of the debate was published 8 June 1652. He died 27 April 1657, and was buried in the church of St. Christopher. A son, James Cranford, was also in holy orders and succeeded his father in the living of St. Christopher, but died in August 1660. Three other sons, Joseph, Samuel, and Nathanael, entered Merchant Taylors' School in June 1644 (, Register, i. 161). The elder Cranford wrote: 1. 'Confutation of the Anabaptists,' London, n. d. 2. 'Expositions on the Prophecies of Daniel,' London, 1644. 3. 'Haereseomachia, or the Mischief which Heresies do,' London, 1646, a sermon preached before the lord mayor 1 Feb. 1645-6, to which a fierce reply was issued in broadsheet form, under the title of 'The Clearing of Master Cranford's Text' (8 May 1646). Cranford also contributed a preface to the 'Tears of Ireland,' 1642, the whole of which is usually attributed to him. It is an appalling, although clearly exaggerated, account of the cruelties inflicted on the protestants in Ireland in the rebellion of 1641, and is illustrated with terribly vivid engravings. Prefatory epistles by Cranford appear in Richard Stock's 'Stock of Divine Knowledge ' (addressed to Lady Anne Yelverton), London, 1641; in Edwards's 'Gangraena,' pt. i. and pt. ii. London, 1646; Christopher Lover's 'The Soul's Cordiall,' 1652; and in B. Woodbridge's 'Sermons on Justification,' 1652. In 1653 the last contribution was severely criticised by W. Eyre in his