Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/284

 ministers upon seven frivolous articles exhibited against him by three of his Lambeth parishioners, whom he styles 'semi-separatists.' On 16 March 1642–3 he was called into the exchequer chamber to answer the charges. The committee refused to hear his witnesses, and voted him out of his living on the 23rd, four only out of seventeen being present. The order was not reported to the commons until 11 July, when it was negatived. Featley has left a full report of those proceedings in 'Spongia,' the second part of 'The Gentle Lash.' Earlier in the year he had been offered, says his nephew, the chair of divinity at Leyden, but declined it on the plea of old age (Featlei Παλιγγενεσία, pt. ii, p. 37). He attended the meetings of the assembly of divines, of which he was nominated a member in June. Heylyn questions whether he sat in the assembly to show his parts or to head a party, or out of his old love to Calvinism (Hist. of the Presbyterians, 1670, p. 404). He spoke boldly on behalf of episcopacy, and denounced the alienation of church property and the toleration of new sects (, History, 1849, bk. vii. par. 254, 265). He also refused to assent to every clause in the solemn league and covenant. His speeches, together with 'sixteen reasons for episcopal government,' are printed in 'Sacra Nemesis;' the speeches alone, as 'Orationes Synodicæ,' in the sixth edition of his 'Dippers Dipt.' In consequence of a message from Charles, whose chaplain he was, Fentley eventually withdrew from the assembly (The Gentle Lash, p. 3); but being soon afterwards detected in a correspondence with Archbishop Ussher, then with the king at Oxford, he was imprisoned as 'a spy and intelligencer' in Lord Petre's house in Aldersgate Street. A letter to the archbishop had been drawn from him by a trick, and apparently falsified by the transcriber. Although, according lo his sentence, his rectories and library only were ordered to be sequestered (Commons' Journals, iii. 263), 'yet all his rent and arrears were seised with account-books, and his house, being no copyhold and no parsonage-house, was taken from him, and all his household stuff distracted, and a great part thereof sold' (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1641–3, p, 489). This harsh treatment gained him many sympathisers outside his own party, Richard Baxter among others (Life and Times, i. 75).

During his imprisonment Featley returned to controversy. At the request of the parliament he wrote a learned treatise against the Roman catholic entitled 'Roma Ruens; Romes Ruins; being a succinct Answer to a Popish Challenge, concerning the antiquity, unity, universality, succession, and perpetuall visibility of the true Church …' 1644. While writing it, says his nephew, he was allowed three books at a time from his library. In January 1643-4 he published as the third section of 'The Gentle Lash' his remarkable 'Challenge' against the puritan divines of the day, in which he offered to vindicate the articles, discipline, and liturgy of the church of England. Another controversy was with a fellow-prisoner, the baptist minister, Henry Denne [q. v.], of whose sect Featley had always been a bitter opponent, having on 17 Oct. 1643 held fierce argument in Southwark with William Kiffin [q. v.] and three other baptists, the substance of which he embodied in his best-known work entitled 'Καταβαπτισταὶ καταπτυσταί. The Dippers dipt: or, the Anabaptists duck’d and plung'd over head and ears, at a Disputation in Southwark. Together with a large and full Discourse of their (1) Originall, (2) Severall sorts, (3) Peculiar Errours, (4) High Attempts against the State, (5) Capital punishments: with an application to these times,' 4to, London, 1645. This amusing treatise passed through six editions in as many years, and mingles invective with anecdotes of the wickedness of his antagonists and its providential punishment. In dedicating the book to the parliament Featley was evidently making a desperate bid for liberty. Denne, feeling greatly hurt by the tone of Featley's diatribe, offered to dispute the ten arguments with him 'face to face,' 'the first whereof we did debate in private, but four gentlemen desiring to hear the rest of the performance, the doctor would not admit them without an order from the state. . . but that if I would write, he would defend his arguments ' (, preface to Antichrist). Denne thereupon drew up his 'Antichrist Unmasked,' which appeared by 1 April of the same year, 1645, when Featley was already a dying man; another reply by the Rev. Samuel Richardson, entitled 'Some brief Considerations,' followed soon afterwards.

Featley was in bad health before his imprisonment, and after eighteen months' confinement he was permitted upon bail to remove to Chelsea College for change of air. There he died of asthma and dropsy, 17 April 1645, and on the 21st was buried by his own desire in the chancel of Lambeth church, 'at which time a very great multitude of persons of honour and quality attended the funeral rites.' The sermon preached on the occasion by Dr. William Leo, a friend of thirty-seven years, affords many interesting biographical details. He is described by his nephew as being 'low of stature, yet of a lovely