Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/131

 playmate to the princes Charles and James, and kept to his dying day a book given him by the latter. Archbishop Laud took notice of him for his readiness in opening the watergate when Laud ‘came late from council’ to cross to Lambeth. His father took him to see Laud in prison, when the archbishop ‘gave him some new money.’ After preliminary schooling he was admitted in 1643 to Westminster School, and became a favourite pupil of [q. v.], who treated him very kindly. His mother, a zealous puritan, got leave for him to attend the early lecture at Westminster Abbey, but to Busby's diligence in preparing him for the communion he ascribes his definite adoption of a religious life on ‘April 14 (or yer. abouts) 1647.’ In the picture of Busby in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, Henry is introduced by his side (in the ‘Catalogue of the First Exhibition of National Portraits,’ 1866, No. 943, the younger figure is said to be Matthew Henry).

In May 1647 Henry was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, and went into residence on 15 Dec. He was admitted student on 24 March 1648, just before the parliamentary visitation, which to his regret removed Underwood, his tutor, substituting William Finmore (afterwards archdeacon of Chester), ‘a person able enough, but not willing.’ While at home on leave in January 1649 he saw Charles I, who ‘went by our door on foot each day’ to his trial, ‘& once hee spake to my father & sayd Art thou alive yet!’ Of Charles's execution he gives the graphic account of a sorrowing eye-witness. He graduated B.A. in 1649 and M.A. on 10 Dec. 1652. His father's death left the family in great straits, which were relieved by the occasional bounty of friends.

Henry preached his first sermon at South Hinksey, Oxfordshire, on 9 Jan. 1653. On the introduction of Francis Palmer, afterwards professor of moral philosophy, he was engaged (30 Sept.) by John Puleston, justice of the common pleas, as tutor to his sons at Emral, Flintshire, and preacher at Worthenbury Chapel, in the parish of Bangor-is-coed, same county. In 1654 he was with his pupils at Oxford; from 1655 he was constantly at Worthenbury. The rector of Bangor was [q. v.], but the living had been sequestered in 1646. Robert Fogg, the parliamentary incumbent, put in a caveat (14 Sept. 1657) against Henry's ordination as minister of Worthenbury, but afterwards withdrew it. Accordingly, having undergone a lengthy but rather superficial examination by the fourth Shropshire classis (constituted by parliament, April 1647), he was ordained with five others at Prees, Shropshire, on 16 Sept. 1657. No mention is made of his subscribing the ‘league and covenant,’ as ordered by parliament; he made a strongly Calvinistic confession, but said nothing about church government. His ideal was a modified episcopacy on Ussher's system. In 1658 a commission of ecclesiastical promotions took Worthenbury Chapel out of Bangor parish, making it with Worthenbury Church (a donative) a new parish, of which Henry was incumbent. He declined the vicarage of Wrexham, Denbighshire, in March 1659, refusing shortly afterwards a considerable living near London. He appears to have sympathised with the royalist rising under Sir George Booth in August 1659. Mrs. Puleston died in 1658, and the judge on 5 Sept. 1659. Roger Puleston, their eldest son, had no love for his tutor; they had even come to blows (16 Sept. 1656).

At the Restoration, which Henry, then newly married, welcomed as ‘a publick national mercy,’ Bridgeman resumed the rectory of Bangor, and Henry's position was simply that of his curate at Worthenbury Chapel. In September 1660 he was presented at Flint assizes with Fogg and Richard Steel for not reading the common prayer, and again at the spring assizes, without effect. He had taken the oath of allegiance, but refusing reordination he was incapable of preferment. On 24 Oct. 1661 Bridgeman, having failed to arrange matters, came to Worthenbury and read Henry's discharge ‘before a rable.’ Henry showed some feeling, but was allowed to preach farewell sermons on 27 Oct. The Uniformity Act, which took effect on 24 Aug. 1662, ‘being the day of the year on which I was born … and also the day of the year on which by law I died,’ made him a ‘silenced minister.’ He surrendered his house and annuity for 100l., to avoid litigation, and left Worthenbury for Broad Oak, Flintshire, a property settled upon his wife.

Busby asked him some time afterwards, ‘Pry'thee, child, what made thee a nonconformist?’ His answer was, ‘Truly, Sir, you made me one, for you taught me those things that hindered me from conforming.’ This refers to principles of conscience, not to details of scruple. He consulted, D.D. [q. v.], then dean of Christ Church, about his difficulties. His main objection was re-ordination, which he reckoned simony. On 10 Oct. 1663 he was apprehended with thirteen others and imprisoned for four days at Hanmer, Flintshire, on suspicion of an insurrectionary plot. On 15 March 1665 he was cited to Malpas, Cheshire, for baptising one of his own children; at the end of the