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 licence to preach in Plymouth, but after the quashing of the indulgence in 1673, he was lodged with other nonconformist preachers in the Marshalsea at Plymouth. Obtaining his release, he removed to London. In 1679 he became minister to the English church at Middleburg, Holland; but he returned to London on 22 July 1681. Here he gathered a presbyterian congregation in a small meeting-house in Middlesex Court, Bartholomew Close, Smithfield. This meeting-house was one of the buildings which at that time (and till recently) strangely encroached upon the structure of the church of St. Bartholomew the Great. In one corner was a statue described as ‘a popish priest with a child in his arms,’ and a window of the meeting-house opened into the church, facing its pulpit, so that a person sitting in the meeting-house gallery could watch the conduct of divine service in the church. Quick, who was one of those who took advantage of James II's declaration for liberty of conscience in 1687, was apparently never disturbed in his London charge. He was noted as ‘a serious, good preacher,’ and had a special gift in prayer. All his life he was a hard student, giving his nights to study. He did much to promote the succession of a learned ministry among nonconformists. His interest in the French protestant church was probably due in part to the fact that Plymouth was, from 1681, the seat of an important colony of Huguenot refugees. For the relief of such refugees he made great exertions; his own ‘house and purse were almost ever open to them.’ Quick died on 29 April 1706, in his seventieth year. Funeral sermons were preached by his successor, Thomas Freke (d. 1716), and by Daniel Williams. His wife Elizabeth died in 1708. His only daughter married John Evans (1680?–1730) [q. v.]; she is said to have been wealthy, perhaps through her mother, for Quick himself had no great command of money. His portrait, engraved by John Sturt, is prefixed to the ‘Synodicon.’

He published funeral sermons for Philip Harris (1682), John Faldo [q. v.] (1690), and Mrs. Rothwell (1697); this last is valuable for a number of biographical notices, including one of his brother, Philip Quick. Also, 1. ‘Hell opened, or the Infernal Sin of Murder punished,’ &c., 1676, 8vo (an account of a wholesale poisoning case at Plymouth). 2. ‘The Young Man's Claim to … the Lord's Supper,’ &c., 1691, 4to. 3. ‘Synodicon in Gallia Reformata; or the Acts … and Canons of … National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France,’ &c., 1692, fol. 2 vols. (contains a history of French protestantism to 1685). 4. ‘A Serious Inquiry … whether a man may lawfully marry his deceased Wife's Sister,’ &c., 1703, 4to (against such marriages). An advertisement in this last states that ‘about three years since’ Quick had issued proposals for printing his ‘Icones Sacræ;’ William Russell, first duke of Bedford, had offered to make good the expense. In the week following his patron's death (7 Sept. 1700) Quick was disabled, and could not collect subscriptions. The manuscript of the ‘Icones’ is now in Dr. Williams's Library, Gordon Square, London; it fills three folio volumes, containing the lives of fifty French and twenty English divines. Calamy acknowledges his debt to it for the lives of seven of the ejected nonconformists, including Nathanael Ball [q. v.], George Hughes [q. v.], and William Jenkyn [q. v.]

[Funeral Sermons by Williams and Freke, 1706; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 493; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), ii. 198; Calamy's Account, 1713, pp. xxv, 247 seq.; Calamy's Continuation, 1727, i. 331 seq.; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, ii. 318; Protestant Dissenters' Mag. 1799, p. 301; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1810, iii. 369 seq.; Worth's Hist. of Nonconformity in Plymouth, 1876, pp. 19, 24.] 

QUICK, JOHN (1748–1831), actor, the son of a brewer, was born in 1748 in Whitechapel, London. In his fourteenth year he left his home and joined a theatrical company at Fulham, where he played Altamont in the ‘Fair Penitent,’ receiving from his approving manager three shillings as a full single share in the profits. During some years, in Kent and Surrey, he played Romeo, George Barnewell, Hamlet, Jaffier, Tancred, and other tragic characters, and in 1767 was at the Haymarket under the management of Foote, one of the pupils in Foote's ‘Orators,’ his associates including Edward Shuter [q. v.], John Bannister [q. v.], and John Palmer (1742?–1798) [q. v.] His performance, for Shuter's benefit, of Mordecai in ‘Love à la Mode’ recommended him to Covent Garden, where, on 7 Nov. 1767, he was the original Postboy in Colman's ‘Oxonian in Town;’ on 14 Dec. the First Ferret in the ‘Royal Merchant,’ an operatic version of the ‘Beggar's Bush;’ and on 29 Jan. 1768 the original Postboy in Goldsmith's ‘Good-natured Man.’ At Covent Garden, with occasional visits to Liverpool, Portsmouth, and other towns, and to Bristol, where he was for a time manager of the King Street Theatre, Quick remained during most of his artistic career.

Quick's performances were at first confined as a rule to clowns, rustics, comic servants,