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Rh towards the liberal movement of his age. After two years in Oxford, in March 1638 he was presented by Juxon, bishop of London, to the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In the autumn of the same year he was appointed to preach in St Mary's on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, and apparently used the occasion to clear himself of a suspicion, which, however, haunted him through life, of a secret leaning to the Romish communion. This suspicion seems to have arisen chiefly from his intimacy with Christopher Davenport, better known as Francis a Sancta Clara, a learned Franciscan friar who became chaplain to Queen Henrietta; but it may have been strengthened by his known connexion with Laud, as well as by his ascetic habits and ritualistic propensities. More serious consequences followed his attachment to the Royalist cause, when in 1842 the livings of the loyal clergy were sequestered by decree of parliament. The author of Episcopacy Asserted against the Aerians and Acephali New and Old, ineffective as that work seems in the light of modern research, could scarcely hope to retain his parish. Along with Fuller, Chillingworth, and others, he found temporary refuge with the king at Oxford. His two little boys must have been cared for by friends, for his wife, Phœbe Langsdale, whom he had married the year after his settlement at Uppingham, had died with her third child in that disastrous year 1642.

During the next fifteen years Taylor's movements are not easily traced. Sometimes he appears with the king, from whom at his last interview he received, in token of his regard, his watch and some jewels which had ornamented the ebony case in which he kept his Bible. He is supposed to be the Dr Taylor who was taken prisoner with other Royalists while besieging Cardigan castle. In 1646 he is found in partnership with two other deprived clergymen, keeping a school at Newton Hall, in the parish of Llanvihangel. It was while resident here that he attracted the friendship of one of his kindest patrons, Richard Vaughan, earl of Carbery, whose hospitable mansion, Golden Grove, is immortalized in the title of Taylor's still popular manual of devotion, and whose countess had the greater distinction of being the original of the "Lady" in Milton's Comus, It was also while resident in Wales that Taylor married his second wife, Joanna Bridges, who was generally understood to be a natural daughter of Charles I., and who owned a good estate, though probably impoverished by Parliamentarian exactions, at Mandinam, in Carmarthenshire. From time to time he appears in London in the company of his friend Evelyn, at whose table he met such men as Boyle, Berkeley, and Wilkins. Thrice he was imprisoned: in 1653-4 for a well-intended but injudicious preface to his Golden Grove; again in Chepstow castle, from May to October 1655, on what charge does not appear; and a third time in the Tower in 1657-8, on account of the indiscretion of his publisher, Royston, who had adorned his "Collection of Offices" with a print representing Christ in the attitude of prayer. This unsettled life, with its interruptions, harassments, and privations, would seem rather to have stimulated than to have stinted the productiveness of his genius. In 1647 appeared his most important work, The Liberty of Prophesying, and in the following year the complete edition of his Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy against the Pretence of the Spirit, as well as his Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar, a book which at once won a popularity it still in large measure retains. Then followed in rapid succession the Twenty-seven Sermons, "for the summer half-year," and the Twenty five "for the winter half-year," Holy Living, Holy Dying, a controversial treatise on the Real Presence, the Golden Grove, and the Unum Necessarium, which by its Pelagianism gave great offence. During these years he was also busy with his Ductor Dubitantium (published in 1660), which he intended to be the standard manual of casuistry and ethics for the Christian people.

In 1658 settlement was at length reached through the kind offices of the earl of Carbery, who obtained for Taylor a lectureship in Lisburn. At first he declined a post in which the duty was to be shared with a Presbyterian, or, as he expressed it, "where a Presbyterian and myself shall be like Castor and Pollux, the one up and the other down," and to which also a very meagre salary was attached. He was, however, induced to take it, and found, near his patron's mansion on Lough Neagh, so congenial a retirement that even after he was raised to a bishopric he continued to make it his home. At the Restoration, instead of being recalled to England, as he probably expected and certainly desired, he was appointed to the see of Down and Connor, to which was shortly added the small and adjacent diocese of Dromore. He was also made a member of the Irish privy council and vice-chancellor of the university of Dublin. None of these honours were sinecures. Of the university he writes, "I found all things in a perfect disorder a heap of men and boys, but no body of a college, no one member, either fellow or scholar, having any legal title to his place, but thrust in by tyranny or chance." Accordingly he set himself vigorously to the task of framing and enforcing regulations for the admission and conduct of members of the university, and also of establishing lectureships. His episcopal labours were still more arduous. There were, at the date of the Restoration, about seventy Presbyterian ministers in the north of Ireland, and most of these were from the west of Scotland, and were imbued with the dislike of Episcopacy which distinguished the Covenanting party. No wonder that Taylor, writing to the duke of Ormonde shortly after his consecration, should have said, "I perceive myself thrown into a place of torment." His letters perhaps somewhat exaggerate the danger in which he lived, but there is no doubt that his authority was resisted and his overtures rejected. His writings also were ransacked for matter of accusation against him, "a committee of Scotch spiders being appointed to see if they can gather or make poison out of them." Here, then, was Taylor's opportunity for exemplifying the wise toleration he had in other days inculcated. These Presbyterians had, like himself, suffered under Cromwell for their loyalty, and might have been expected to evoke his sympathy; but the new bishop had nothing to offer them but the bare alternative—submission to episcopal ordination and jurisdiction or deprivation. Consequently, in his first visitation, he declared thirty-six churches vacant; and of these forcible possession was taken by his orders. At the same time many of the gentry were won by his undoubted sincerity and devotedness as well as by his eloquence. With the Romanist element of the population he was less successful. Ignorant of the English language, and firmly attached to their ancestral forms of worship, they were yet compelled to attend a service they considered profane, conducted in a language they could not understand. As Heber says, "No part of the administration of Ireland by the English crown has been more extraordinary and more unfortunate than the system pursued for the introduction of the Reformed religion." At the instance of the Irish bishops Taylor undertook his last great work, the Dissuasive from Popery (in two parts, 1664 and 1667), but, as he himself seemed partly conscious, he might have more effectually gained his end by adopting the methods of Ussher and Bedell, and inducing his clergy to acquire the Irish tongue.

Nor were domestic sorrows awanting in these later years.