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Rh is well worked out and does not read like the composition of a madman. The conclusion of the matterthe failure of his health and his loss of mental balance through continual dwelling upon the same theme, which resulted at last in a vision of the returning Lord on Low Sunday, 1694 can only be briefly noticed here. From this time he, who had been wont to preach for hours together and was often ' ready to faint before he would give over,' whose extempore prayers had been long and vehement with ' an awful silence between each petition ' would no more preach nor pray nor even administer the sacraments : the reign of Christ had begun so he told the people from his open window and the day of such means of grace was past : there was nothing else to do but to await the consummation of all things, which would be on the next Whitsunday. He did not live to see the failure of his own prophecy ; but his followers, who had gathered round the parsonage and in the village to the number of more than four hundred, under the firm con- viction that Water Stratford was the ' holy ground,' the only place where salvation was guaranteed, continued for some time to hold religious exercises by themselves, and even the exhumation of the poor vicar's remains by his successor did not convince them that he was really dead. Their existence as a sect continued some twenty or thirty years. The strangest thing about the whole affair is that the ecclesias- tical authorities do not seem to have taken the slightest notice of it.

The records of the eighteenth century for this county are fairly full and good. There is reason to believe that the revival of Church life under Queen Anne, which was so marked in London, had but little effect upon the country generally. The returns of Bishops Wake and Gibson bear witness to the truth of this statement at any rate within the diocese of Lincoln. These valuable books contain statistics for all