Curiosities of Puritan NomenclatureBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, Personal -- English
Now, this Dudley Fenner was a thoroughly worthy man, but a fanatic of most
intolerant type. In 1583 we find him at Cranbrook, in Kent. An account of
his sayings and doings was forwarded, says Strype, to Lord Burghley, who
himself marked the following passage:--
"Ye shall pray also that God would strike through the sides of all
such as go about to take away from the ministers of the Gospel the
liberty which is granted them by the Word of God."
But a curious note occurs alongside this passage in Lord Burghley's hand:
"Names given in baptism by Dudley Fenner: Joy-againe, From-above,
More-fruit, Dust."--Whitgift, i. p. 247.
Two of these names were given to his own children, as Cranbrook register
shows to this day:
"1583, Dec. 22. Baptized More-fruit, son of Mr. Dudley Fenner."
"1585, June 6. Baptized Faint-not, fil. Mr. Dudley Fenner, concional
digniss."
Soon after this Dudley Fenner again got into trouble through his sturdy
spirit of nonconformity. After an imprisonment of twelve months, he fled
to Middleborough, in Holland, and died there about 1589.
The above incident from Strype is interesting, for here manifestly is the
source whence Camden derived his information upon the subject. In his
quaint "Remaines," published thirty years later (1614), after alluding to
the Latin names then in vogue, he adds:
"As little will be thought of the new names, Free-Gift, Reformation,
Earth, Dust, Ashes, Delivery, More-fruit, Tribulation,
The-Lord-is-near, More-triale, Discipline, Joy-againe, From-above,
which have lately been given by some to their children, with no evill
meaning, but upon some singular and precise conceite."
Very likely Lord Burghley gave Fenner's selection to the great antiquary.
Coming into London, the following case occurs. John Press was incumbent of
St. Matthew, Friday Street, from 1573 to 1612:
"1584. Baptized Purifie, son of Mr. John Presse, parson."
John Bunyan's great character name of _Hopeful_ is to be seen in Banbury
Church register. But such an eccentricity is to be expected in the parish
over which Wheatley presided, the head-quarters, too, of extravagant
Puritanism. We all remember drunken Barnaby:
"To Banbury came I, O prophane one!
Where I saw a Puritane one,
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday."
But the point I want to emphasize is that this _Hopeful_ was Wheatley's
own daughter:
"1604, Dec. 21. Baptized Hope-full, daughter of William Wheatlye."
Take a run from Banbury into Leicestershire. A stern Puritan was Antony
Grey, "parson and patron" of Burbach; and he continued "a constant and
faithfull preacher of the Gospell of Jesus Christ, even to his extreame
old age, and for some yeares after he was Earle of Kent," as his tombstone
tells us. He had twelve children, and their baptismal entries are worth
recording:
"1593, April 29. Grace, daughter of Mr. Anthonie Grey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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