As one of the leaders of the Presbyterian party, Dr. Thomas Young became Vicar of Stowmarket in due time. He was one of the Smectymnian divines. As it is not every schoolboy who knows what the term means, let me explain who they were. Two or three hundred years ago people were much more controversial than they are now, and very fierce was the battle on the subject of the relative claims, from a Scriptural point of view, of Prelacy or Presbytery. One of the most distinguished champions of the former was Dr. Hall, Bishop of Norwich—a simple, godly, learned man, who deserves to be held in remembrance, if only for the way in which he got married. ‘Being now settled,’ he writes, ‘in that sweet and civil county of Suffolk, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my thoughts, after two years, to condescend to the necessity of a married state, which God no less strangely provided for me; for walking from the church on Monday, in the Whitsun week, with a grave and reverend minister, I saw a comely and modest gentlewoman standing at the door of that house where we were invited to a wedding-dinner, and inquiring of that worthy friend whether he knew her, “Yes,” quoth he, “I know her well, and have bespoken her for your wife.” When I further demanded an account of that answer, he told me she was the daughter of a gentleman whom he much respected—Mr. George Whinniff, of Brettenham; that out of an opinion he had of the fitness of that match for me he had already treated with her father about it, whom he found very apt to entertain it. Advising me not to neglect the opportunity, and not concealing the just praises of the modesty, piety, good disposition, and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly presence, I listened to the motion as sent from God, and at last, upon due prosecution, happily prevailed, enjoying the comfortable society of that meet-help for the space of forty-nine years.’ A young clergyman so good and amiable ought to have fared better as regards the days in which his lot was passed. Hall should have lived in some theological Arcadia. As it was, he had to fight much and suffer much. In those distracted times he was all for peace. When the storm was brewing in Church and State, which for a time swept away Bishop and King, he published—but, alas! in vain—his ‘Via Media.’ ‘I see,’ he wrote, ‘every man to rank himself unto a side, and to draw in the quarrel he affecteth. I see no man either holding or joining their hands for peace.’ Bishop Hall was the most celebrated writer of his time in defence of the Church of England. Archbishop Laud got him to write on ‘The Divine Right of Episcopacy,’ nor could he have well placed the subject in abler hands. This was followed, after Laud had fallen, with ‘An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament,’ in which treatise he vindicated the antiquity of liturgies and Episcopacy with admirable skill, meekness, and