Jeremy Taylor was born under James VI and I, was the son of a barber in Cambridge, and was baptized on 15 August, 1613. Unless he was christened two years after his birth, it is not plain how he could have been in his fifteenth year when (August, 1626) he was admitted to Caius College as a sizar (at Oxford, "servitor"); Jeremy's eloquence attracted the notice of Archbishop Laud, who had him made a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford (1636). At Oxford, a Cavalier University, Jeremy studied casuistry, the topic of his large book "Ductor Dubitantium," a Guide to the Doubting. In 1638, Jeremy obtained the cure of souls at Uppingham, and in the same year preached, in the University pulpit, a Guy Fawkes Day sermon. In 1639 he married. In 1640, Laud was impeached of treason; in 1642, as chaplain, Jeremy served under the standard of King Charles. Parliament abolished Bishops; Jeremy defended Episcopacy ("Of the Sacred Order of Episcopacy"). In February, 1645, he was captured in a Royalist defeat, but was protected by Lord Carbery, and became his private chaplain at Golden Grove in Carmarthenshire, where he was safe from the persecution of the friends of freedom of conscience that called themselves "the godly". At Golden Grove, though far from what had been his library, he wrote "An Apology for Liturgy" (abolished by Parliament in 1645). In 1647 appeared his "Liberty of Prophesying," a plea for toleration. Such pleas always came from the religious party which was being persecuted, though, even when persecuted, the Covenanters always denounced "the vomit of toleration," their aim being, in power or out of power, to force all mankind to be presbyterian covenanters. The frenzy of armed religious fanatics made Taylor, like Falkland, as described by Clarendon, "ingeminate peace! peace!" But he himself was to be in prisons often, under the persecution of the Commonwealth, and when he unhappily became, under the Restoration, Bishop of Dromore in a covenanting part of Ireland, he replaced the Presbyterian ministers by Anglican clergymen. Taylor's plea for toleration was an offence to all parties. These years of the King's disasters and death must have been bitterness to Taylor. He now composed his work "The Great Exemplar," a Life of Christ, filled with persuasions to godliness, with reflections far fetched but charmingly phrased, and he did not disdain legends destitute of scriptural authority. "In the country of Thebais, whither they first arrived, the child Jesus being by design or providence carried into a temple, all the statues of the Idol gods fell down, like Dagon at the presence of the Ark, and suffered their timely and just dissolution and dishonour." The book makes no attempt at criticism, and is of an immense length: in those days "a great book" was not deemed "a great evil".