“This was the text on which he preached, and his eloquence had such
effect on the daughter of Sir Roger Mortimer, that, forgetting the
dignity of her birth, and the loyalty of her family, she united her
destiny with this low-born man; and, believing herself to be suddenly
inspired from this felicitous conjunction, she actually out-preached two
female Quakers in a fortnight after their marriage, and wrote a letter
(very ill-spelled) to her father, in which she announced her intention
to “suffer affliction with the people of God,” and denounced his eternal
damnation, if he declined embracing the creed of her husband;--which
creed was changed the following week, on his hearing a sermon from the
celebrated Hugh Peters, and a month after, on hearing an itinerant
preacher of the Ranters or Antinomians, who was surrounded by a troop of
licentious, half-naked, drunken disciples, whose vociferations of--“We
are the naked truth,” completely silenced a fifth-monarchy man, who was
preaching from a tub on the other side of the road. To this preacher
Sandal was introduced, and being a man of violent passions, and
unsettled principles, he instantly embraced the opinions of the last
speaker, (dragging his wife along with him into every gulph of polemical
or political difficulty he plunged in), till he happened to hear another
preacher of the Cameronians, whose constant topic, whether of triumph or
of consolation, was the unavailing efforts made in the preceding reign,
to force the Episcopalian system down the throats of the Scots; and, in
default of a text, always repeated the words of Archy, jester to Charles
the First, who, on the first intimation of the reluctance of the Scots
to admit Episcopal jurisdiction, exclaimed to Archbishop Laud, “My Lord,
who is the fool now?”--for which he had his coat stripped over his head,
and was forbid the court. So Sandal vacillated between creed and creed,
between preacher and preacher, till he died, leaving his widow with one
son. Sir Roger announced to his widowed daughter, his determined purpose
never to see her more, but he promised his protection to her son, if
entrusted to his care. The widow was too poor to decline compliance with
the offer of her deserted father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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