According to Peter Cunningham, that shining light of the Puritan party in the early days of Cromwell, "Praise-God Barebone," was a leather-seller in Fetter Lane, having a house, either at the same time or later, called the "Lock and Key," near Crane Court, at which place his son, a great speculator and builder, afterwards resided. Barebone (probably Barbon, of a French Huguenot family) was one of those gloomy religionists who looked on surplices, plum-porridge, theatres, dances, Christmas pudding, and homicide as equally detestable, and did his best to shut out all sunshine from that long, rainy, stormy day that is called life. He was at the head of that fanatical, tender-conscienced Parliament of 1653 that Cromwell convened from among the elect in London, after untoward Sir Harry Vane had been expelled from Westminster at the muzzles of Pride's muskets. Of Barebone, also, and his crochetty, impracticable fellows, Cromwell had soon enough; and, in despair of all aid but from his own brain and hand, he then took the title of Lord Protector, and became the most inflexible and wisest monarch we have ever had, or indeed ever hope to have. Barebone is first heard of in local history as preaching in 1641, together with Mr. Greene, a felt-maker, at a conventicle in Fetter Lane, a place always renowned for its heterodoxy. The thoughtless Cavaliers, who did not like long sermons, and thought all religion but their own hypocrisy, delighted in gaunt Barebone's appropriate name, and made fun of him in those ribald ballads in which they consigned red-nosed Noll, the brewer, to the reddest and hottest portion of the unknown world. At the Restoration, when all Fleet Street was ablaze with bonfires to roast the Rumps, the street boys, always on the strongest side, broke poor Barebone's windows, though he had been constable and common-councilman, and was a wealthy leather-seller to boot. But he was not looked upon as of the regicide or extreme dangerous party, and a year afterwards attended a vestry-meeting unmolested. After the Great Fire he came to the Clifford's Inn Appeal Court about his Fleet Street house, which had been burnt over the heads of his tenants, and eventually he rebuilt it. In Irving's "History of Dissenters" there is a curious account, from an old pamphlet entitled "New Preachers," "of Barebone, Greene the felt-maker, Spencer the horse-rubber, Quartermaine the brewer's clerk, and some few others, who are mighty sticklers in this new kind of talking trade, which many ignorant coxcombs call preaching; whereunto is added the last tumult in Fleet Street, raised by the disorderly preachment, pratings, and prattlings of Mr. Barebone the leather-seller, and Mr. Greene the felt-maker, on Sunday last, the 19th December."