10. _Thomas Pyle M.A._ Of the birth-place and the early part of the life of the rev. T. Pyle, whose name is still mentioned with veneration by the few who remember him as a preacher, we have not been able to obtain any account. So rapid is the neglect or the forgetfulness of oral tradition! From his epitaph we learn indeed that he was born in 1674. About the year 1698, he was examined for ordination, at Norwich, by the celebrated and truly honest William Whiston, at that time chaplain to bishop Moore, who has stated in the interesting Memoirs of his Life, that Dr. Sydal and Mr. Pyle were the best scholars among the many candidates whom it was his office to examine. It is probable that he was ordained upon the title of one of the curacies of St Margaret’s parish, as he married, in 1701, a Mrs Mary Rolfe of an affluent and respectable family in Lynn, and in the same year he was appointed by the Corporation to be minister or preacher of St. Nicholas’ Chapel. He published some political Sermons in the years 1706, 1707. and especially in the year 1715. In these discourses he vindicated and enforced those principles to which we are indebted for the expulsion of the Stuarts, and for the elevation of the Brunswick family to the throne. About the same period he became generally known as the author of a very useful Paraphrase on the Historical Books of the Old Testament, and another on the Acts, the Epistles and the Revelation of the New Testament. Soon afterwards he enlisted himself as a writer in the Bangorian Controversy, and was a strenuous and able advocate of the civil and religious principles of Bp. Hoadly. He appears to have been on terms of particular friendship with some of the greatest and best men in the Church of England, such as Dr. Sam. Clarke, Mr. Jackson of Leicester, Dr. Sykes, Bp. Hoadly, Dr. Herring, afterwards abp. of Canterbury; and equally so with some eminent dissenting ministers, particularly Dr. Sam. Chandler and Mr. Rastrick of Lynn. Many years after his death his youngest son, the rev. Philip Pyle, published several volumes of his “Sermons on plain and practical Subjects.” His writings are characterised by a perspicuity and manly sense, rather than by any elevation of style, or by a graceful negligence; and yet in the delivery of his sermons, so impressive was his elocution, that both in the metropolis and in the country, he was one of the most admired preachers of his time. The flowing lines were sent to him on his Sermon preached at Lincoln’s Inn, May 4th. 1735, on Gen. III, 19.