For twenty-eight years, Mr. Foxcroft had been the minister of the Church just mentioned, and, strangely enough, Dr. Chauncy was his colleague. Mr. Foxcroft’s first letter is dated “December 31, 1744,” and his second and third were written during the fortnight next ensuing. He shews, that, “Bishops of the Church of England have power to grant licenses of wider extent than the narrow district of a single parish, to any ordained minister they think proper, who, in virtue of such license, may travel from place to place as they think fit.” “The sending forth of itinerant preachers was a practice of the Church of England at the beginning of the Reformation; and has been remarkably revived of late years, particularly with relation to foreign parts.” “Mr. Whitefield is not the only episcopal itinerant in America. In the Abstract of the Proceedings of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, for 1743, Mr. Morris is expressly named ‘_Itinerant Missionary_,’ in Connecticut; Mr. Punderson, ‘_Itinerant Missionary_,’ in New England; and Mr. Lindsay, ‘_Itinerant Missionary_,’ in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It is no violation, therefore, of the original commission from the Bishop, to act beyond the limits of a particular cure or charge, or even in the character of an itinerant. And, with regard to special license,” continues Mr. Foxcroft, “I question whether the itinerant missionaries above-mentioned have had this any more than Mr. Whitefield.” 2. “An Inquiry into the Itinerancy and the Conduct of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, an Itinerant Preacher: vindicating the former against the charge of _unlawfulness_ and _inexpediency_, and the latter against some aspersions, which have been frequently cast upon him. By William Hobby, A.M., Pastor of the first Church in Reading. Boston, 1745.” (8vo. 28 pp.) Mr. Hobby was a graduate of Harvard College, and was a fluent and fervid preacher. He died in 1765, aged fifty-seven. Passing over that part of his pamphlet which refers to the _lawfulness_ of itinerancy, it may be stated, that he successfully replies to the attacks on Whitefield respecting his Orphan House accounts, his being an enthusiast and ecclesiastical chameleon,[118] and his aspersion of ministers. With regard to the accusation that he was a _perjurer_, because he had sworn to prosecute his appeal against Commissary Garden’s censure, and had not done so, Mr. Hobby says, “Whitefield exerted himself to the utmost to get a hearing in the court at home (which he now proves by an affidavit, taken before the Lord Mayor of London by himself and his solicitor), but all in vain.”