1684
1st. May
Thursday
Richard Wroe, Fellow of the College,
appointed Warden, May 1, being the first Fellow so promoted.(7)
12th. December Friday
Rev. John Tilsley, M.A., died December 12.
He was born in 1614 and educated at Edinburgh University. His first professional
employment was at Deane Church, as curate to the Rev. Alexander Horrocks.
On January 4, 1642-3, he married Margaret, daughter of Ralph Chetham,
brother of Humpbrey the benefactor. Tilsley was with Sir John
Seaton when he captured Preston, in Amounderness, and he wrote in a letter,
which was published, an account
of the capture, included in the
Civil
War Tracts.
On the 10th August, 1643, he was appointed Vicar of Deane. On December 13, 1644,
he was one of twenty-one ministers for ordaining ministers in the county of
Lancaster. Tilsley took the Covenant and became a Presbyterian. In 1646
he published A True Copie of the Petition of Twelve Thousand Five Hundred and
upwards of the Well-affected Gentlemen, Ministers, Freeholders, and others of
the County Palatine of Lancaster. He was ejected from his benefice for
refusing “The Engagement” of 1650, but was soon restored. By the will of
Humphrey Chetham Tilsley was made one of the feoffees of his proposed
hospital, and was also nominated one of the persons to purchase godly English
books. By the Act of Uniformity he was ejected from his benefice, but he
preached in various towns occasionally till his death. (Memoir of the .Rev.
John Tilsley, by J. E. Bailey, Leigh, 1884, not published.)(7)
1684
Ralph Thoresby again visited the town,
where his sister Abigail was at Madame Frankland’s boarding
school. (Diary, vol. ii., p. 176.) Her husband’s academy was for the
education of Nonconformist ministers.(7)
1684
Rev. Jeremiah Marsden, alias
Ralphson, died in Newgate. He was the second son of Ralph Marsden,
and was born in 1626, and was sent to Manchester Grammar School; but there he
had a too rigid master, and the Civil War commencing, we are told that he
improved but little. About 1647 he became a pensioner at Christ’s College,
Cambridge. On his father’s death at Neeston, June 30, 1648, Marsden
turned schoolmaster for a living, and in 1654 became a preacher. In 1658 he
received a call to Kendal, where he stayed nine months, and then went to Hull,
and afterwards to Ardsley, near Wakefield. He was ejected from thence in 1662.
After many removes he was invited to Lothbury, and was there seized for
preaching and confined in Newgate. He was known in and about London by the name
of Ralphson, and under that name was Written against by Richard Baxter
in 1684, who did not go to the length of his rigorous separatist principles,
which regarded the parochial worship of the Church of England as idolatrous. He
wrote an autobiography, which remains unprinted. (Calamy’s Ejected Ministers,
vol. ii., p. 796, and cont. pp. 2, 942.)(7)
1684
Nicholas Stratford, D.D., Warden of the
College, resigned and became preacher of Aldermanbury, London.(7)
1684
An organ was built by the celebrated Father
Smyth in the choir of the Collegiate Church.(7)