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 17th
century theologian Jeremy Taylor is renowned for his devotional writings and
his works have won a permanent place in English literature. Simon Kershaw
tells the story of the Bishop who was son of a barber.
Jeremy Taylor was a native of Cambridge who, after the Restoration of
Charles II, became a bishop. His writings are among the glories of English
spirituality and literature, and it is for this that he is chiefly
remembered.
Taylor was born on 15 August 1613, the son of a Cambridge barber. He was
educated at the newly-founded Perse School and then at Gonville and Caius
College. In 1633 he was elected a fellow of the college and was ordained
when he was only 20 years old.
His preaching attracted the attention of William Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury, who encouraged him to continue his studies, and he became a
fellow of All Souls, Oxford. He later became Rector of Uppingham, in
Rutland, where he married and settled down to the work of a country priest.
He was well known as a spiritual guide and director, and people came to him
from far and wide for advice and counsel.
During the Civil War he was a supporter of the king's cause and was Chaplain
to the Crown. Charles I appointed him Rector of Overstone in
Northamptonshire. He was captured and imprisoned after the siege of Cardigan
Castle. The king is said to have given him his watch and some jewels before
his execution in January 1649.
Bishops in the Church of England were then abolished under the Commonwealth,
and Taylor, who had been a strong supporter of episcopacy, was repeatedly
imprisoned. During this time he produced much of his great writing: his
apology for authorized and set forms of liturgy 'against the pretence of the
Spirit', a book of twenty-seven sermons for 'the summer half year', and
shortly after, a book of twenty-five for 'the winter half'.
In 1650 his great work, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, was
published. It is a manual of Christian practice and devotion which has
influenced Anglicans ever since. The following year the sequel appeared: The
Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. Both quickly established themselves as
classics of Anglican spirituality as well as being some of the finest
examples of English prose.
In 1658 he accepted a position as a lecturer or preacher at Lisburn in
Ulster, and on the Restoration of Charles II, when episcopacy was also
restored, he became Bishop of Down and Connor, and also vice-chancellor of
the University of Dublin.
However, he did not have an easy time in his new post. Many of his clergy
were Presbyterians who refused to accept his authority and were deprived of
office, whilst the majority of the population was Roman Catholic. The
difficulty of his position no doubt affected his health, and, catching a
fever from a patient he was visiting, Jeremy Taylor died at Lisburn on 13
August 1667, two days before his fifty-fourth birthday.
He is remembered as perhaps the greatest of the 'Caroline Divines', those
Anglican theologians and writers of the mid-seventeenth century, a man of
broad outlook and warm heart who wrote with great passion and belief, and
whose conviction and faith still speak to us today.
Coleridge placed him among the four masters of early seventeenth century
literature, with Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton.
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