Gurnall's Early Life and Education

GURNALL’S HISTORY VERY LITTLE KNOWN — REASON OF THIS — BORN AT LYNN, 1616 — EDUCATED AT LYNN GRAMMAR SCHOOL, AND EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE — HISTORY OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE — STATE OF FEELING AT CAMBRIDGE WHILE GURNALL WAS THERE.

WILLIAM GURNALL, Rector of Lavenham, in Suffolk, and author of “The Christian in Complete Armour,” is a man about whom the world possesses singularly little information. Perhaps there is no writer who has left a name so familiar to all readers of Puritan theology, but of whose personal history so little is known. Except the three facts, that he was a Puritan divine of the seventeenth century, — that he was Minister of Lavenham, — and that he wrote a well-known book of practical divinity, most persons know nothing of William Gurnall.

This dearth of information about so good a man appears at first sight extraordinary and unaccountable. Born, as he was, in a seaport town of no mean importance, — the son of parents who held a prominent position in the town, — educated at Cambridge, at one of the best known Colleges of the day, — the cotemporary of leading divines of the Commonwealth times, — minister of the largest church in West Suffolk for the uninterrupted period of thirty-five years, — author of a work which, from its first appearance, was eminently popular, — Gurnall was a man, we naturally feel, of whom more ought to be known. How is it then that more is not known? How shall we account for the absence of any notice of him in the biographical writings of his day?

I believe that these questions admit of a very simple answer. That answer is to be found in the line of conduct which Gurnall followed in the year 1662, on the passing of the unhappy Act of Uniformity. He did not secede from the Church of England! He was not one of the famous two thousand ministers who gave up their preferment on St. Bartholomew’s Day, and became Nonconformists. He retained his position, and continued Rector of Lavenham. Puritan as he undoubtedly was, both in doctrine and practice, he did not do what many of his brethren did. When Baxter, Manton, Owen, Goodwin, and a host of other giants in theology, seceded from the Church of England, Gurnall stood fast, and refused to move. He did not act with the party with which he had generally acted, and was left behind.

The result of this line of conduct can easily be imagined. Whatever opinions we may hold about Gurnall’s conformity, we must all allow that the course he took was not likely to make him a favourite with either of the two great religious parties into which England at that time was divided. A neutral is never popular in a season of strife and controversy. Both sides suspect him. Lach party is offended at him for not casting his weight into their scale. This, I suspect, was precisely Gurnall’s- position. He was a Puritan in doctrine, and yet he steadfastly adhered to the Church of England. He was a minister of the Church of England, and yet a thorough Puritan both in preaching and practice. In fact, he was just the man to be disliked and slighted by both sides.

I throw out the conjecture I have made with considerable diffidence. It is undoubtedly nothing but a conjecture. But I look at the broad fact that the biographical writers who have handled Gurnall’s age, have chronicled scores of names of far less weight than his, and have refused to say a word about the author of “The Christian in Complete Armour.” Calamy, Clarke, Neal, and Brooke have written hundreds of pages about men for whom the world cares nothing now, but not a page about Gurnall! I leave it to others to offer a better explanation of this fact, if they can. I must be allowed to retain my own settled conviction, that we should know far more about Gurnall if he had not submitted to the Act of Uniformity in 1662, and retained the pulpit of Lavenham parish church.

To supply a correct history of this good man and his times, is the object of the biography I am now writing. Ever since I read “The Christian in Complete Armour,” I have felt that the author of such a book was a man whose life ought to be known. From the day that I was transplanted into the Eastern Counties, and became a Suffolk incumbent, I have made it my business to study the lives of eminent Suffolk divines. None of them all appears to deserve excavation from undeserved oblivion so much as Gurnall.

Almost the only source of information about Gurnall which we now possess is a small volume, published in 1830, by a writer named M‘Keon, entitled, “An Inquiry into the Birthplace, Parentage, Life, and Writings of the Rev. William Gurnall, formerly Rector of Lavenham, in Suffolk, and Author of ‘The Christian in Complete Armour.” This book was printed and published for the author at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, and not in London. It is owing to this circumstance, perhaps, that it seems to have attracted little notice, and to have become comparatively unknown.

Mr. M‘Keon was an inhabitant of Lavenham, and likely to procure information about Gurnall, if any one could. He was undoubtedly a painstaking man,

P and an antiquarian of considerable research. His accuracy and correctness are worthy of all commendation. There is hardly a single date or fact in his book which I have not taken the trouble to verify by inquiry and investigation; and there is hardly one, I feel bound to say, in which I have found him wrong. But it cannot be said that his “‘ Inquiry” is written in a popular and attractive style. In accumulating facts he was most successful; in arranging and exhibiting them to the reading public I certainly think he failed.

However, whatever may be the faults of Mr. M‘Keon’s book, it is certainly the only attempt at any account of Gurnall which has hitherto existed. A funeral sermon, to be sure, was preached by Gurnall’s friend and neighbour, the well-known commentator Burkitt. But the information it contains is comparatively very small. I must therefore frankly avow that I am indebted to Mr. M‘Keon’s work for the greater part of the facts about Gurnall which I have brought together in the following pages. I have tried to re-arrange these facts. I have endeavoured to present them to the reader in an attractive form, by illustrating them with some cross lights from the history of Gurnall’s times. I have added a few facts which Mr. M‘Keon was probably unable to obtain. But I think it only fair to state that Mr. M‘Keon’s book is the principal mine from which the biographical account of Gurnall now presented to the reader has been drawn. If I have added anything of interest to his work, it is almost always by following up clues which his volume indicated or put into my hand.

William Gurnall was born at Lynn, in the county of Norfolk, in the year 1616, and was baptized at St. Margaret’s church in that town, on the 17th of November, 1616. His father and mother were married at St. Margaret’s church on the 3lst of December, 1615, and the subject of this memoir was therefore their eldest child.*

It has often been observed that-the mothers of great men, and especially of great divines, have been remarkable for strong mind and force of intellect. Mothers have been found, as a general rule, to influence children’s character far more than fathers. How far this was true in the case of Gurnall we have unfortunately no means of judging. We only know that his mother’s maiden name was Catherine Dressit,; and that in all probability she was a native of Lynn.

Gregory, the father of William Gurnall, appears to

Mr. Hankinson, once Rector of St. Margaret’s, Lynn, informed me that the name ‘‘Gurnall,” to the best of his knowledge, is no longer known in Lynn. But he says that the name ‘‘Gurling” is not uncommon, and that he has little doubt it was originally ‘‘Gurnal.” He adds, ‘‘I find an entry of baptism in 1799, where the name is ‘Gurnell or Gurling.’” In Suffolk, the names of “*Girling” and ‘‘Grinling,” as I happen to know from the parish register of Stradbroke, are very common.

have been one of the principal inhabitants of Lynn. At any rate he was an Alderman of his native town in the year when his son was born, and was Mayor of the borough eight years afterwards, in 1624. Nothing is known of his calling or occupation. The fact that his son died possessed of certain landed property at Walpole, a country parish not far from Lynn, makes it highly probable that Gregory Gurnall was a landed proprietor. But on this point nothing certain is known.

Gurnall had the misfortune to lose his father when he was only fifteen years old. His death is recorded in the register of St. Margaret’s, Lynn, as having taken place on the 14th of October, 1631. He was buried in St. Margaret’s church, and a tomb was erected to his memory, with a curious inscription. This tomb is no longer extant, as the spire of St. Margaret’s church was blown down in a violent hurricane in the year 1741, and falling on the body of the church destroyed a large portion of the building. Mackerell’s History of Lynn, published about four years before the hurricane, records the inscription. If epitaphs were worth anything, the language of Gregory Gurnall’s epitaph might lead us to the conclusion that he was a godly man. But unhappily it is too well known that tombstones are not always to be trusted.

How long Gurnall’s mother survived his father there is no evidence to show. M‘Keon conjectures that she married again. It is certainly a curious fact that Burkitt, the commentator, in his funeral sermon on William Gurnall, uses the following language: “How great was that tribute of veneration and respect which he constantly paid to the hoary hairs of his aged parents.” Considering that his father died when he was only fifteen years old, these words can hardly be supposed to apply to Gregory Gurnall. Unless therefore the word “parents” in Burkitt’s sermon is a printer’s mistake for “parent,’ it seems a very probable idea that Gurnall’s mother married again, and that he had a kind and loving stepfather. But who he was, and how long his mother lived, we do not know.

The first fifteen years of Gurnall’s life appear to have been spent‘in his native town of Lynn. There is at any rate no doubt that he was educated at the Free Grammar School of that town up to the time when he went to Cambridge. The fact is recorded in the books of the school.

The first fifteen years of life have often so much weight in the formation of a man’s character, that it would be very interesting to find out the influences under which William Gurnall spent his early years. Unhappily we possess no materials for doing this. Ambrose Fish was appointed Master of Lynn Grammar School in 1626, in the place of Mr. Robinson, deceased, and Robert Woodmansea was appointed

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Master in 1627. But we know nothing of these men. I can only point out two things which appear to me deserving of attention.:

For one thing, we may probably trace up to Lynn, Gurnall’s Puritan predilections and opinions. Lynn was one of the chief towns of the most thoroughly Protestant district in England in the seventeenth century. In the days of Queen Mary and Elizabeth the inhabitants of Norfolk and Suffolk were famous for their deep attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation. In the days of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth, they were no less famous for their steadfast adherence to Puritan principles. In no part of England were High Church opinions so thoroughly disliked as in the diocese of Norwich, and in no diocese were the minds of people so continually exasperated by vexatious persecutions of Nonconformists.” Brought up in a large market town like Lynn, we cannot doubt that the religious atmosphere in which young Gurnall moved was essentially Puritan. If, as it seems not unlikely, from a comparison of dates, the famous John Arrowsmith and Samuel Fairclough were Ministers at Lynn during Gurnall’s school days, we get an additional ray of light thrown on the

Harsnet, White, Corbet, Wren, and Montague were Bishops of Norwich between 1619 and 1641. Three of them, at least, viz., Harsnet, Wren, and Montague, were notoriously very High Churchmen, and strongly opposed to the Puritans.

source of his doctrinal opinions. To hear men like Arrowsmith and Fairclough preach every Sunday, and perhaps to be solemnly catechised or examined by Arrowsmith on stated public occasions, were just the things likely to produce an indelible impression on a mind like Gurnall’s.°

John Arrowsmith was born at Gateshead, in 1602. He was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and was chosen Fellow of Katherine Hall. He was elected one of the University Preachers, was beneficed at Lynn, and was afterwards Preacher at St. Margaret’s, Ironmonger’s Lane, London. He was a leading member of the Westminster Assembly, and had-a principal share in drawing up the Assembly’s Catechism. He was elected Master of St. John’s College in 1644, and was chosen Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in 1647. In 1651 he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity, and Rector of Somersham. He was chosen Master of Trinity College in 1653, died in 1659, and was buried in Trinity College Chapel. His commentary on the first seventeen verses of the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel, entitled ‘‘God-Man,” gives a very favourable impression of his ability.

Samuel Fairclough was born at Haverhill in 1594, and was educated at Queen’s College, Cambridge. He was appointed Lecturer at Lynn by the Mayor and Aldermen in 1619, and continued there, according to Samuel Clarke, who gives a long and most interesting account of him, ‘‘for some time.” The opposition and persecution of Harsnet, Bishop of Norwich, obliged him to resign this lecture. He was afterwards Lecturer at Clare, in Suffolk, and was then appointed Rector of Keddington, by Sir N. Barnardiston. He resigned this living in 1662, on account of the Act of Uniformity. He died in retirement in 1677, aged 84. Though a retiring man, and not known by any writings, he seems to have been a man of singular gifts and graces. There is an interesting tablet in Heveningham Church, erected by his daughter, wife of Mr. Jones, Rector of Heveningham. He lived at Heveningham for two years, but died at Stowmarket.

For another thing, we probably owe to Gurnall’s early residence at Lynn his remarkable familiarity with the sea, sailors, and shipping. I was once puzzled to make out the reason why nautical illustrations so frequently occur in his writings. It did not surprise me to find an author like Gurnall, who delighted in illustrations, pressing everything in town and country into his service. I could understand the man who was Rector of a Suffolk town for thirty-five years, drawing comparisons from shops, and farms, and streets, and fields, and horses, and cattle, and corn, and grass and flowers. I could understand the minister who lived through the bloody wars of the Commonwealth times, using abundant imagery from the habits of soldiers and from the battle-field. But I never could understand Gurnall’s familiarity with the sea and shipping, until I found out that he was born and bred in Lynn. He knew well what a sailor’s life was. He had seen the quaint-looking craft which carried on the coasting trade of Lynn. He had doubtless talked with sailors who could tell the perils of ‘‘the Wash,” the Lincolnshire coast, the Norfolk Sands, and the voyage to the Humber. Hence came his nautical illustrations in Lavenham pulpit. How true it is that all knowledge is useful to a minister of Christ. The man of God makes everything he has seen become serviceable to his Master’s cause.

The next thing that we know about Gurnall is his

Wiliam Gurnall — HMis Early Life. 217

connection with Cambridge as a pensioner of Emmanuel College. It appears that Lynn Corporation had two Scholarships at Emmanuel in its gift, connected with the Grammar School of the town. To one of these Gurnall was presented by the Corporation, in December, 1631, not long after his father’s death. A correspondent of M’Keon, at Lynn, says: “I find, on reference to the Corporation books, that on the 2nd December, 1631, William Gurnall, son of Gregory Gurnall, alderman there, lately deceased, and one of the scholars of Lynn School, was nominated to one of the Scholarships in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, called Lynn Scholarship, or Mr. Titley’s Scholarship; and that on the 11th of June, 1632, the nomination, dated 29th March then last, passed the Corporation seal.”

Of Gurnall’s history during his residence at Cambridge we know literally nothing, with the exception of the following bald facts. The College books record that William Gurnall, pensioner, of Norfolk, was admitted March 29, 1632, was B.A., 1635, and M.A., 1639. It is certain that he was never elected a Fellow of his College, and as the Lynn Scholarship was only tenable for seven years, it is highly probable that he ceased to reside at Cambridge in the year 1639, when he took his degree as M.A., and received no further assistance from his Scholarship.

It would no doubt be highly interesting, if we knew something of Gurnall’s history during the seven years of his University life. The character of a young man is generally moulded for life during the period between sixteen and twenty-three, and the author of the “Christian in Complete Armour,” was probably no exception to this rule. Who were his friends and companions? Who were his tutors and lecturers? Was he a reading man? Whom did he walk with, and talk with? What great preachers did he hear in the University pulpit? What were his habits and ways of employing his time? What side did he espouse in the mighty controversies of the day? All these are questions which it would be very pleasant to have answered. The answers would throw great light on many a passage in his after-life and writings. But the answers unhappily are not forthcoming. The only light that we can throw on Gurnall’s University life, consists of a few facts about his College, and the general state of England between 1632 and 1639.

The College to which Gurnall belonged was always famous in the seventeenth century for its theological tendencies. It was eminently a Puritan College.

Sir Walter Mildmay, of Chelmsford, in Essex, was the founder of Emmanuel College, and even from its very foundation in 1585, it seems to have been notorious for its attachment to Puritan principles. Fuller, in his History of Cambridge, relates that on “Sir Walter Mildmay coming to Court, soon after he had

William Gurnali — His Early Life. 219

founded his College, Queen Elizabeth said to him, ‘Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a Puritan foundation. ‘No, madam, saith he, ‘far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.’ Sure I am (adds Fuller, writing about 1650) at this day it hath overshadowed all the University, more than a moiety of the present Masters of Colleges being bred therein.”

The number of leading divines of the seventeenth century who were educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is certainly extraordinary. Beside Bishop Hall and Bishop Bedell, we find in the list of its members the names of Stephen Marshall, Jeremiah Burroughs, Thomas Sheppard, Thomas Hooker, Ezekiel Culverwell, Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Crooke, John Cotton, John Stoughton, Anthony Burgess, Laurence Chaderton, John Preston, Anthony Tuckney, Lazarus Seaman, Matthew Poole, Samuel Clarke, Ralph Vennine, Thomas Watson, Stephen Charnock, William Bridge, Peter Sterry, Samuel Cradock. Any one familiar with Puritan divinity will see at a glance that this catalogue embraces the names of some of the most eminent Puritan writers. Some of them no doubt were cotemporaries and fellow-students of Gurnall himself.

From inquiries which I have made, I have succeeded

220 Eishops and Clergy of other days.

in obtaining some information about Emmanuel College between the years 1652 and 1639, which I think will not be devoid of interest to all admirers of Gurnall. At any rate it will show who were at Emmanuel when he was there, both as an undergraduate and a graduate, and with what kind of minds he was associated.

The Masters at Emmanuel in Gurnall’s time were (J) William Sancroft, uncle of the Archbishop, who held the office from 1628 to 1637; and (2) Holdsworth, who held the office from 1637 to 1645, when he was ejected by the Earl of Manchester. He was a zealous advocate of the King, and attended him during his confinement in the Isle of Wight, and soon after, according to Neal, died of grief.

The reason why Gurnall was never elected Fellow of his College, was probably, if I may venture a conjecture, the high character and attainments of his competitors. According to the books of Emmanuel, Ralph Cudworth was elected Fellow in 1639, Worthington (afterward Master of Jesus) in 1641, and Sancroft (afterward Archbishop of Canterbury), in 1642.

The Fellows of Emmanuel between 1632 and 1639 were the following : — Walter Foster, ‘Richard Clarke, John Ward, Thomas Ball, Ezekiel Wright, Thomas Hill, Nicholas Hall, William Bridge, Samuel Bowles, Henry Salmon, David Ensigne, Anthony Burgess,

Wiliam Gurnall — His Early Life. 221

Thomas Holbeck, Thomas Horton, Malachi Harris, R. Sorsby, Benjamin Whichcot, John Henderson, John Almond, R. Weller, Peter Sterry, Laurence Sarson, John Saddler, Ralph Cudworth.

“All the Fellows,” says a member of Emmanuel, “appear to have been tutors in their day, though some had more pupils than others. As far as our books lead us to infer, Hill, Hall, Burgess, Holbeck, Ensigne, Salmon, Whichcot, all seem to have been most popular tutors in their day. We have no tutors’ books which tell us under whom Gurnall was admitted.”

When I add to the above information the fact, that Horrox, the astronomer, was admitted at Emmanuel in 1632, the same year as Gurnall, and that Archbishop Sancroft, the famous nonjuror, was admitted in 1633, I shall have exhausted all the stock of information that I have been able to scrape together about Gurnall’s College life and his cotemporaries.

Seven years spent at a College like Emmanuel could not fail to have an effect on Gurnall’s mind. Brought up from his boyhood to honour and reverence the Puritans as the excellent of the earth, at Lynn, — trained afterwards at a College where the whole atmosphere was peculiarly Puritan, — it would have been strange indeed if Gurnall had grown up without decided Puritan opinions.

The state of England during the seven years of

Gurnall’s University life was very peculiar. It was the crisis of the troubled period between the Reformation and the Commonwealth times. The suicidal and blind misgovernment of Charles I. was rapidly paving the way for the destruction of the throne. The undisguised Romish tendencies and bitter persecutions of Archbishop Laud, and his fellow-workers, were doing the same for the Church of England. From one end of the country to the other there were discontent, murmuring, controversy, bitterness, and party spirit. On every side there were symptoms of a coming break-up, or a violent conflict both in Church and State.:

Cambridge, we need not doubt, had its full share of all the troubles and discomfort of this stormy period. The following passage from Fuller’s History of Cambridge records things which happened there in 1632, the very year that Gurnall entered Emmanuel, — things which no doubt he saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears : —

“This year,” says Fuller, “a grave divine preaching before the University at St. Mary’s, had this passage in his sermon: ‘That as at the Olympian games he was counted the conqueror who could drive his chariot wheels nearest to the mark, yet so as not to hinder his running, or stick thereon, so he, who in his sermons could preach near Popery, and yet no Popery, there was your man. And, indeed, it now began to be the complaint of most moderate men, that many in the University, both in school and pulpit, approached the opinion of the Church of Rome more than ever before.

“Mr. Bernard, Lecturer of St. Sepulchre’s in London, preached at St. Mary’s in the afternoon of May 6th, his text, Sam. iv. 21: ‘The glory is departed from Israel, etc. In handling whereof he let fall some passages which gave distaste to a prevalent party in ‘the University, as for saying: (1) That God’s ordinances, when blended and adultered with innovations of men, cease to be God’s ordinances, and He owneth them no longer. (2) That it is impossible any should be saved, living and dying without repentance, in the doctrine of Rome, as the Tridentine Council -hath decreed it. (3) That treason is not limited to the blood royal; but that he is a traitor against a nation that depriveth it of God’s ordinances. (4) That some shamefully symbolize in Pelagian error and superstitious ceremonies with the Church of Rome. Let us pray such to their conversion or to their destruction, ete.

“Dr. Cumber, Vice-Chancellor, gave speedy notice hereof to Dr. Laud, Bishop of London, though he (so quick his University intelligence) had information thereof before. Therefore he was brought into the High Commission, and a recantation tendered to him, which he refused to subscribe, though professing his sincere sorrow and penitency, in his petition and letter to the Bishop, for any oversight and unbecoming expression in his sermon. Hereupon he was sent back to the new prison, where he died. If he was miserably abused therein by his keepers, as some have reported, to the shortening of his life, He that maketh inquisition for blood, either hath, or will be, a revenger thereof.”

This deplorable affair took place, let us remember, in the year 1632, the very year that Gurnall came up to reside at Emmanuel. How much stir it would excite among the undergraduates of a thoroughly Puritan College we can easily imagine. All who know anything of an English University, know how ready undergraduates are, as a body, to sympathize with the persecuted and oppressed, and to side with the minority.

It was during Gurnall’s residence at Cambridge that Dr. Ward, one of the representatives of the Church of England at the Synod of Dort, gave the following unsatisfactory description of the state of the University, in a letter to Archbishop Usher, dated 1634. He says, “It may be you are willing to hear of our University affairs. JI may truly say I never knew them in worse condition since I was a member thereof, which is almost forty-six years.” *:

“Usher’s Correspondence, No. 179.

It was during Gurnall’s residence at Cambridge that the infamous sentence on Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, was passed in the Court of Star Chamber. For publishing certain alleged libels on the Church of England these unfortunate men were condemned to stand in the pillory, and have their ears publicly cut off The sentence was actually carried into effect, June 30, 1637, in Palace-yard.. Bastwick was a physician, who had been educated at Emmanuel College. We can easily imagine the sensation which his punishment would create within the walls of his old College.

It was during Gurnall’s residence at Cambridge that the famous disturbances in Scotland arose, out of Archbishop Laud’s attempt to introduce the notorious Scotch Liturgy, with its Popish Communion Office, into the churches of Edinburgh. The well-known riot in St. Giles’ Church, when a stool was thrown at the Bishop of Edinburgh’s head, by a zealous woman called Jenny Geddes, took place on Sunday, July 23, 1637.

It was during Gurnall’s residence at Cambridge that John Hampden began the unhappy struggle between the King and his subjects by refusing to pay ship-money. The decision of the Chief Justice was given against him on the 9th of June, 1637.

I mention these facts and dates in order to give the reader some idea of the times in which Gurnall passed

Q through his University career. We cannot doubt that his character and opinions must have been strongly influenced by them. No one could be at Cambridge from 1632 to 1639, without seeing and hearing things which would leave a mark on his memory for life, and without coming across a stream of conflicting opinions which he would remember to his dying day. No doubt Gurnall became acquainted with some of the best specimens of the Puritan divines. No doubt also he saw in the heart of a Puritan College enough to make him feel that all Puritans were not perfect men. I venture the conjecture that his after-life at every step was greatly influenced by the recollection of what he saw at Emmanuel, Cambridge.