LEIGH, 503 Though this important point was gained, it does not appear with what success Mr. Huntley prosecuted the com- missioners. He could not expect any considerable recom- mence from the high commission. He contended with cruel and barbarous oppressors. Having endured the most cruel imprisonment for many years, he was released, most probably, upon the meeting of the long parliament. In the year 1644 he was one of the witnesses against Arch- bishop Laud at his trial ;+ and this is 411 that we know of him, Mn. LEIGH was many years a laborious minister of the gospel at Wolverhampton, and enjoyed a prebend in the cathedral of Lichfield, but was silenced by order of Arch- bishop Laud, for nonconformity. The archbishop, giving directions to Sir Nathaniel Brent, his vicar-general, says, " Take special notice of Mr. Leigh ; and if you can fasten upon him any thing, whereby he may justly be censured, pray see it be done, or bring him to the high commission court to answer it there. Let him not obtain any license to preach any lecture there or in another place hard-by, at Tetenshall, whither those at Wolverhampton do run after him out of their own parish." He is charged with having churched refractory women in private, with being averse to the good orders of the church, and with having ordered the bell-man to give notice in open market of a sermon; for which, in the year 1635, he was suspended.t Upon Mr. Neal's mention of this case, Dr. Grey boldly and triumphantly asks, " And can Mr. Neal be so weak as to think this an insufficient causeof suspension? The rubricks," he adds, ". are the law of the church, and are well known to be part of the statute-law of the. land."t Here, without taking notice of the author's opinion of the rubricks, it may be observed, that Mr. Neal, with all men of liberal principles, would undoubtedly think, without discovering any peculiar weakness of mind, that this was no sufficient reason for an eecclesiastical censure, so tyrannically oppres- sive on the liberty of the subject. Mr. Leigh, who was thus removed from his flock, and driven from his sphere of ministerial usefulness, afterwards settled at Shrewsbury, Wharton's Troubles of Laud, vol. i, p. 270. Prynne'sCant. Doome, p. 881. t Grey's Examination, vol. 1. p. 155.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=