520 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. MR: CROWDER, vicar of Vell in Surrey, was a pious man, and a frequent preacher, but endured cruel persecu- tion. About the year 1631 he was committed close prisoner to Newgate for sixteen weeks, and then deprived of his living by the high commission, without any articles, witness, or other proof brought against him. It was, indeed, pretended that he had spoken some treasonable words in the pulpit; but the truth was, he preached twice on a Lord's day too near the court, which at that time was not conformable to the oppressive measures of the ruling prelates.. SAMUEL SKELTON was a pious and zealous minister in Lincolnshire, but much harassed and persecuted for non- conformity. In the year 1629 he accompanied Mr. Higginson and others to New England. Arriving in the Massachusets bay, they settled at Naumkeak, which they called Salem, where their first work was the formation of a christian church. Having on this occasion appointed a day of solemn fasting and .prayer, Mr. Skelton was chosen pastor, and Mr. Higginson teacher.i. Mr. Skelton survived his colleague, and, after enduring many painful hardships, entered into thejoy of his Lord, August 2, 1634.t He was a man endowed with a strong faith, a most heavenly conversation, and was well furnished with ministerial abilities.§ HUMPHREY BARNET was minister at Uppington in Shropshire, where he and Mr. Wright of Wellington were accounted the first puritans in the county, for noother reason than their sedulous preaching and their sober and pious lives; though at that time they were both conformable to the estab- blished church. He was a celebrated preacher, and much admired by the country people, who flocked to hear him twice every Lord's day, a practice then not very common. When the Book of Sports came -forth, instead of reading it, he preached against it ; for which he was cited to appear before the Bishop of Lichfieldand Coventry, and forced to leave the diocese. Being driven from the people of his charge, he removed into Lancashire, where he closed his labours and sufferings, probably about the year 16344 Mr. Joshua Barnet, silenced in 1662, was his soul fruntiey's Prelates' Usurpations, p. 161. + Prince's Chron. Hist. vol. i. p. 183, 189. Mathei's Hist, of New Eng. b. iii. p. 76. § Hist. of New Eng.p. 22. H Calamy's Conlin. vol. ii. p. 726. 'II Palmer's Noncon. Mem. vol. iii. p. 150.
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