PALMER, 75 HERBERT "PALMER, B. D.-This most pious divine was the son of Sir Thomas Palmer, born at Wingham near Canterbury, in the year 1601, and educated in St. John's college, Cambridge ; but was afterwards chosen fellow of Queen's college, in the same university. He was a man celebrated for genuine piety, and thought to have been sanctified from the womb. In the year 1626, he entered upon his first ministerial exercises in the city of Canterbury, having previously obtained a license fromArchbishop Abbot,+ authorizing him to deliver a lecture at St. Alphage church, every Lord's day afternoon. In this situation, by his sound doctrine and unblemished deportment, his great usefulness was presently manifest to all. By his zealous and judicious efforts, the corruptions so prevalent among the ecclesiastics of the cathedral, who ,preferred pompous ceremonies above the power of godliness, were greatly interrupted. This, indeed, soon roused the malice and enmity of the bigotted ecclesiastics. They could not endure the soundness of his doctrine and the holiness of his life, so much opposed to their dead formality, and their unrighteous doings. Though his high birth and numerous friends screened him for a time, articles were at length exhibited against him ; but his replies to those articles, it is said, were such, that he was honourably acquitted.+ In theyear 1629, upon the complaint of the dean and arch- deacon, Mr. Palmer was silenced and his lecture put down, to the great grief of his numerous audience. The charges brought against him were,-" That he read prayers and catechized against the minister's will, and not according to the ecclesiastical canons :-that in the catechizing, he took upon him to declare the king's mind in his instructions :- that he preached a factious sermon in the cathedral, and detracted from its divine service :-and that factious persons When Archbishop Abbot's mother was pregnant of him, she is said to have had a dream, which proved at once an omen and an instrument of his future promotion. She fancied she was told in her sleep, that if she could eat a jack, or pike, the child she went with would prove a son, and rise to great preferment, Not long after this, in takinga pail of water outof the river Wey, which ran by their house, she accidently caught a jack, and had thus an odd opportunity of fulfilling her dream. This story excited much conversation, and coming to the knowledge of certain persons of distinction, they offered to become sponsors to the child, which was kindly accepted, and had the goodness to afford many testimonies of their affection to their godson while at school, and after he went to the university. Such were the good effects of his mother's dream.-Biog. Britten. vol. i. p. 3. 1- Clark's Lives annexed to Martyrologie, p. 183-187.
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