Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Arnway, John

681649Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 02 — Arnway, John1885Richard Charles Browne

ARNWAY, JOHN (1601–1653), royalist divine, was of a Shropshire family and heir to a considerable estate. He was a commoner of St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, and in 1635 rector of Hodnet and Ightfield. (For difficulties connected with these appointments see State Papers, Dom. 1634-5.) His abounding charity and devoted loyalty were conspicuous. When he repaired to the king at Oxford in 1642, the parliament garrison at Wem plundered his house so completely that (according to his own account) they left him neither bible, nor money, nor clothes. He was promoted to be archdeacon of Lichfield and Coventry and prebendary of Woolvey. Resuming his activity in the royal service, his estate was sequestrated and he imprisoned till after the king's death. He was then exiled, and took refuge at the Hague, where (in 1650) he published two pamphlets, (1) the 'Tablet,' a vindication of the king against Milton's 'Eikonoclastes,' and (2) 'An Alarum to the Subjects of England,' an account of the oppressions which he and others had suffered. He was compelled by poverty to accept an invitation to exercise his function among the English in Virginia, where he died, it is supposed in 1653. Both his tracts were reprinted in 1661 by William Rider of Merton College.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 307: Fasti, i. 397, 415.]

R. C. B.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.9
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

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