hearsal Transpros'd;’ his ideas of religion are condensed (p. 262) in the rhymes:
By the liturgy learn to pray;
So pray and praise God every day.
The Apostles' Creed believe also;
Do as you would be done unto.
Sacraments take as well as you can;
This is the whole duty of man.
With equal gusto he soon ridiculed the high church party and his old friends the nonconformists. A violent quarrel with his bishop, Henry Compton (1632–1713) [q. v.], followed. The tithes of St. Botolph's, Colchester, had (since 1544) been enjoyed by the rectors of All Saints; Compton set aside this arrangement in favour of another clergyman. Hickeringill made himself obnoxious by researches into ecclesiastical law, enabling him to teach his neighbours to resist the exactions of the spiritual courts. On 9 May 1680 he preached before the lord mayor, Sir Robert Clayton [q. v.], at the Guildhall Chapel, London, hurling the curse of Meroz on all who, like Compton, slighted the law by allowing latitude to dissenters. In this pungent discourse Hickeringill asserts that civil authority is supreme in all matters, and shows much knowledge of constitutional history.
His subsequent life was a series of battles in the courts and in the press. On 3 March 1681 he was tried at Chelmsford assizes before Judge Weston on an indictment of twenty-four counts for barratry; his former general, Monck, now duke of Albemarle, sat on the bench. He conducted his own case, and proved a match for Sir George Jeffreys, the leading counsel against him. The prosecution broke down (ib. ii. 189 sq.), though it was reported in Nat. Thompson's weekly ‘Loyal Protestant’ that he had been convicted of perjury (ib. i. 394). He was next cited to Doctors' Commons for performing marriages without banns or license, and for proceedings in connection with the tithes of St. Botolph's and other parishes. He appeared before Sir Robert Wiseman on 8 June 1681, kept on his hat, and replied to all remonstrances in Greek, till Wiseman ordered an appearance in Greek to be registered as a non-appearance, when he threatened to prosecute Wiseman according to statute for citing him out of his proper diocese (ib. pp. 176 sq.). He appeared again on 21 Nov., and put in pleas, which on 25 Nov. were allowed (ib. pp. 53 sq., 115 sq.) An admirer, Sol. Shawe of Monmouth, addressed to him (2 Feb. 1682) an eulogistic poem. On 8 Feb. 1682 articles of good behaviour were exhibited against him in the king's bench (cf. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 162), and on 8 March, at the Chelmsford assizes, Compton prosecuted him for slander, ‘scandalum magnatum,’ under the statute 2 Ric. II, c. 5. At the Easter election of parish officers for St. Botolph's (4 April 1681) he had publicly spoken of Compton as ‘a bold, daring, impudent man,’ as ‘very ignorant,’ and ‘concerned in the damnable plot.’ This was understood of the Popish plot, but Hickeringill meant a plot against himself (ib. p. 150). Jeffreys was again counsel against him, and got a verdict for the plaintiff, with 2,000l. damages, which Compton proposed to give towards the building of St. Paul's. Hickeringill wrote a long letter to Compton which he proposed to send by the hands of Thomas Firmin [q. v.], whom he never saw, offering to pay the costs of the old suit, on condition that there should be a new trial (Scand. Mag. passim). For celebrating marriages irregularly he was suspended for three years. He was restored and excused the fine, on publicly recanting in the court of arches (27 June 1684) the ‘scandalous, erroneous, and seditious principles’ contained in his publications numbered 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 18 below (cf. Luttrell, i. 312). Meanwhile ‘that unhappy verdict’ had lost him a fortune of 20,000l., his uncle, Dr. Troutbeck, having altered the disposal of his estate, ‘lest any of the lawn-sleeves should lay their fingers on't’ (Works, iii. 117).
Soon after the accession of James II Hickeringill (perhaps suspected of favouring Monmouth's enterprise) was peremptorily excluded from his living by royal mandate, and not recalled till 1688, ‘about a month before the Dutch landed’ (ib. ii. 380). In 1691 Tom Brown (1663–1704) [q. v.] assailed him in his ‘Novus Reformator Vapulans,’ where Hickeringill is introduced as taking part in a discussion with David Jones and the ghost of Prynne. In 1705 his ‘Survey of the Earth’—Luttrell calls the book ‘the Vileness of the Earth’—gave Compton a fresh occasion for bringing him into the spiritual court. In March 1706–7 he published a ‘Letter concerning Barretry, Forgery, and the Danger and Malignity of partial Judges and Jurymen’ (Bodleian Library). Later in the year he was charged with altering the rate-books brought to him as commissioner of taxes by the assessors for the parish of Wix, in which he was a landowner; was convicted of the ‘forgery’ in August, and was fined 400l. ‘He carried himself,’ writes Hearne, ‘with that indecency to the court that he was thought to be mad’ (Collections, ed. Doble Oxf. Hist. Soc. ii. 33, 412). He was now an old man; in his last year he occupied himself in editing collections of his
