cretion, on that Prospect, would have met with more lenity than I have experienced, and I believe England is the only country in Europe where Prisoners at Discretion are not understood to have their Lives saved.'
Patten described Oxburgh as ' of a good, mild, and merciful disposition, very thoughtful, and a mighty zealous man in his conversation, and more of the priest in his appearance than the soldier.' A rough portrait was engraved to adorn his dying speech, and this has been reproduced for Caulfield's 'Portraits of Remarkable Persons' (ii. 138-41).
[Mahon's Hist. of England, i. 254; Burton's Hist. of Scotland, viii. 311; Patten's Hist. of the Late Rebellion, 1717, p. 115, &c.; Hibbert-Ware's State of Parties in Lancashire in 1715, passim; D'Alton's King James's Irish Army List, p. 851; Historical Register, 1716, pp. 222-3; Cobbett's State Trials; Doran's Jacobite London, i. 214; Lives of Twelve Bad Men, ed. Seccombe, pp. 123-7; Noble's Continuation of Granger, iii. 461; A True Copy of a Paper delivered to the Sheriffs of London by Colonel Oxburgh, 1716, fol.]
OXENBRIDGE, JOHN (1608–1674),
puritan divine, born at Daventry, Northamptonshire, on 30 Jan. 1608, was eldest son of Daniel Oxenbridge, M.D. of Christ Church, Oxford, and a practitioner at Daventry, and afterwards in London. His mother was Katherine, daughter of Thomas Harby, by Katherine, daughter of Clement Throgmorton of Hasley, third son of Sir George Throgmorton of Loughton. Wood confuses him with another John Oxenbridge, a commoner of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1623, anno ætatis 18. He was, in fact, admitted a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on 8 April 1626, and matriculated in July of the same year. Migrating afterwards to Oxford, he entered Magdalen Hall, proceeded B.A. on 13 Nov. 1628, and commenced M.A. on 18 June 1631 (Wood, Fasti Oxon. i. 438, 460). He became a tutor of Magdalen Hall ; and in
order to promote the better government of the society, he drew up a document which
he persuaded his scholars to subscribe. He thus exhibited a contempt for the college
statutes which led to his deprivation of office on 27 May 1634. Laud was chancellor
of the university, and his sentence on Oxenbridge is printed in Wharton's 'Remains of Laud,' ii. 70. It recites that, both by the testimony of witnesses upon oath and by his own confession, the tutor had 'been found guilty of a strange, singular, and superstitious way of dealing with his scholars, by persuading and causing some of them to subscribe as votaries to several articles framed by himself (as he pretends) for their better government; as if the statutes of the place he lives in, and the authorities of the present governors, were not sufficient.' The vice-chancellor, Brian Duppa [q. v.], was thereupon informed that Oxenbridge should 'no longer be trusted with the tuition of any scholars, or suffered to read to them publicly or privately, or to receive any stipend or salary in that behalf.' Oxenbridge left the hall, and subsequently married his first wife, Jane, daughter of Thomas Butler, merchant, of Newcastle, by Elizabeth Clavering of Callaley, aunt to Sir John Clavering of Axwell.For some time he preached in England, showing himself to be 'very schismatical,' and then he and his wife, who 'had an infirm body, but was strong in faith,' took two voyages to the Bermudas, where he exercised the ministry. In 1641, during the Long parliament, he returned to England, and preached 'very enthusiastically in his travels to and fro.' London, Winchester, and Bristol are enumerated in the list of towns which he visited. A manuscript memoir quaintly remarks that he and his wife
'tumbled about the world in unsettled times.' In January 1643-4 he was residing at Great
Yarmouth, where he was permitted by the corporation to preach every Sunday morning
before the ordinary time of service, provided he made his 'exercise' by half-past eight o'clock in the morning. He thus preached for months without fee or reward;
but at his departure the corporation presented him with 15l. His next call was to
Beverley, to fill the perpetual curacy of the minster, in the patronage of the corporation.
His name occurs in the list compiled by Oliver under the date of 1646 (Oliver,
Beverley, p. 368). Two years afterwards he was nominated by the committee of plundered ministers as joint preacher with one Wilson at St. Mary's, Beverley (Poulson, Beverlac, p. 368). Wood, in a venomous article, states that while Oxenbridge was in the pulpit 'his dear wife preached in the house among her gossips and others;' and the manuscript memoir remarks that her husband, ' a grave divine and of great ministerial skill . . . loved commonly to have her opinion upon a text before he preached it ... she being a scholar beyond what is usual in her sex, and of a masculine judgment in the profound points of theology.'
From Beverley Oxenbridge went to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where a week-day lecture-ship in the gift of the Mercers' Company, London, had been founded by one Fishborne in 1625, and a new church, commenced in 1648, was finished in 1652 by the exertions of Colonel George Fenwick, the governor
