possibly being turned out of it, to the great regret and sorrow of his parishioners, who had learned to love and trust him.
The inhabitants of the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Friday Street, Cheapside, unanimously chose him as their minister in 1652; and though he speaks of it as the smallest in London, it is evident that he remained there six or seven years. He must have married Miss White on his first settlement in the metropolis. That he would gladly have gone elsewhere is rendered probable by his declaration that Cromwell twice refused to present him to a living worth four hundred pounds a year, though he was the nominee of the patron. In July 1657 the Protector, however, gave Annesley the Lord's Day evening lecture at St. Paul's, which brought him one hundred and twenty pounds a year; and twelve months after, through the favour of Richard Cromwell, he was made vicar of St. Giles', Cripplegate, against the wish of some of the inhabitants, who at the Restoration petitioned Charles II. for his removal. That monarch, however, confirmed him in his living—possibly because he did not wish to make too rapid or sweeping changes.
Dr. Annesley had been a prominent man among the Puritan divines, whether he approved of the execution of the "martyred King" or no, for he had been one of the commissioners appointed by the Act of Parliament for the approbation and admission of ministers of the Gospel after the Presbyterian manner. No doubt he would have liked to have retained his living and won the favour of the King, for his ancestral instincts were likely to make him Royalist rather than Roundhead. But when it came to a question of conscience he was firm to his principles, and in 1662, when the
