Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/367

MR. BENNETT'S BEQUEST. 331 a pension for the support of Mr. Oliver's family. The admission into the parish church of a tablet to the memory of one who had been excluded from the chief office in that church, is strong evidence of the personal regard in which he had been held. Under these circumstances we may fairly assume that, up to the time of his death — 6th July, 1 68 1 — he had many regular attendants on his ministry. The Congregationalists of to-day attribute to him the founding in Launceston of the Society of Protestant Dis- senters, from which their own society sprang. This theory is supported by the fact that Colonel Robert Bennett, of Hexworthy, who assisted Fairfax in his capture of our Castle in 1646 (p. 277), and who afterwards obtained from Cromwell a grant of that castle and of its adjoining deer park, left a son, William Bennett of Hexworthy, Esq., who, like the father, was a Nonconformist and a Presbyterian. This William Bennett, by a codicil to his will, such codicil bearing date 18th October, 1703 (twenty-two years after Mr. Oliver's death), gave to his son, Edward Bennett, and six other named persons, ^120, upon trust that they should within, if possible, three years after the testator's decease, with that sum build, fit, and erect in the town of Laun- ceston, or within one mile or thereabouts of the same, a convenient meeting-house for the ordinary and most common use of entertaining a congregation of Dissenters from the Church of England, as were commonly called Presbyterians ; and if the statutes for the indulgence of such Dissenters should be repealed, or if the said meeting- house should happen for three years together not to be used for the meeting of such congregation, then the said house was to be set at an annual rent, and the income dis- tributed among poor honest Christians, giving preference to Presbyterians. The testator died in the year 1704, and his will and the codicil were proved in Exeter 30th August, 1704. On the