those days! The personages of Oliver’s Letter may well be unknown to us.
Of Mr. Story, strangely enough, we have found one other notice: he is amongst the Trustees, pious and wealthy citizens of London for most part, to whom the sale of Bishops’ Lands is, by act of Parliament, committed, with many instructions and conditions, on the 9th of October 1646.[1] ‘James Story’ is one of these; their chief is Alderman Fowke. From Oliver’s expression, ‘our Country,’ it may be inferred or guessed that Story was of Huntingdonshire: a man who had gone up to London and prospered in trade, and addicted himself to Puritanism;—much of him, it is like, will never be known! Of Busse and Beadly (unless Busse be a misprint for Bunse, Alderman Bunce, another of the above ‘Trustees’), there remains no vestige.
Concerning the ‘Lecture,’ however, the reader will recall what was said above, of Lecturers, and of Laud’s enmity to them; of the Feoffees who supported Lecturers, and of Laud’s final suppression and ruin of those Feoffees in 1633. Mr. Story’s name is not mentioned in the List of the specific Feoffees; but it need not be doubted he was a contributor to their fund, and probably a leading man among the subscribers. By the light of this Letter we may dimly gather that they still continued to subscribe, and to forward Lectureships where possible, though now in a less ostentatious manner.
It appears there was a Lecture at Huntingdon: but his Grace of Lambeth, patiently assiduous in hunting down such objects, had managed to get that suppressed in 1633,[2] or at least to get the King’s consent for suppressing it. This in 1633. So that ‘Mr. Wells’ could not, in 1636, as my imbecile friend supposes,[3] be ‘the Lecturer in Huntingdon,’ wherever else he might lecture. Besides Mr. Wells is not in danger of suppression by Laud, but by want of cash! Where Mr. Wells lectured, no mortal knows, or will ever know.
