MEDITATIONS

MISCELLANEOUS

HOLY AND HUMANE

IN TWO PARTS

BY JOSEPH HENSHAWE DD

LORD BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH

TO WHICH IS ADDED

A THIRD PART

BY RICHARD KIDDER DD

LORD BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS

OXFORD

JOHN HENRY PARKER

MDCCCXLI

328

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Author of the excellent Meditations reprinted in this volume was Dr. JOSEPH HENSHAWE, Sometime Lord Bishop of Peterborough. He was descended from an ancient family, for many generations resident at Henshawe Hall, in the township of Siddington, in the county Palatine of Chester, and was the second son of Thomas Henshawe, Solicitor General of Ireland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by Joane only daughter of Richard Whiston, chief Surgeon to that Queen. Our Author was born in 1603, and, according to the Oxford biographer, in the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, although

it would appear that his father and grandfather had for some years resided at Sumpting, a village on the sea-coast of Sussex. He was educated at the Charter House, then lately founded, being one (the 29th) of the first thirty-five Scholars appointed by the Governors at their fourth Meeting. In December, 1621, he entered at Magdalene Hall, having previously been elected to an Exhibition at Charter House, and here he took the Degree of Bachelor of Arts, Feb. 26, 1624-5.

It has been asserted, on the authority of a MS. account of Bp. Henshawe, written in 1719, by a relative (Philip Henshawe, Esq. son of a nephew of the Bishop's), and communicated to White Kennett, Bishop of Peterborough, that he was at one period elected to a Fellowship at All Souls; but a careful examination of the Registers of that College proves, that the only Fellow of that Society of the name

of Henshawe, was a totally different person, one, in truth, forced into the place of a better subject by the Parliamentary Visitors in 1648.

At an early age he was appointed Chaplain to John Digby, Earl of Bristol, as well as to George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham of that name. Beside the Rectories of Steadham cum Hayshot, and of East Lavant, both in the county of Sussex, he held a Canonry in the Cathedral Church of Chichester; and proceeded D.D. A.D. 1639. He had married Jane, seventh daughter of John Maye, Esq. of Rawmere, in the same neighbourhood. By her he had three children, the eldest of whom died young, and was buried within the Chancel of East Lavant Church, in the same vault with her mother, to whom he afterwards erected an alabaster monument, consecrating her memory in an Inscription, which