Note 7 — INTRODUCTION TO NATHANIEL WHITING.

It was not, however, for some time after I had been working on Whiting that I found considerable new light thrown on him by his prose work, which is in the British Museum, under his name, though Albino and Bellama is not. The title of it is abbreviated by Hazlitt, and is in the original very long, beginning with the Hebrew אל ... בית ... אל Old Jacob's Altar newly repaired; or The Saints' Triangle of Dangers, Deliverances and Duties. It is a solid little quarto of some 260 pages, dedicated to Sir William Fleetwood, Sir George Fleetwood, 'Baron of Swonholm in Sweadland', and 'his Excellency Charles Lord Fleetwood'. Whiting was now 'Minister' of Aldwinckle (All Saints, as the registers show7) by the patronage of Sir William, to whom he refers as his 'ancient' and 'affectionate Mecaenas' in his Cambridge days. He is certainly by this time a full-blown Puritan. He uses that word itself frequently, and with pride; refers to 'my reverend grandfather', minister of Elton, Northants, who was apparently a 'pilgrim father'; speaks of the time when 'the Episcopal monopoly lasted', and eulogizes 'the faithful Peters to whom is committed the Word of Reconciliation' (Reconciliation à la Peters is good!); but also calls Herbert 'divine' and quotes St. Anselm, though of course without the 'Saint'. Allowing for its standpoint the book is not virulent, and is a respectable piece of hortatory divinity on its own side. Besides, the thought that in a few months 'the Episcopal monopoly' came back again, and that 'the faithful Peters' received the deferred pay for his various 'commissions', mitigates judgement not a little; while, to crown all, the contrast with Albino and Bellama is irresistibly comic. Perhaps, indeed, some of the ribaldry of the convent scenes in the verse may be due to the Puritanism which is so distinct in the prose. But it would be an odd Saint who could construct himself a 'triangle' of any kind of sanctities or pious experiences out of Whiting's romance. And this, which is so characteristic of the time, and yet not so uncharacteristic of all times, adds to my satisfaction in presenting Mr. Nathaniel Whiting with some little more detail than even Brydges has given. (It may be added that he was deprived of the living at the Restoration. Edward Price succeeded him on February 20, 1662-3. According to a brief notice in Notes and Queries,8 he then migrated to the village of Cranford, near Kettering, and got together a congregation there. There is no trace of him in the registers of either of the Cranford churches.9 The same authority states that he died childless and was a benefactor of the free school of Aldwinckle, of which he was master during the period of his incumbency.)