Calamy

Calamy, EDMUND, a Puritan divine, was born in London in 1600. He studied at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge (1616-19), where he attached himself to the Calvinistic party; and afterwards became domestic chaplain to Felton, Bishop of Ely. In 1626 he was appointed lecturer at Bury St Edmunds, but resigned his office when the order to read the Book of Sports began to be enforced (1636). In 1639 he was chosen minister of St Mary's Aldermanbury, London. He now entered warmly into the controversies of the time, and became noted as a leading man on the side of the Presbyterians. He had a principal share in the composition of Smectymnus (q.v.), a work intended as a reply to Bishop Hall's Divine Right of Episcopacy, and one of the most able and popular polemics of the day. Like the mass of the Presbyterian clergy, he was monarchical and not republican in his political opinions. He disapproved, therefore, of the execu- tion of Charles, and of Cromwell's protectorate, and did not hesitate to avow his attachment to the royalist cause. He was one of the deputies appointed to meet Charles II. in Holland, and congratulate him on his restoration. His services were recognised by a royal chaplaincy and the offer of the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield, which he refused through conscientious scruples (his wife's, according to Tillotson). Ejected for nonconformity in 1662, he continued to attend service in his old church, till heart-broken by the Great Fire of London, he died 29th October 1666. He had published nineteen sermons, &c.—Two of his five sons were educated for a religious profession: the one, Dr BENJAMIN CALAMY (1642-86), rose to be a prebendary of St Paul's, and published A Discourse about a Scrupulous Conscience, dedicated to his patron, Judge Jeffreys; the other, EDMUND CALAMY (1635-85), was ejected for nonconformity. His son, EDMUND CALAMY, D.D., born in 1671, studied three years at Utrecht, and, declining Carstares' offer of a Scotch professorship, from 1694 was a Nonconformist minister in London. He visited Scotland in 1709, when Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen all conferred honorary degrees on him, and he died 3d June 1732. Of his forty-one works, the best known are his Account of the Ejected Ministers, and his interesting Autobiography, first published in 1829.