Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baylie, Thomas
BAYLIE, THOMAS (1582–1663), puritan divine, was born in Wiltshire in 1582, and was entered either as a servitor or batler of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, in 1600. He was elected demy of Magdalen College in 1600, and perpetual fellow of that house in 1611, being then M. A. Afterwards he became rector of Manningford Bruce, in his native county, and he proceeded to the degree of B.D. in 1621, at which time he was a zealous puritan. He took the covenant in 1641, was nominated a member of the assembly of divines, and obtained the rich rectory of Mildenhall, Wiltshire, 'where, being settled, he preached up the tenets held by the fifth- monarchy men, he being by that time one himself, and afterwards became a busy man in ejecting such that were then (1645 and after) called ignorant and scandalous ministers and schoolmasters.' On being turned out of his living at the Restoration, he set up a conventicle at Marlborough, where he died and was buried in the church of St. Peter on 27 March 1663. He published: 'Thomae Baylaeei Maningfordiensis Ecclesise Pastoris de Merito Mortis Christi, et Modo Conversionis, diatribae duee, provt ab ipso in schola theologica apud Oxonienses publice ad disputandum propositae fuerunt, Maij 8. An. Dom. 1621. Nec non Concio ejusdem ad Clerum apud eosdem habita in templo Beatae Mariae, Iulij 5 An. D. 1622,' Oxford, 1626, 4to, dedicated to Sir Thomas Coventry, keeper of the great seal.
[Wood's Athenae Oxon. (ed. Bliss), iii. 633; Palmer's Nonconformists' Memorial, iii. 367; Cat. Librorum Impress. Bibl. Bodleianae, i. 206; Hetherington's Hist, of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, 110.]