a new edition. Among dissenters Calamy's dumpy volumes took the place of Clarke's ‘Lives,’ those folio treasures of the older puritan hagiology. Inferior to Clarke's collections in richness and breadth, they were well adapted for explaining the causes and justifying the spirit of the nonconformist separation. In choosing for his central figure Richard Baxter, whom some writers have strangely called a presbyterian, Calamy emphasised liberty of conscience as the keynote of nonconformity. He wrote three distinct lives of Baxter, the ‘Abridgment,’ a shorter life prefixed to Baxter's ‘Practical Works,’ 4 vols. 1707, fol., and a sketch in the ‘Continuation’ (p. 897), especially valuable for its dealing seriatim with the ‘chief accusations’ brought against Baxter. In 1775 Samuel Palmer condensed Calamy's four volumes into two, with the title of ‘The Non-Conformists' Memorial.’ An improved edition was issued in 3 vols. 1802–3, but an adequate edition of Calamy is still a desideratum. Palmer's arrangement is convenient, and his additions are of some service, but he is not a good compiler; he omits valuable matter, rarely reproducing the original documents which abound in Calamy, nor can his accuracy be trusted. Partly perhaps from failing eyesight, he makes some blunder or other in nearly every life. Even on the title-page of his first volume (1802) he not only commits himself to the number of ‘two thousand’ ejected, but gives 1666 as the date of the Uniformity Act (corrected in vols. ii. and iii.). This number of two thousand is rather a figure of rhetoric than of calculation. Calamy says it was ‘mention'd from the first’ (Account, pref. p. xx), and it probably originated as a counterpart to an assertion by Thomas Cartwright [q. v.] in one of his defences of Field and Wilcocks's ‘Admonition,’ 1572, to the effect that ‘two thousand preachers, which preached and fed diligently, were hard to be found in the church of England’ (Contin. pref. p. i). Calamy does not profess to give an exact enumeration, but he thinks two thousand under the mark. His own volumes mention 2,465 names, omitting duplicates, but counting those who afterwards conformed. Palmer's contain 2,480, including only 230 of the after conformists, but adding new names. Nor is this exhaustive; in Norfolk and Suffolk, to take an example, Calamy and Palmer give 182 names; Browne, the careful historian of nonconformity in these counties, while removing two (one ejected in another county), adds 14 on the evidence of ecclesiastical registers, so that Oliver Heywood may be right in estimating the gross total at 2,500. All the lists require more careful classification than they have yet received. Baxter is probably very near the mark when he fixes at 1,800 the number of the nonconforming clergy who entered upon active work in the dissenting ministry. Calamy's ‘Continuation’ concluded his historical labours. In the summer of 1729 his health was broken, and he spent ten weeks at Scarborough for the waters. He lived to deprecate, though not to take part in, the discussions (1730) on the decay of the dissenting interest, and preached on 28 Oct. 1731 the first sermon to ministers at Dr. Williams's library (he was one of the original trustees of Williams's foundations). In the following February he tried the Bath waters, but returned home to prepare for death. He died on 3 June, and was buried at Aldermanbury on 9 June, 1732.
Calamy was married, first, on 19 Dec. 1695, to Mary (d. 1713), daughter of Michael Watts, a cloth merchant and haberdasher (d. 3 Feb. 1708, aged 72); secondly, on 14 Feb. 1716, to Mary Jones (niece of Adam Cardonel, secretary to the great Duke of Marlborough), who survived him. He had thirteen children, but only six survived him, four of them, including Edmund (1697?–1755) [q. v.], being by the first wife.
Of the many engravings of Calamy, the best is that by G. Vertue, prefixed to the sermons on the Trinity (see below); less refined, but more genial, is that by Worthington from Richardson's painting, prefixed to his autobiography; that by Mackenzie, ‘from an original picture,’ prefixed to Palmer's work, shows a shapeless face with a squinting leer. Calamy's most important publications, in addition to those mentioned above, are: 1. ‘Defence of Moderate Nonconformity,’ 3 parts, 1703–5, 8vo, against Ollyffe and Hoadley. 2. ‘Inspiration of the Holy Writings,’ 1710, 8vo, dedicated by permission to Queen Anne. 3. ‘Thirteen Sermons concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity,’ 1722, 8vo, in which he vindicates the authenticity of 1 Jo. v. 7, and vouches for the orthodoxy of the generality of his dissenting brethren. George I, to whom the book was dedicated, received Calamy ‘very graciously’ when he came to present it, and charged him with a message to the London dissenting ministers, to use their ‘utmost influence’ at the coming election in favour of the Hanoverian candidates. 4. ‘Memoirs of the Life of the late Revd. Mr. John Howe,’ 1724, 8vo. Calamy's numerous funeral sermons are valuable for their biographical particulars. He was in the habit of furnishing similar particulars to other writers of funeral sermons, John Shower, for instance.
[Calamy's gossiping autobiography, ‘An His-
