tolerate him when he exclaims, “The glorious Church of England, the best and most pure Church in the whole world!”
Returning to his University career, we find that he was admitted a pensioner of St. John’s College on 1st May 1690. His diary during his life in Cambridge contains eloquent eulogies on Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. There has been some controversy over the latter eulogy, which it is hopeless to enter upon, because (as the late Joseph Robertson, LL.D., said to myself) historians, chroniclers, and extractors from registers can hardly be persuaded to pay practical attention to the old style, when the year began on March 25, and when 1st January 1692 came after 31st December 1692 instead of coming (as it would do now) twelve months before it. On account of this neglect, some of our historical dates and many biographical ones are a whole year wrong. And it appears to me that the controversialists as to the date of the burning of Newton’s papers argue as if at that time 31st December 1692 was, of course, followed by 1st January 1693.
Abraham de la Pryme took his degree of B.A. in January 1694 (n.s.). On 29th July his father died. Abraham, no doubt, wrote the admired epitaph on his father, which still attracts attention in Hatfield Church. Some of the pages of the diary being lost which were written at this time, we have not his word for it that he actually composed the epitaph. But on 3d August 1700 he wrote: “Yesterday I went upon some business to Hatfield, by Doncaster, where my relations lived, and where I set up a noble monument in the church for my father.” Here is the epitaph in modern spelling (for the antique spelling, see the Surtees Society volume):—
Sacred to the Honour of God and the Dead.
At the foot of this Pillar lies buried, in certain hope of rising in Christ, the body of
Matthew Pryme of the Levels, Gent,
(son of Charles De la Pryme, of the city Ypres in Flanders),
who married Sarah, daughter of Peter Smagge, gent., citizen of Paris, and having lived forty-nine years in this vain world (a pattern of virtue, honesty, and industry) departed to a better the 29th of July a.d. 1694, leaving behind him a good name, a mournful wife, and of eleven children whom God had given him only five living, Abraham, Peter, Sarah, Mary, and Francis, who, out of gratitude to God and duty to the excellent memory of the dead, did most freely, willingly, thankfully, and deservedly erect this monument to his memory.
Abraham made his widowed mother’s house at Hatfield his headquarters for a time, while he ranged about the country making antiquarian observations and collections. His temporal circumstances were good; and on 29th June 1695 he became curate of Broughton, near Brigg, in Lincolnshire, with an annual salary of £30. Here he carried on topographical researches, and communicated his information to the Royal Society, the result being a few papers in the Philosophical Transactions. Desiring to write a book on its local history, he resigned his curacy. On 20th November 1697 he writes: “I have now left my curacy at Broughton, in Lincolnshire, and am come to live at Hatfield, the better to carry on my history of that place.” He did not remain for quite a year in the maternal home, for on 1st September 1698 he accepted the appointment of curate and Divinity Reader of the Church of the Holy Trinity at Hull. Here he continued his antiquarian studies. The valuable manuscripts which he compiled here and elsewhere (for he did not live to print and publish anything) are fully catalogued and described by the Surtees Society.
As to 1699, he says: “This year we have had a fast day to pray God to turn the hearts of the enemys of our holy religion from persecuting the Vaudois and French Protestants. It is certain that they are very grievously persecuted in all the inland towns of France and the four provinces thereof, but not very much so in the cittys and places we trafic to. To ballance this persecution, the Papists have raised a report beyond sea that we do most grievously persecute, rost, boyl, and torment those of their religion here; and they have had great fasts and processions in all the Papist countrys for this imaginary persecution.”
We come now to “Volume the Second of the Life of Abrah. de la Pryme, containing an account of all the most observable and remarkable things that lie hath taken notice of from the year 1700, beginning at January, unto this time, to witt, the year 17 . .” His expenses in visits to interesting localities, and in making multifarious antiquarian collections, threatened to ruin him financially. On 3d August 1700 he wrote to Dr. Gale, Dean of York, who had admitted him to his friendship about two years previously, “I am at very great charges in keeping correspondence, and in buying of books and in carrying on my studdy of antiquitys, even to the danger and hazzard of my own ruin, and the casting of myself into great debts and melancholy.” His object was to obtain promotion from a curacy to a church living through the Dean’s interest. He also appealed to the Mayor and
