Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 13 - Section VIII
VIII. Rev. Abraham de la Pryme, F.R.S.
Abraham, son of Matthew de la Pryme and Sara Smaque, was born within the parish of Hatfield, in Yorkshire, on 15th January 1671. Before he was twelve years old he began an autobiography and diary and record of every-day observations, occurrences, and on dits, entitled “Ephemeris Vitae Abrahami Pryme; or, a Diary of my own Life, containing an account likewise of the most observable and remarkable things that I have taken notice of from my youth up, hitherto. Eccl. Vanity of Vanitys. All is vanity and vexation of spirit. Man’s life is but a vain thing and a series of evils. Teach us then, O Lord, so to number our days that we may obtain everlasting bliss in thyne eternal kingdome.” Here we have abundance of materials.
He tells us that he was born “(to all the miserys of life) at a house about the middle of the Levels, about the middle way on the high road-side on the left hand as you come straight from the Isle of Axholmeor Haxyhorn from Epworth to the little neat town of Hatfield.” “My father can speak Dutch and my mother French, but I nothing yet but Inglish.” “In 1680 my father shifted dwelling and went and lived at an old great larg hall in the Levels, which was built by Mijn Heer Van Valkenburg, one of the great drainers of the country.” Following the old style of the year, he says as to 1684: “In this year in Feb. dyed King Charles the Second of a disease they call an apoplexy, as they say; he is mightily lamented by every one, as well by his enemies as friends; and I heard a gentleman say that came from London that the citty was in tears, and most of the towns through which he came. Yet perhaps it may be that they wept not so much for the love they bore him, as for fear that his brother who now reigns may be worse than he. Good God, prevent it!” As to 1686, “This year was published an order against bonfires and fireworks upon any account whatever. The vulgar and every one soon perceived what it drove at, viz., the hindering of rejoicings and sports on gunpowder treason night. Therefore that nevertheless they might not loose the priviledge of haveing some merriment and of shewing their abhorrence of popery, they invented illuminations — that is, every house when that night came set all their windows as full of candles as ever they could hold in all the great towns of England, which caused a most delicate spectacle.” As to 1688, “About the end of this year happen’d in England the greatest revolution that was ever known. I mean by that most bold and heroick adventure of the most illustrious and famous Wil. Hen. Nassaw, Prince of Orange, who soon turned the scale of affairs, and delivered us out of all our fears of tyranny and popery which, as farr as I can possibly see, would infallibly have faln upon us.”
Under the rule of William and Mary he could quietly concentrate his thoughts upon his prospects of a college education. His Presbyterian father wished him to study at Glasgow College. Abraham had different thoughts, having been prejudiced against Presbyterians by people who believed true religion to be nothing but a silently and painfully calculated viaticum. He writes in 1689: “This day I heard my father say that as he went to Doncaster fair, he overtook a company of godly Presbyterians who were singing salms as they rid. Was not this a great peece of affectedness, and more out of vain glory and pride than piety? I have heard of a Presbyterian minister who was so precise that he would not as much as take a pipe of tobacco before that he had first sayed grace over it. My father, alas! inclines mightily this way, as does all the French and Duch of these Levels, and he would needs have me to go to the University of Glasco, but I do not intend it. I hope God will so incline my father’s will as to suffer me to go to Cambridge, which thing I beg for Jesus Christ his sake.” His father yielded to his wish, and in the end of April 1690 he set out for Cambridge; there he took the degree of B.A., and was afterwards ordained as an Anglican curate. How successfully the scandalous tongues of college dons, county squires, and coffee-house coteries had worked upon the fancy and the fears of the innocent curate may be seen in an extract from his diary: “1696, Oct. 10. Having been a little melancholy this day, I was very pensive and sedate, and while I remained so, there came several strange thoughts in my heart which I could not get shutt of. Methought I foresaw a Religious Warr in the nation, in which our most apostolick and blessed church should fall a prey to the wicked sacrilegous Nonconformists, who should almost utterly extinguish the same, and set up in the place thereof their own enthusiastick follys, which God prevent! &c, &c.” In this matter specially, but also as to all anecdotes, he exhibits a credulity which would astonish us if we did not know that his generation was credulous in the extreme. I have let my dates go astray for once in order to dismiss ecclesiastical topics, which I do, with the remark that while I condemn the diarist’s personalities, I can cheerfully 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 Aldermen of Hull to use their interest with the Duke of Newcastle, or some other nobleman or member of parliament. In his Memorial to their Worships, dated April the 5th, 1701, he writes, “I have almost finish’d and prepared for the press the whole history, antiquitys, and description of Hull, in long folio, containing a successive historical account of its original building, incrcas, and fortune in warre, battels, sieges, revolutions of state and government, &c, from its first building unto this time, which, when published, will be exceedingly to the honour and glory of the town, and the future peace, good, and welfare thereof. I have been at great charges in employing my friends at York, London, Oxford, Cambridge, and other places, in searching records there relating to the same, and in running through almost an infinite fateague, night and day, of continual writeing, reading, searching, compareing, reviewing, and composing of books, records, papers, and deeds, concerning the same, and inserting them into the same.” Through the Dean’s good offices, the Archbishop of York recommended Mr. De la Pryme to the Duke of Devonshire, who presented him in the year 1701 to the living of Thorn, “a markate town a little of of my town of Hatfield,” and he was duly admitted to the parochial charge on 16th October. In the same year, although only thirty years of age, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. But too soon the diarist, Ralph Thoresby of Leeds, had to write the following mournful record:— “1704, June 20. Was much concerned to hear of the death of my kind friend, Mr. Abraham de La Pryme, Minister of Thorne, who, visiting the sick, caught the new distemper or fever, and he died on Monday after, the 12th inst., in the prime of his age; he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, has several letters in the Transactions, had made a great collection of MSS., compiled the History of Hull, in three vols. fol. . . . Lord! sanctify afflictive providences.”[1] The following is the inscription on his gravestone in Hatfield Church:—
Here lies all that was mortal of Abraham de la Pryme, F.R.S., Minister of Thorn, in the county of York, son of Matthew de la Pryme, and Sarah, his mournful relict. He died June the 13th, 1704, in the 34th year of his age.
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Tho' snatch’d away in youth’s fresh bloom, |
A painful priest — a faithful friend — |
- ↑ Rev. Robert Banks, Vicar of Hull, wrote to Thoresby, December 29, 1707:— “Mr. Prime, a little before he left us, took some pains to collect what he thought remarkable out of the writings and records in the Town Hall, which, after his death, the Mayor and Aldermen purchased of his brother, who lives at Hatfield. As to the rest of his manuscripts, they were about two years since in his brother’s custody, and it may be easily known whether he has disposed of them or no, and to whom.”