Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM LAW [William Law (1686-1761) was born in 1686 at King’s Cliff in Northamptonshire, where his father was a grocer. He entered as a sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1795, took his B.A. degree and was elected Fellow of Emmanuel in 1708, and received holy orders in 1711. For some years he resided at Cambridge, taking pupils; but in 1714 he had to resign his Fellowship because he could not conscientiously take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration which were imposed on the accession of George I. For some years it is not easy to trace the course of his life, but some time before 1727 he became an inmate in the house of Mr. Gibbon at Putney, the grandfather of the historian, as tutorto his son, whom he accompanied to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His pupil left the university without a degree, and Law returned to Mr. Gibbon’s house, his whole stay there lasting more than twelve years. On the death of Mr. Gibbon the Putney establishment was broken up, and Law returned to his native county, and settled first at Thrapston, and then in a house of his own at King’s Cliff. Two pious ladies, Miss Hester Gibbon, a sister of his pupil, and Mrs. Hutchison, widow of an M. P., joined him for the sake of his spiritual direction; and the
Hall Yard
(the name of Law’s residence) became the centre of an establishment not unlike that at Little Gidding under Nicolas Ferrar. Almshouses and schools were built and endowed, and Law’s outer life consisted mainly in attending to these, and in ministering to the poor of the parish. He attended every service at the Parish Church, and observed regularly all the canonical hours of devotion. He strongly disapproved, of clerical marriages, and remained a bachelor until his death in the spring of 1761. His whole life was an endeavour to follow …