seems to have been greatly enamoured, although poorly paid, and
often in straits. Subsequently to the great event of his life--his
vision--our subject appears to have come south, and to have been in the
employment of Lord Charles Spencer at Hanworth in Middlesex. Like most of
the prophets of his day, Clark was haunted with the belief that the last
day was approaching; and considering himself called upon to announce to his
acquaintance and neighbours that this "terrible judgment of God was at
hand," he got but contempt and ridicule for his pains:--more than that,
indeed, for those raising the cry that he was a madman, they procured the
poor man's expulsion from his situation. Under all these discouraging
circumstances, he maintained his firm conviction of the approaching end of
time: so strongly was his mind bent in this direction, that "I opened the
window of the house where I then was," says he, "thinking to see Christ
coming in the clouds!"

"I was three days and three nights that I could not eat, drink, nor
sleep; and when I would close my eyes, I felt something always touching
me; at length I heard a voice sounding in mine ears, saying 'Sleep not,
lest thou sleep the sleep of death:' and at that I looked for my Bible,
and at the first opening of it I read these words, which were sent with
power, 'To him that overcometh,'" &c.

Poor Clark, like his prototype Thomas Newans, laboured hard to obtain the
sanction of the hierarchy to his predictions:

"I desire no man," he says, "to believe me without proof; and if the
Reverend the Clergy would think this worth their perusal, I would very
willingly hear what they had to say either for or against."

The orthodoxy of the "Reverend the Clergy" was not, however, to be moved;
and Alexander Clark and his books now but serve the end of pointing a
moral. With more real humility and less presumption, there was much that
was good about him; but letting his heated fancies get the better of the
little judgment he possessed, our _amiable enthusiast_ became rather a
stumbling-block than light to his generation.

J. O.

* * * * *

AMCOTTS PEDIGREE.

(Vol. viii., p. 387.)

Although I may not be able to furnish your inquirer with full pedigree of
this family, my Notes may prove useful in making it out.

From a settlement after marriage in 1663, of Vincent Amcotts of Laughton,
in the county of Lincoln, gentleman,