at Huntingdon, the last year of the former century, of a good
family; though he himself, being the son of a second brother, inherited
but a small estate from his father. In the course of his education, he
had been sent to the university; but his genius was found little fitted
for the calm and elegant occupations of learning; and he made small
proficiency in his studies. He even threw himself into a dissolute
and disorderly course of life; and he consumed, in gaming, drinking,
debauchery, and country riots, the more early years of his youth,
and dissipated part of his patrimony. All of a sudden, the spirit
of reformation seized him; he married, affected a grave and composed
behavior entered into all the zeal and rigor of the Puritanical party,
and offered to restore to every one whatever sums he had formerly gained
by gaming. The same vehemence of temper which had transported him into
the extremes of pleasure, now distinguished his religious habits. His
house was the resort of all the zealous clergy of the party; and his
hospitality, as well as his liberalities to the silenced and deprived
ministers, proved as chargeable as his former debaucheries. Though
he had acquired a tolerable fortune by a maternal uncle, he found his
affairs so injured by his expenses, that he was obliged to take a
farm at St. Ives, and apply himself for some years to agriculture as a
profession. But this expedient served rather to involve him in further
debts and difficulties. The long prayers which he said to his family in
the morning, and again in the afternoon, consumed his own time and
that of his ploughmen; and he reserved no leisure for the care of his
temporal affairs. His active mind, superior to the low occupations
to which he was condemned, preyed upon itself; and he indulged
his imagination in visions, illuminations, revelations; the great
nourishment of that hypochondriacal temper to which he was ever subject.
Urged by his wants and his piety, he had made a party with Hambden, his
near kinsman, who was pressed only by the latter motive, to transport
himself into New England, now become the retreat of the more zealous
among the Puritanical party; and it was an order of council which
obliged them to disembark and remain in England. The earl of Bedford,
who possessed a large estate in the fen country near the Isle of Ely,
having undertaken to drain these morasses, was obliged to apply to
the king; and by the powers of the prerogative, he