Faringdon, Anthony

, an English divine, was born at Sunning in Berks, 1596. He was admitted scholar of Trinity college, Oxford, in 1612, and elected fellow in 1617. Three years after, he took a master of arts degree; about which time entering into orders, he became a celebrated preacher in those parts, an eminent tutor in the college, and, as Wood says, an example fit to be followed by all. In 1634, being then bachelor of divinity, he was made vicar of Bray near Maidenhead in Berks, and soon after divinity-reader in the king’s chapel at Windsor. He con^ tinued at the first of these places, though not without some trouble, till after the civil commotions broke out; and then he was ejected, and reduced with his wife and family to such extremities, as to be very near starving. Lloyd says that his house was plundered by Ireton, in mean revenge, because Mr. Faringdon had reproved him for some irregularities when at Trinity college. At length sir John Robinson, alderman of London, related to archbishop Laud, and some of the parishioners of Milk-street, London, invited him to be pastor of St. Mary Magdalen in that city, which he gladly accepted, and preached with great approbation from the loyal party. In Io47, he published a folio volume of these sermons, and dedicated them to his patron Robinson, “as a witnesse or manifesto,” says he to him, “of my deep apprehension of your many noble favours, | and great charity to me and mine, when the sharpnesse of the weather, and the roughnesse of the times, had blown all from us, and well-neer left us naked.”

After his death, which happened at his house in MIilkstreet, Sept. 1658, his executors published, in 1663, a second folio volume of his sermons, containing forty, and a third in 1673, containing fifty. He left also behind him, in ms. memorials of the life of John Hales of Eaton, his intimate friend and fellow-sufferer; but these memorials have never come to light. Some particulars of his intimacy with Hales will be given in our account of that excellent man. ¹