• With all explanations, and all the modesty of Sibbes himself, ■'tve cannot help lamenting that his contemporaries so readily ac- quiesced in his choice of being a ' hidden one.'
But I must now try to put together such particulars as have been jfound, and in proceeding to do so it can only be needful to remind those who have attempted similar service, of the Greek proverb — To/i (TiTov 'u'zoprjvcri ffcrot^Sa^ov-cc/ 0/ o^dlSoi — which may be freely rendered,
* Chick-peas are eagerly sought after when we lack corn.'
CHAPTER II.
parentage and BIRTH — BIRTH-PLACE AND SCHOOLS.
Buffollc — Martyrs and ' Puritans' — Name, its various orthofjrnpliy — Bishop Mountagu — ' JJ I tie blood'— T lint y Ron — Birlli-place, Tostock, not Sudbury — Zacliary Catlin — The ohl English Yilhigc — Removal to Thurston — The ' Wheel-wright' — • School ;it I'ahcnham — Piichard Brigs — The 'hoy father of the man' — John Milton — Contemporary 'hoys' — firammar-school at Bury St Edmunds — Father hef'rudges 'expense' — Master Sibbes put in the ' whecl-wiigbt's'shop — Friends stej) in.
RlcifAP.D PilBBES was a native of Suffolk, one of the great martyr and puritan counties of England, that furnished many of the early
MEMOIR OF KICHAED SIBBES, D,D. XXV
fugitives to Holland, a very unusual proportion of the emigrants to New England (whose lustrous names are still talismans over the Atlantic), and nearly a hundred of the 'ejected' two-thousand of ]662. The name ' Sibbes' is variously spelled. The spelling now given, and adopted in our title-page, is his own signature to his own dedications and ' epistles to the reader.' But he is fre- quently called Sibbs, and such is the orthography of his Will, as well as of his heirs and their descendants. There is a third vari- ation, Sybbes or Sybesius. But it is the Latinized form, as it occurs in Richterus Redivivus.* A fourth, Sibs, is common to many of the original editions, and furnishes a side-thrust in a play upon the word to Bishop Mountagu, in his ' Appello ad CiBsarem' (1G25), that over-clever ' Defence.' Even thus early Sibbes was speaking bravely out in his post at ' Gray's Inn' against the serai- popish piactices of the prelates ; and the venal bishop, afraid to strike openly, must needs hint dislike in this taunt, 'So ... . with our Puritans, very Sibs unto those fathers of the society, every moderats man is bedaubed with these goodly habiliments of Ar- minianisin, popery, and what not, unless he will be frantic with them for their holy cause.' -f* This may, perchance, be a mere jest- ing use of the word ' sib,' but the capital S and plural, and the man, seen to indicate an intended hit at our author, ever out- spoken against such as the uiiquestionably astute but also unques- tionably inscrupulous Richard Mountagu. The earliest occurrence of the nane that I have met with is in a Robert Sibbes or Sybbs of Cony-Weion, Norfolk, who, in 1524^, purchased Ladle's Manor, Rockland-Uofts, which again was sold by his son and heir, also a Robert, in 1594.;}: Perhaps, by further inquiries, it might be possible to connectthe neighbouring Norfolk v/ith the Suffolk Sibbeses ; and, though I have searched in vain in Burke's 'Armoury,' and all through tie Davy ' Suffolk MSS.,'§ for genealogical record, it is pos- sible thai further research might even shew 'blue blood' in the descent o: the author of the ' Bruised Reed.' But it would serve
* ' Richteus Eediviviis.' In a curious letter of Christopher Arnohl, containing new and apparenly unused information about Milton. Writing to Geo. liichter (from Lend., A.D. 7Aug. (sic) 1651, printed in Eichterus Eedivivus, p. 485), he says, ' In Academia Caitabrigiensi vir peramans mei, Abrah Whelocus, Arab, atque Anglo- saxonicaj Lin.uarum Piofessor et Bibliotliecarius publicus codices manuscriptos cum
primisGrsecos&c Obstupui in Johannitica (bibliotheca), cum raili magnum
sacrorura librrum Grrocobarbnrorum copiam ottunderent, a benefactoro quodam anonymo, suatone Kichardi Sybbes, S. Th. Prol. et hujus Coll. quondam socii seni- oris, A.D lG28dono oblatorum.'
t ' Appello d CaBsarem, a Just Appcale from Two Unjust Informers.' By Richard Mountagu. 4\>, 1625, p. 139.
X Blomefieldj Norfolk, vol. i , pp. 481-82. § In British Museum. Addl. MSS.
XXVI MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
little purpose to do so, or to prove liim ' sih' to this, that, or the other
great family. The far-fountained 'red' ichor that has come down from
' The grand old gardener and his wife '*
suffices, the more especially as, at the time of his birth at least, our author's family was assuredly lowly, and of the people :
' Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. 't
In all preceding notices, Sudbury, the old town, so far back as Ed- ward III.'s times inhabited by the Flemings, is given as Sibbes's birth-place. ' At Sudbury,' says Neal (' History of the Puritans'), and Brook (' Lives of the Puritans'), and so all the ' Biographical Diction- aries.' 'Nigh Sudbury,' says Fuller; ' At the' edges of Suffolk, near Sudbury,' says Clarke. This is a mistake. The town, 'as great as most, and ancient as any,' according to Thomas Fuller, that can boast of Thomas Gainsborough and Thomas Constable later, as natives, and of Faithful Teate, William Jenkyn, and Samuel Peyto earlier, as ministers, can afford to give up an honour to whidi it has no claim. Tostock, not Sudbury, was his birth-place. The ' regis- ters' of the period, of Sudbury and Tostock alike, have prished; but a contemporary manuscript 'Memoir' of Sibbes, from the pen of Zachary Catlin (of whom more anon), which the streamlof time, while engulphing so much else of what was precious and vhat was worthless, has floated down and placed by lucky accidert in my possession, states the fact. As this contemporary manuscript must be frequently laid under contribution in the sequel, it may be as well to give here its proem, which is sufficient, apart from what will subsequently appear, to attesf its au- thority and trustworthiness. ' At the request of a nolle friend. Sir William Spring, I have here willingly contributed to;he happy memory of that worthy man of God, Dr Sibbes, a few siidi flowers as I could collect, either from the certain relation of tiose that knew his first education, or from mine own observation ?f him sA that distance whereat we lived. And if anything herei recorded raiay seem convenient for his purpose, who is (as I am informed)