Mr. Leigh

Mr. Leigh was many years a laborious minister of the gospel at Wolverhampton, and enjoyed a prebend in the cathedral of Lichfield, but was silenced by order of Archbishop Laud, for nonconformity. The archbishop, giving directions to Sir Nathaniel Brent, his vicar-general, says, " Take special notice of Mr. Leigh; and if you can fasten upon him any thing, whereby he may justly be censured, pray see it be done, or bring him to the high commission court to answer it there. Let him not obtain any license to preach any lecture there or in another place hard-by, at TctenshaU, whither those at Wolverhampton do run after him out of their own parish." He is charged with having churched refractory women in private, with being averse to the good orders of the church, and with having ordered the bell-man to give notice in open market of a sermon; for Which, in the year 1635, he was suspended.+ Upon Mr. Neal's mention of this case, Dr. Grey boldly and triumphantly asks, " And can Mr. Ncal be so weak as to think this an insufficient cause of suspension ? The rubricks," he adds, " are the law of the church, and are well known to be part of the statute-law of the land."{ Here, without taking notice of the author's opinion of the rubricks, it may be observed, that Mr. Ncal, with all men of liberal principles, would undoubtedly think, without discovering any peculiar weakness of mind, that this was no sufficient reason for an eccclcsiastical censure, so tyrannically oppressive on the liberty of the subject. Mr. Leigh, who was thus removed from his flock, and driven from his sphere of ministerial usefulness, afterwards settled at Shrewsbury,

• Wharton's Troubles of Land, vol. i. p. 870.
+ Prynne's Cant Doome, p. 381.
$ Grey's Examination, vol. I. p. 155.

where he was highly esteemed.* Upon his removal from this place, he, in 1644, became mmister at Shoreditch, London, by order of parliament.! It does not appear how long he remained in this last situation, nor can we obtain any further information concerning him.