Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/293
Meriton
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��of Trin. Coll. Dublin; Admission Keg. of Christ's Coll. Cambr. per the master ; will in Public Kecord Office, Dublin.] B. P.
MERITON, JOHN (1636-1704), divine, was the son of Richard Meriton of North- allerton in Yorkshire, and was born in 1636. He was educated first at a private school at Danby Wiske, and was admitted sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, on 18 Oct. 1652, but at that time took no degree. On 9 Jan. 1655-6 he was presented, on the recommen- dation of Oliver Cromwell, lord protector, to the rectory of St. Nicholas Aeons, London (Lambeth MS. 996, fol. 456). On 14 July 1657 he was incorporated M.A. in the uni- versity of Oxford, and became an upholder of the presbyterian form of church government. He was made Sunday lecturer of St. Martin's- in-the-Fields shortly before the Restoration. On 26 Sept. 1660 he was created M.A. of Cambridge by royal mandate, and 1).D. in 1 669. He signed the ( Humble and Grateful Acknowledgements of many Ministers in and about London ' to the king for his conces- sions expressed in his declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs in November 16(50. On 18 July he was reinstituted to his rectory of St. Nicholas Aeons, which he resigned before 1664. The church was burnt in 166 and not rebuilt. Before the Act of Uniformity came into operation he opposed it strongly, but later on he himself conformed and re- tained his living. He was appointed to the rectory of St. Michael's, Cornhill, on 28 March 1663, which he held till his death. He was rector of St. Mary Bothaw from 25 June 1666 till 1669; the church was destroyed in the great fire in the former year, and the parish was in 1669 annexed to that of St. Swithin's, London Stone. He was also lecturer of St. Mary-at-Hill from 1661 to 1683. Wood (Athena, vol. iv. col. 722) speaks of him as having been deprived of the lectureship of St. Olave's, Southwark, ( for fanaticism,' but an inspection of the 'Vestry Minutes 'of the parish shows that the lec- turer removed in October 1683 was a Thomas Meriton appointed on 24 Sept. 1662.
Meriton was one of the London rectors who remained at his post during the great plague year of 1665, and later on, after the fire of 1 666, was very energetic in the arrange- ments for uniting, rebuilding, and endowing the city churches. Two letters of his to Sancroft on the subject, dated 1670, are in the Bodleian Library (Tanner MSS. xliv. ff. 239, 242). Meriton appears to have been a popular preacher. Pepys (Diary, 1849, iii. 333, iv. 45), though he speaks of him as 'the old dunce Meriton,' and' my old acquaintance, that dull fellow,' went to hear him (11 Nov.
��1 666 and 19 May 1 667), and pronounced that he 'made a good sermon, and hath a strange knack of a grave, serious delivery, which is very agreeable.' Calamy (Own Life, ii. 89) was in the habit of hearing him in 1689 when the dissenting meet ings were closed, and of sending his father accounts of the sermons. Meriton died in December 1704, and was buried in the chancel of St. Michael's, Corn- hill, on the llth. His wife Elizabeth pre- deceased him in December 1680, and a son Thomas in June 1678. The registers of St. Michael's record the baptisms of a daughter Elizabeth on 6 Dec. 1664, and of a son Row- land on 18 Oct. 1674, and the marriages of three daughters and of the son Rowland. The last named, dying in December 1743, was buried at St. Michael's, Cornhill.
He published: 1. 'Curse not the King,' anniversary sermon on the day of humilia- tion for the 'horrid murder' of Charles I, London, 16(50. 2. ' Of Christ's Humiliation,' sermon printed in 'Morning Exercises,' Lon- don, 1660 (new ed. 1844, vol. v.) ; an out- line is given in Dunn's ' Divines,' pp. 210- 211. 3. 'ReligioMilitis,' London, 1672. In Wood's 'Fasti ' (Bliss), on the authority of Grey, it is stated that he published 'Forms of Prayer for every Day in the Week, for the Use of Families.'
He must not be confused with two con- temporaries an uncle and nephew of the same name. John Meriton (b. 1629), the uncle, son of the Rev. Henry Meriton of Stilton, Huntingdon, graduated B.A.at Mag- dalene College, Cambridge, in 1648, and M.A. in 1652; became vicar of St. Ives, Hunting- donshire, and chaplain to Henry, earl of Arlington, lord chamberlain, and published: 1. ' The Obligation of a Good Conscience to Civil Obedience,' London, 1670. 2. 'Sermon before the King at Whitehall,' London, 1677. The third John Meriton (1662-1717), the nephew of the former, was son of Henry Merit on, rector of Oxburgh in Norfolk (1647- 1707) and of Boughton in the same county (1677-83), was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge ; became rector of Boughton in 1687, of Caldecote in 1688, and of Oxburgh (on the death of his father) in 1707. He died in 1717. With his father he entered into controversy with thequakers, and took part in a conference between them and some clergymen of the church of Eng- land, on 8 Dec. 1698 in West Dereham Church in Norfolk. He published ' An Antidote against the Venom of Quakerism,' London, 1(599. Smith (liibl. Anti-Quakeriana, pp. 66 9) gives a list of the pamphlets called forth by the controversy. In the Bodleian Library (Tanner MS. 22 f. 5) is a letter from
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