of his person’ was regarded by Burnet as nothing short of blasphemy (Hist. of his Own Time, i. 141). Baillie (Letters, ii. 429) says that after Cromwell's death he was out of favour, and regarded as a parasite. He continued to live in London, took pupils, for whom he prepared a catechism (Preface to his Appearance of God to Man), and after the Restoration held a conventicle. Apparently his later years were occupied with literary work. He paraphrased the Canticles, and dictated from his sick-bed a ‘Discourse on the Mystery of Love and Wrath.’ He died, after a long illness, on 19 Nov. 1672.
Sterry's sermons and books are excellent both in matter and style. Some of his prose has been held worthy of comparison with Milton's. His religion was a pure and lofty platonism. Holding entirely aloof from the polemical spirit of his time, he strongly disagreed with the presbyterian system, whose ‘constitutions, methods, and discipline,’ he said, ‘laboured to hedge in the wind, and to bind up the sweet influences of the spirit.’ The very mystical qualities which rendered him unacceptable to Baxter were those that attracted Cromwell. Unlike the majority of the puritans by whom he was surrounded, Sterry was keenly alive to the influences of poetry, music, and art, and speaks with admiration of the works of Virgil, Titian, and Vandyck (Freedom of the Will, p. 28). He is satirised in Butler's ‘Hudibras’ (bk. iii. canto ii. 11. 215, &c.).
Besides many other sermons preached before the lords and commons, in St. Paul's, Covent Garden, St. Margaret's, and elsewhere, Sterry published: 1. ‘The Spirit's Conviction of Sinne,’ London, 1645, 4to; another copy of the same date has the title, ‘The Spirit Convincing of Sinne.’ 2. ‘England's Deliverance from the Northern Presbytery compared with its Deliverance from the Roman Papacy,’ London (printed at Leith), 1652, 4to. ‘A rare Epistle’ was sent to him by David Brown of Soho, concerning a disturbance made by a woman while Sterry was preaching at Whitehall, to which a satisfactory answer was returned, and the correspondence published, ‘Cloathing for the Naked,’ 1652, 4to.
Posthumously were published: 1. ‘Discourse of the Freedom of the Will,’ London, 1675, fol. 2. ‘The Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the Soul of Man,’ London, 1683, 4to. 3. ‘The Appearance of God to Man in the Gospel and Gospel Change,’ London, 1710, 4to. This contained miscellaneous works, and an announcement that part ii. (which does not seem to have been published) would contain ‘A Discourse of Vertue. That an Eternity of Duration having a beginning without end is expos'd to Difficulties. Of the state of the Wicked after Death and of the Divine Wrath and of the Devil. Short essays on A Spirit, Memory, A Plant, the Consort of Musick,’ &c. ‘Prayers selected from Thomas à Kempis, Everard, Law, and (chiefly) Peter Sterry,’ appeared 1785, 8vo, and a sermon of Sterry's was republished in ‘Fourteen Sermons,’ 1831, 12mo. Some unpublished manuscripts are in the possession of a descendant, Mrs. Wynter, residing at Wodville, Taunton. They consist chiefly of papers and sermons treating of philosophical and metaphysical subjects, together with a number of letters and autobiographical fragments.
Nathaniel Sterry (d. 1698), of Surrey, Peter's younger brother, entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on 19 July 1644, graduated B.A. 1648, became a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1649, proceeded M.A. on 31 May 1651, and B.D. on 24 March 1675. He was appointed rector of Stuston, Suffolk, in 1662, and on 8 Sept. 1674 rector and dean of Bocking, Essex. He was, like Peter, an ardent Cromwellian. He died before 10 Nov. 1698, when his successor was appointed (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714, p. 1422; Burrows, Visitation of Oxford, pp. 178, 265, 313, 525; Brodrick, Memorials of Merton College, Oxford, pp. 104, 290, 291, 363; Newcourt, Eccles. Repert. ii. 68, 69).
[Brook's Lives of the Puritans, iii. 347; Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, iv. 180 n.; Edwards's Gangræna, pt. ii. p. 145; Thurloe's State Papers, p. 621; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 197, 912, 1170; Cal. State Papers, Dom., Committee for Compounding, p. 2077, and from 1649–50 to 1658–1659 passim; Masson's Life of Milton, passim; Sylvester's Life of Baxter, p. 75; Mitchell's Westminster Assembly, xviii. 112; Minutes of the Westminster Assembly lxxxiv. 121, 134; Cromwelliana, pp. 132, 154, 155; Kennett's Register and Chronicle, p. 555; Hanbury's Hist. Mem. relating to independents, ii. 217, iii. 423, 590; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. iii. 38, 434, vii. 388, 2nd ser. xii. 271; Walcot's Hist. of St. Margaret's, Westminster, p. 86; Nickolls's Original Letters, p. 18; Sterry's Works; Ludlow's Memoirs, ed. Firth, 1894, ii. 45; Baker MSS. vol. vi. f. 80; information from the master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, from J. Willis Clark, esq., registrary of the university of Cambridge, and from the Rev. A. B. Grosart.]
STEUART. [See also Steward, Stewart, and Stuart.]
STEUART, Sir HENRY SETON (1759–1836), of Allanton, Lanarkshire, author of ‘The Planter's Guide,’ born on 20 Oct. 1759, was the second but eldest surviving son of James Steuart, tenth of Allanton,
