Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/152

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82

��NOTES BY THE WAY.

��to silence him ; it is said that Harley offered him a bishopric if only he would conform. Then threats were tried, and a plot laid to assassinate him. Bradbury used to tell how he was the first man who proclaimed King George I. By an arrangement with Bishop Burnet, he was among the first to receive intimation of the death of Queen Anne. This was done by a special messenger dropping

a handkerchief from the gallery while Bradbury was preaching.

He suppressed his feeling of joy during the sermon, but made mention of it in a prayer of thanksgiving at the close of the service. Mr. Bradbury was one of the Dissenting ministers who carried up the congratulatory address to King George on his accession. As they were dressed in long black Geneva cloaks, a nobleman, probably Lord Bolingbroke, said to him, " Pray, sir, is this a funeral?" "Yes, my Lord," was the ready reply. "It is the Border funeral of the Schism Bill, and the resurrection of Liberty." Another

founder of 'the minister of the church was George Burder, the founder and first Religious secretary of the Religious Tract Society ; an interesting account of

Tract Society, him is to be found in 'The Story of the Religious Tract Society,' by the Rev. Samuel G. Green, D.D. Another renowned name

Caleb Morris, associated with Fetter Lane is that of Caleb Morris. In the ' Me- morials of Fetter Lane Congregational Chapel,' by Arthur Pye- Smith, published by Warren Hall & Lovitt, mention is made of the great influence exercised by Caleb Morris. In that out-of- the-way chapel in Fetter Lane he drew to him " students, ministers, teachers, men of science, men of letters, philosophers." The members of the church have caused a chapel to be erected at Leyton, now known as New Fetter Lane Chapel. Mr. Albert Spicer, M.P., laid the foundation stone on the 8th of July, 1899, and it was opened by Dr. Fairbairn on the 7th of May, 1900.

It should not be forgotten that the first improvement to be made in Fetter Lane was the erection of the handsome building, formerly occupied by the publishing firm of Sampson Low, Marston & Co., but now (1908) the London quarters of the Cambridge Press, of which Mr. Charles Felix Clay is the manager.

��PLURAL VOTING.

1900, Oct. 20. It would appear from The Daily News of the 2nd of October

Plural voting- that at the General Election in 1895 the largest number of votes was held by the late Rev. Washbourne West, Bursar of Lincoln College, Oxford, who possessed twenty-three in twenty-three counties. A correspondent writes on the following day that among present plural voters Mr. Joseph Baxendale, senior partner of the firm of Pickford & Co., ought to stand high, he having forty- three votes.

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