Cornish, thought he ‘would have sunk down’ as he told the sad story. There can be little doubt that this business preyed upon Calamy's spirits and caused his death. In less than two months he was seized by a pleurisy, under which he sank, ‘when a little turned of forty years of age,’ says his nephew, somewhat underestimating his years. He was buried on 7 Jan. 1686 at St. Lawrence Jewry, the sermon at his funeral being preached by his co-prebendary, William Sherlock. He left a widow, to whom his parishioners made a ‘generous present.’ Calamy was on the best of terms with his nonconformist brother and nephew, and ‘exceeding kind’ to the latter after his father's death. He declares that could he find any church ‘that did lay greater stress upon a pure mind and a blameless life, and less upon voluntary strictnesses and indifferent rites and ceremonies than we do, I would very soon be of that church, and even entice all I could to it’ (Sermons, 4th edition, 1704, p. 75). According to Ned Millington, the auctioneer who valued his library, none of his books were so much thumbed and marked as the works of the puritan William Perkins, particularly his ‘Cases of Conscience.’
He published seven separate sermons, enumerated in ‘Biographia Britannica,’ the earliest being a sermon at Guildhall, from Tit. iii. 8, 9, 1673, 4to. In 1690 his brother James edited an 8vo volume, dedicated to the parishioners of St. Lawrence and St. Mary Magdalene, and containing thirteen of Calamy's sermons, all preached on special occasions; prefixed is his likeness, engraved by Vander Gucht, and appended is Sherlock's sermon at his funeral, originally published 1686, 4to. The volume went through several editions, and was to have been followed by another, which James Calamy could not be prevailed upon to bring out. One of his sermons is reprinted in ‘British Pulpit Eloquence,’ 1814, 8vo, vol. i. Granger mentions two other prints of Benjamin Calamy.
[Biog. Brit. 1784, iii. 137 (life by John Campbell, LL.D., a few additions by Kippis); Birch's Life of Tillotson, 2nd ed. 1753, p. 388; Calamy's Hist. Acct. of my own Life, 1830, i. 57 sq., 74; Granger's Biog. Hist. of Eng., 1824, v. 32; extract from parish register of St. Mary Aldermanbury, per Rev. C. C. Collins.]
CALAMY, EDMUND, the elder (1600–1666), one of the authors of ‘Smectymnuus,’ was born in February 1600, the only son of a tradesman in Walbrook. His father came from Guernsey, and the family tradition is that he was an exiled Huguenot from the coast of Normandy. Calamy was admitted, on 4 July 1616, to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1619, B.D. in 1632. His aversion to Arminianism is said to have stood in the way of his obtaining a fellowship, but he was made ‘tanquam socius’ on 22 March 1626. This office (peculiar to Pembroke) was tenable for three years; but Calamy could have held it but a very short time if it be true that Nicholas Felton, bishop of Ely, who took him into his house as chaplain, presented him to the vicarage of St. Mary, Swaffham Prior. After Felton's death (5 Oct. 1626) he was chosen lecturer at Bury St. Edmunds, and resigned his vicarage in favour of one Eldred, whom the parishioners desired. The Swaffham living lapsed to the lord keeper, who would not present Eldred, but allowed him to officiate till he found him another living, and then (24 Aug. 1633) presented Jonathan Jephcot. There are somewhat conflicting accounts of Calamy's attitude at this period towards the ceremonies. He was not the uncompromising nonconformist which his colleague, Jeremiah Burroughes [q. v.], proved himself. Wood and Walker make the most of the statements of an anonymous pamphleteer, followed by Henry Burton [q. v.], from which it may appear that Calamy wore the surplice and bowed at the name of Jesus. He admits that ‘in some few things’ he did conform, but strenuously asserts his noncompliance on other points, and especially as regards reading ‘that wicked book of sports.’ And, in the impeachment of Bishop Wren, Calamy is mentioned as one of the divines whom the enforcement of Wren's articles of 1636 drove away from the district. When he left Bury he preached a retractation sermon, in which he took his farewell of all ceremonial compliance. Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, a leader of the puritan party, is said to have presented him to the valuable rectory of Rochford, Essex, on the death (‘about 1640,’ Wood) of William Fenner, B.D. Probably, however, he was only lecturer at Rochford. The Essex climate had an unfortunate effect upon Calamy's constitution. He fell into a quartan ague, which left him with a nervous affection of the head, permanently precluding him from mounting the pulpit, so that he ever afterwards preached from the reading-desk. The death of John Stoughton, D.D. (buried 9 May 1639), made an opening for Calamy in the perpetual curacy of St. Mary Aldermanbury, to which he was elected before 27 May 1639. In July of that year he was incorporated B.D. at Oxford. At this period the controversy on episcopacy became acute. The elder Edward Bagshaw [q. v.] had attacked as a lawyer the political rights of the bishops, and been silenced. At Laud's desire, and with his
