after taking the covenant, he was nominated one of the members of the Westminster assembly. This, coupled with the violence of his temper, drew upon him the hatred of the cavaliers, and, his living being in the vicinity of a royalist camp, the troops plundered and drove him from his house. He was then non-resident for so long that his living was held to have been forfeited, and he retired to a hamlet in Sussex, in which county he complained that religion was neither preached nor practised.
In 1643 he was chosen three times to preach before the parliament, and during the November of that year, while on a journey to Colchester, with a guard of sixteen soldiers, the party was attacked by about two hundred cavaliers, whom Cheynell's generalship put to flight. During this journey he met with Chillingworth, who was then in the custody of some parliamentary soldiers, and with whom he kept up an incessant and acrimonious dispute. He, however, tended Chillingworth during his illness with assiduous kindliess, and after his death procured for him the rites of christian burial, which most of the presbyterians were anxious to deny him; but at the funeral he took occasion to express his detestation of the dead man's Socinian opinions in no measured language (Des Maizeaux, Life of Chillingworth, p. 360, ed. 1726).
About this time Cheynell became a chaplain in the army of the Earl of Essex, and is said to have gained such skill in the art of war as to be consulted by the colonels. In recognition of the value of these services, the parliament in 1643 conferred on him the valuable living of Petworth in Sussex. When in 1646 the parliament resolved on the reformation of the university of Oxford, he was one of the ministers chosen to 'prepare the way' for a visitation. He was authorised to preach in any pulpit he might choose, and, besides availing himself fully of this permission, he instituted a meeting for the settlement of scruples, which became known throughout Oxford as the 'scruple shop.' During this year he had his famous dispute with Erbury as to whether in the christian church the office of minister is committed to any particular persons, and also one with Henry Hammond [q. v.], the author of the 'Practical Catechism. In the following year, parliament having resolved that the 'reformation of the university be proceeded with,' Cheynell was nominated one of the body of visitors. He was the most detested, as well as the most active and meddlesome of all. Upon the appointment of the Earl of Pembroke to the chancellorship of the university, Cheynell was selected to present him with the seals of office, and shortly after obtained the degree of B.D., which he had previously been refused. He seems to have proceeded to D.D. almost immediately afterwards, and about the same time to have been invested with the office of president of St. John's College, upon Dr. Bailey's deprivation, of whose lodgings he took possession by the summary process of breaking open the door. He was also, by the recommendation of the committee of parliament, made Lady Margaret professor. Of his large powers he made such excessive use that Wood states he was called 'arch-visitor.' His unrestrained zeal and bitter temper led him to exercise great severity against any whose views did not coincide with his own, and to increase his authority he persuaded about half a dozen members of the parliament to meet privately and constitute themselves a committee, and then to grant the visitors the extraordinary power of forcing the solemn league and covenant and the negative oath upon all members of the university they might think proper, as well as to prosecute such as did not appear to a citation. By these means he was enabled to oust a large number of university officials from their places, which he filled up with persons of his own opinions, without overstrict examination into their educational qualifications. He was directed by parliament in 1649 to draw up a confutation of the Socinian denial of the Trinity, and in the following year another against the tenets advanced by John Fry, a member of the House of Commons, who had been expelled for his Socinian opinions. In 1650 he either resigned, or was dismissed from, the presidency of St. John's, and his professorship, on account of his refusal to take the 'engagement' (Calamy says because he was found 'an improper person,' presumably as the holder of a valuable living), and retired to his rectory at Petworth, where he is said (Calamy, Non. Mem.) to have been a zealous and successful minister. Cheynell was deprived of his living some short time before the general ejection of the nonconforming ministers, possibly on account of occasional fits of insanity, but this is uncertain (see Neal, Hist. Pur. ed. 1736, iii. 404), and after this deprivation resided at Preston in Sussex, on an estate which was either patrimonial (Gent. Mag. April 1755), or which he had purchased (Athenæ Oxon.) In 1655 he represented to the authorities the need of increasing the number of soldiers in Sussex, on account of the numerous cavaliers in the county, and the general fear of a foreign invasion (Thurloe, State Papers, iii. 324), and from this time till his death, which occurred in 1665, nothing further is known about him. He was buried at Preston. Bishop Hoadly
