month he was treated as a layman, and was made sub-collector of tax for the township of Iscoyd. The Five Mile Act of 1665 placed him in a difficulty, Broad Oak being four reputed miles from Worthenbury; on actual measurement it was found to be sixty yards over the five miles. However, he removed for a season to Whitchurch, Shropshire. All this time he was a regular attendant at the parish churches, his habit being to stand throughout the service; he forbore communicating simply on the ground of the kneeling posture. In February 1668 he preached by request in the parish church of Betley, Staffordshire, a circumstance of which distorted accounts were reported in the House of Commons. Not till the short-lived indulgence of 1672 did he resume his public ministry in his licensed house, still avoiding (like John Wesley) encroachment on church hours. On the withdrawal of the indulgence, he continued to preach without molestation till 1681, when he was fined for keeping conventicles. In 1682 he had a public discussion with quakers at Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire, and was drawn into a debate on ordination at Oswestry, Shropshire, with William Lloyd, then bishop of St. Asaph, and Henry Dodwell the elder [q. v.]. At the time of the Monmouth rebellion he was confined in Chester Castle for three weeks (July 1685) under a general order from the lord-lieutenant. He joined in a cautiously worded address (September 1687) to James II. In May 1688 he was placed on the commission of the peace for Flintshire, but declined to qualify. At the revolution he had great hopes of ‘comprehension.’ The terms of the Toleration Act he accepted; he would have preferred a toleration without subscription; there were points in the articles which, ‘without a candid construction, would somewhat scruple mee, so would the Bible its. strictly taken & in the letter, in those places which seem contradictory, were it not for such an interpretation.’ Hereafter he ministered at Broad Oak ‘at publick time,’ in an outbuilding near his house.
His last years were spent in assiduous pastoral labours, in spite of waning strength. He died at Broad Oak of a sudden attack of colic and stone, on 24 June 1696, and was buried on 27 June in Whitchurch Church, where a marble tablet was erected to his memory, bearing a Latin inscription by John Tylston, M.D., his son-in-law. In 1712, when the church was rebuilt, his body was removed to the churchyard, and the monument to the porch. In 1844 a tablet bearing an English version of the epitaph was placed in the north aisle of the church, the original monument being transferred to Whitewell Chapel, near Broad Oak. Funeral sermons were preached at Broad Oak by Francis Tallents of Shrewsbury, James Owen of Oswestry, and Matthew Henry. Henry's portrait, in the possession (1882) of Mrs. Philip Henry Lee, shows a plaintive countenance, with puritan skullcap and band; an engraving is prefixed to the ‘Life’ by his son. He married, on 26 April 1660, at Whitewell Chapel, Katharine (b. 25 March 1629, d. 25 May 1707), only child of Daniel Matthews of Bronington, Flintshire, and had two sons, John (b. 3 May 1661, d. 12 April 1667), and Matthew [q. v.], and four daughters, all of whom married. A genealogy of his descendants, to 1844, was published by Miss Sarah Lawrence of Leamington.
Unless we count a page of respectable Latin iambics contributed to ‘Musarum Oxoniensium Elaiophoria,’ &c., Oxford, 1654, 4to, Henry published nothing. Sir John Bickerton Williams published from Henry's manuscripts:
- ‘Eighteen Sermons,’ &c., 1816, 8vo.
- ‘Skeletons of Sermons,’ &c., 1834, 12mo.
- ‘Exposition … upon the first eleven chapters of … Genesis.’ &c., 1839, 12mo.
- ‘Remains,’ &c., 1848, 12mo.
- His diaries for twenty-two years (written in interleaved Goldsmith's Almanacs, with a crow-quill) were published in 1882. Like his manuscripts for the pulpit, they consist of brief notes and memoranda, invaluable for the light they throw on the inner life of the earlier nonconformity. They exhibit no humour, little evidence of learning or literature, but much curiosity about natural wonders.
In 1656 he bought a library from a minister's widow for 10l., and added few books to it. He believed in special providences, and invariably saw a divine judgment in the misfortune of an enemy of nonconformity. The veneration which hallows his memory is a tribute to his purity of spirit and transparency of character.
[Memoirs of the Life, &c., by Matthew Henry, 1698; corrected and enlarged by Sir J. B. Williams, 1825 (also in Wordsworth's Eccles. Biog. vol. vi. 1818); Public Characters of 1800–1, p. 339; Lee's Diaries and Letters of P. Henry, 1882 (see also Christian Life, 1883, pp. 129 sq.); Lawrence's Descendants of P. Henry, 1844; Sketch by C. Wicksteed in Christian Reformer, 1862, pp. 641 sq.]
HENRY, ROBERT (1718–1790), historian, son of James Henry, farmer, of Muirton, parish of St. Ninian's, Stirlingshire, and Jean Galloway, was born on 18 Feb. 1718. After attending the parish school of St. Ninian's and the grammar school of Stirling, he entered the university of Edinburgh
