reputation of being an exceedingly litigious and unpacific individual. Baxter certainly says that he was a “reading” parson, which was the name given by the Puritans to those rectors and vicars who, according to the directions of the Book of Common Prayer, read Mattins and Evensong daily in their churches and did not exalt the sermon to a Sacrament, although as a matter of fact this seems a mistake; and, as Bishop Hutchinson says with reference to this passage, Mr. Baxter “knew who he wrote for, and that that would make them believe any Thing that was ill of him, upon a very slender Proof.” In fact the very reverse was the case, for as a young man John Lowes had been summoned to appear before the Bishop’s court at Ipswich on a charge of obstinately refusing to conform to the rites and ritual of the Established Church. In 1625 he had been indicted in the Ipswich courts, and yet again, not many years later, he was convicted by law as a “common imbarritor”; that is to say, one who for his own profit vexatiously foments and maliciously incites to litigation. What proved far more serious, however, was the fact that Lowes had already been once arraigned for witchcraft, and we can quite understand that when Hopkins got hold of him he had small chance of escape. The story which was wrung from him concerning his command to his familiar to sink a ship is characterized as “a monstrous Tale, without any tolerable Proof to support it,” by Hutchinson, who in the course of investigating the present case wrote to Mr. Wilson, the then Vicar of Brandeston, and this gentleman put him in communication with a Mr. Rivett, who had long lived in the village and whose father before him had
33
