Life
1613-1667; bishop of Down and Connor, and administrator of Dromore; ed.
Cambridge, MA 1634; attracted Laud’s attention by his preaching;
sent by Laud to Oxford; chaplain to Laud and Charles I; preached ‘gunpowder
treason’ sermon at St. Mary’s, Oxon., upholding penal legislation
of Elizabeth I; several English livings; prisoner after royalist defeat
before Cardigan Castle, 1645; best works in retirement at Golden Grove,
Carmarthenshire, incl. Liberty of Prophesying (1946); Holy Living
(1650); Holy Dying (1651); received personal gifts from Charles
I before his execution; prisoner at Chepstow, 1655; arrived in Ireland
to hold lectureship at the magnificent Portmore House, Ballindarry; nr.
Lisburn, 1658; dedicated Ductor Dubitantium to Charles II, 1660,
and made Bishop of Down and Connor, 1661; entered hostilities with dissenters,
evicting Presbyterian incumbents of 36 parishes to replace them with Church
of England men; built cathedral at Dromore; ordered destruction by fire
of copies of Liberty of Prophesying; dedicated Confirmation
to Ormonde (1663); Dissuasive from Popery (1664); pleaded for English
bishopric, 1664; also A Discourse of Auxiliary Beauty (1656) and
A Discourse of Friendship (1657); d. in Ireland. ODNB OCEL
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Criticism
Colin McKelvie, ‘Jeremy Taylor’s recommendations for a library
of Anglican theology (1600),’ Irish Booklore, Vol. 4, no.
2 (1980); P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (John Murray 1994),
p.19-21; Thomas K. Carroll, Wisdom and Wasteland: Jeremy Taylor in
his Prose and Preaching (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2002), 288pp.
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References
Fidelis Morgan, The Female Wits: Women Playwrights on the London Stage 1660-1720 (London: Virago 1981) notes that he was correspondent of Katherine Philips and member of her Friends.
Margaret Drabble , ed., Oxford Companion of English Literature (OUP: 1985); son of barber; after Cambridge with Laud’s patronage, became Fellow of All souls, Oxford; rector of Uppingham, 1638; d. Lisburn and buried in the cathedral there; fame rests on the combined simplicity and splendour of his style, notably in Holy Living and Holy Dying; Liberty is an argument for religious toleration; Eniautos, sermons for the Christian Year (1653); Ductor, ‘a general instrument of moral theology’ (1660); The Worthy Communicant (1660).
Belfast Public Library holds Hugh Ross Williamson, Jeremy Taylor (London: Dennis Dobson [1952]), 179pp, front. (port.), bibl.; also Willmott, Robert Aris, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 2nd ed. (1848), 311pp.
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