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Anthony Walker -
Doctor of Divinity
The various clergymen
who have served the parish of Fyfield during the last nine-hundred years
have caused few ripples on the surface of England’s history, but the
seventeenth-century rector, Dr Anthony Walker is a distinguished
exception. Walker's name is associated with several of the places
featured on the Millennium wall hanging in the church and, accordingly,
it is fitting to include the following notes about him in this website.
A biography is in preparation for those who would know more of the man.
Anthony Walker was
born at Connington in Cambridgeshire in 1622, son of William Walker and
Susanne, his wife. When Anthony was six, his mother died. Four months
later, his father married Marie, daughter of John Bois, Canon of Ely and
a member of the committee appointed by King James to translate the Bible.
Following school at
Ely, Anthony was admitted to St John’s, Cambridge in 1638 where he
achieved his MA in 1645. Ordained by Bishop Winniffe of Lincoln in 1644,
his first position was as curate to John Gauden, the colourful Dean of
Bocking. After three years with the Dean, Walker was appointed household
chaplain to the Earl of Warwick at Leeze Priory where he met, for the
first time, Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick. Later acclaimed as the most
pious of all seventeenth-century ladies, the Countess attributed to
Walker, alone, her conversion to a life dedicated to seeking salvation,
after a youth spent in the pursuit of pleasure. Their friendship and her
spiritual dependence upon him endured until her death in 1678.
Walker’s time at
Leeze coincided with the troubles leading up to the execution of Charles
I, who had recommended him, unsuccessfully, as a Fellow of St John’s.
Within hours of the execution, a significant fillip was given to the
royalist opposition with the publication of the Eikon Basilike,
ostensibly the reflections of Charles during his imprisonment. So
alarmed was Cromwell’s government by its impact, that the poet Milton was
commissioned to write a rejoinder, Eikonaclastes. Eikon Basilike had, in
fact, been written by Gauden and in the furious controversy about its
authorship which raged for decades afterwards, Walker was an important
witness because it was he who had carried the work to the publishers,
under conditions of great difficulty and considerable drama. Walker was
the last of the first-hand witnesses to publish his version of these
exciting events and his testimony is now accepted as the authentic
account.
In 1650, Walker
married Elizabeth Sadler, who he had met at Barnston one Sabbath when he
had exchanged duties with the rector there. For the first year of their
marriage, Walker held the living of Croydon. He was active in preaching
sermons in the prison there, despite the prevalence of Gaol Fever, which
afflicted the judiciary as much as the prisoners. Walker caught the
disease himself but he recovered and convalesced at the London house of
his father-in-law. The courage he had shown during this period was a
hallmark of the man and he was to stick to his post again later in life
when he held the living of St Mary Aldermanbury (as well as Fyfield) and
continued to preach throughout the Great Plague of 1665.
In 1652, sometime
after his complete recovery from Gaol Fever, Walker was appointed by the
Earl of Warwick to the living of Fyfield which he held until his death in
1692. He was never, however, a simple country parson. Within Fyfield he
is remembered for the school which he founded by his Will, part of which
is transcribed on the eighteenth-century benefaction board at the back of
St Nicholas’ church. It is less well known that he also provided
detailed instructions for a grammar school in a barn belonging to Wethers,
which house he had bought and rebuilt in expectation that his wife would
live there after his death. The grammar school did not, apparently,
materialise. His will hints at the extent of his property holdings in
Fyfield and neighbouring parishes. He owned houses, farms, fields and
woods in profusion, although it is difficult to identify the specific
properties today due to name changes, fragmentation and the changed
topography. A few names are, however, clearly recognisable, such as
Widny Greene, Northwood, Millhatch, Bruetts and, as mentioned, Wethers.
During their life
together at the moated rectory, nowadays called Parsonage House, his wife
Elizabeth kept a private journal into which her husband promised he would
never pry during her lifetime. After her death in 1690, the good doctor,
having openly recorded his grief in the parish register, opened his late
wife's diary and read, for the first time, the memoirs of a remarkable
woman.
He read the carefully
observed symptoms of the various illnesses which beset, and ultimately
claimed the lives of all their eleven children. He read of her fears on
the August night her husband failed to come home from London, not knowing
that he had been attacked by robbers on the road and, later, he read of
her anger when he was unjustly imprisoned in Tilbury Fort during the
Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. And he read also the contented account of
their wedding day, some forty years previously. Anthony Walker was moved
by what he read to publish his late wife's biography, based largely upon
her own words, subjoined with his own commentary only so far as was
necessary to describe her virtues and charity and to convey the immensity
of his personal loss.
In the wider context
of seventeenth-century society, Walker was a distinguished cleric;
chaplain to the king and friend of the mighty. He died in 1692 in London
while seeing to the publication of his True Account of the Eikon Basilike.
His final resting place is uncertain. He wanted to be buried among his
children in the chancel at Fyfield but the record does not indicate that
his wish was respected.
His line continued by
a single thread. His only daughter to reach adulthood, Margaret, married
John Cox of Coggeshall but she died following the birth of their son,
John, who went on to Felsted School and eventually joined the Bar.
Marcus Dain, Wheel
Cottage
© Marcus Dain 2004 |