Thomas Calamy

“ Calamy, at the head of the London ejected ministers, presented a brief petition to the king in dignified and pathetic terms. Charles gave them hopes of an indulgence; but at the privy council next day the arguments of Sheldon prevailed. Calamy continued to attend the parish church from which he had been ejected. On 28 Dec. he was present as usual, and the appointed preacher did not appear. Prevailed upon by ‘the importunity of the people,’ he went into the desk and preached with some warmth. ”

“ In 1775 Samuel Palmer condensed Calamy's four volumes into two, with the title of ‘The Non-Conformists' Memorial.’ An improved edition was issued in 3 vols. 1802–3, but an adequate edition of Calamy is still a desideratum. Palmer's arrangement is convenient, and his additions are of some service, but he is not a good compiler; he omits valuable matter, rarely reproducing the original documents which abound in Calamy, nor can his accuracy be trusted. Partly perhaps from failing eyesight, he makes some blunder or other in nearly every life. ”

“ The man of sense sees the world of appearances neither too rosily nor too biliously and passes on. There is the ulterior reality to be looked for; it is more interesting....”
“Then you’d condemn out of hand all the countless human beings whose life is passed on the surface?”
“Of course not,” Calamy replied. “Who would be such a fool as to condemn a fact? These people exist; it’s obvious. They have their choice of Mr. Cardan’s eighty-four thousand paths to salvation. The path I choose will probably be different from others. ”

“ In these delightful Latin circumstances the secret, the mystery and the beauty reduced themselves to nothing. One thought of them only because they were amusing and to pass the time; they were really no more important than the tea with crumpets, the vegetarian supper and the amorous repose. If one wanted them to be more than these, one must abandon oneself completely to the contemplation of them. There could be no compromise.
Calamy knew this. But all the same he had made love to Mary Thriplow, not because he had felt an overwhelming passionate necessity to do so ”

“ He practised medicine in New England, and had the repute of a good anatomist. About 1647 he returned to England, leaving a wife and family in America. He was shipwrecked on the coast of Spain; Calamy relates, as a 'well-attested' fact, that at the very time when he was in danger of being drowned, his little daughter of four years old roused the family in New England by continually crying out 'My father!'
In 1648 Firmin was appointed to the vicarage of Shalford, Essex, which had been vacant a year since the removal of Ralph Hilles to Pattiswick. ”

“ Would he be happy to live thus, close to the earth, earthily, an ancient, instinctive, animally sagacious life? It seemed hardly imaginable. And yet, after all, it was likely enough. It needs a very strong, a passionately ardent spirit to disengage itself from childish tradition, from the life which circumstances impose upon it. Was his such a spirit?
He was startled out of his speculations by the sound of his own name, loudly called from a little distance. He turned round and saw Mr. Cardan and Chelifer striding up the road towards him. Calamy waved his hand and went to meet them. ”

“ Calamy's gossiping autobiography, ‘An His- torical Account of my own Life, with some Reflections on the Times I have lived in,’ though quoted by Kippis, was first edited by John Towill Rutt in 2 vols. 1829, 8vo, 2nd ed. 1830, from two transcripts of Calamy's autograph, one of which, in three folio volumes, had been collated with the original by his son Edmund; Rutt, in his preface, speaks of having ‘endeavoured to exercise a discretion,’ which James (Hist. Litigation Presb. Chapels and Charities, 1867, p. 724) interprets as referring to omissions from the text ”

“ He looked at Calamy over the top of his glass and took another sip, as though to his health. “You haven’t met any one of late who took your fancy; that’s all. Unless, of course, it’s a case of catarrh in the bile ducts.”
“It’s neither,” said Calamy, smiling.
“Or perhaps it’s the first great climacteric. You don’t happen to be thirty-five, I suppose? Five times seven—a most formidable age. Though not quite so serious as sixty-three. That’s the grand climacteric.” Mr. Cardan shook his head. “Thank the Lord, I got past it without dying, or joining the Church of Rome, or getting married. ”

“ Calais (56) , a fortified seaport in France, on the Strait of Dover, where it is 21 m. across; was in possession of the English from 1347 to 1558, and the last town held by them on French soil; is the chief landing-place for travellers from England to the Continent, and has considerable export trade, as well as cotton and tulle manufactures.
Calamy, Edmund, a Presbyterian divine, born in London; favourable to Royalty, but zealously opposed to Episcopacy, against which he vigorously protested with his pen; opposed the execution of Charles I. and the protectorate of Cromwell ”

“ Among dissenters Calamy's dumpy volumes took the place of Clarke's ‘Lives,’ those folio treasures of the older puritan hagiology. Inferior to Clarke's collections in richness and breadth, they were well adapted for explaining the causes and justifying the spirit of the nonconformist separation. In choosing for his central figure Richard Baxter, whom some writers have strangely called a presbyterian, Calamy emphasised liberty of conscience as the keynote of nonconformity. He wrote three distinct lives of Baxter, the ‘Abridgment,’ a shorter life prefixed to Baxter's ‘Practical Works,’ 4 vols. ”

“ Calamy speaks of him as ‘a very worthy man.’ His theology was of the Baxterian type, a mean between Calvinism and Arminianism. He accepted the articles in Ussher's sense, as ‘instruments of peace,’ and deplored the combative zeal alike of the high churchman and the puritan. ”

“ Dr. Calamy, grandson of his friend, describes Case as ‘one of a quick and warm spirit, an open plain-hearted man, a hearty lover of God, goodness, and all good men. He was a Scripture preacher, a great man in prayer, and one that brought home many souls to God.’ Baxter, who was buried near him, called him ‘an old faithful servant of God.’ There is an offensive sketch of him, based on Wood's account, in ‘The King Killers,’ 1719, 8vo, terming him an ‘impenitent covenanting saint’ (pt. ii. p. 31) . His head is on the plate prefixed to the volume of farewell sermons, 1662, 8vo. ”

“ Cardan; “but I have my doubts whether any amount of sitting under bo-trees really makes it possible for any one to wriggle out of human limitations and get behind phenomena.”
“Well, I’m inclined to think that it does make it possible,” said Calamy. “There we must agree to differ. But even if it is impossible to get at reality, the fact that reality exists and is manifestly very different from what we ordinarily suppose it to be, surely throws some light on this horrible death business. Certainly, as things seem to happen, it’s as if the body did get hold of the soul and kill it. ”

“ The good man exults in the wonders which sometimes may be opened to us by what he terms “a silver key rightly applied.” The doctor had invented the treason, and now had only to seek for the traitor. A faithless workman supplied him with a sight of all the sheets printed, and, with a still grosser violation of the honour of the craft, exposed the naked manuscript itself to the prying eyes of the critical dissenter. To the honour of Clarendon, as far as concerned Calamy’s narrative, there was no disagreement ”

“ Aldwinkle echoed, ardently associating herself with the party of youth. She felt as young as they did. Younger indeed; for having been young when the world was younger, she had the thoughts and the feelings of a generation that had grown up placidly in sheltered surroundings—or perhaps had not grown up at all. The circumstances which had so violently and unnaturally matured her juniors had left her, stiffened as she already was by time into a definite mould, unchanged. Spiritually, they were older than she.
“I don’t see that it would be possible to live in a more exciting age,” said Calamy. ”

“ Cardan sums up and symbolises in the word omphaloskepsis. Aren’t they the soft-heads, the all-too-susceptible and sentimental imbeciles?”
“On the contrary,” Calamy replied, “in point of historical fact they’ve generally been men of the highest intelligence. Buddha, Jesus, Lao-tse, Boehme, in spite of his wheels and compunctions, his salt and sulphur, Swedenborg. And what about Sir Isaac Newton, who practically abandoned mathematics for mysticism after he was thirty? Not that he was a particularly good mystic; he wasn’t. ”

“ Calamy was silent for a moment. “It’s difficult,” he said pensively, “it’s horribly difficult. The fundamental question is this: Can you talk of the soul being at the mercy of the body, can you give any kind of an explanation of mind in terms of matter? When you reflect that it’s the human mind that has invented space, time and matter, picking them out of reality in a quite arbitrary fashion—can you attempt to explain a thing in terms of something it has invented itself? That’s the fundamental question.”
“It’s like the question of the authorship of the Iliad,” said Mr. Cardan. ”

“ It has been suggested that Calamy saw the dissenting interest was declining; yet this was before the rent in nonconformity at Salters' Hall (1719) which began the decline afterwards lamented by Calamy. Doddridge's extreme youth and consumptive tendency supply the natural explanation of Calamy's advice. Doddridge was recommended by Horseman, a leading conveyancer, to Sir Robert Eyre [q. v.] with a view to his studying for the bar. But a letter from Clark, opening his house to him if he still preferred the dissenting ministry, decided his future. ”

“ Young Lord Hovenden, who knew that he liked dancing and desired Irene Aldwinkle more than anything in the world, found all this a little incomprehensible. “I can’t see what vere is to prevent a man from doing what he wants to do. Except,” he qualified, remembering the teaching of Mr. Falx, “economic necessity.”
“And himself,” added Mr. Cardan.
“And what’s the most depressing of all,” Calamy went on, without paying attention to the interruption, “is the feeling that one will go on like this for ever, in the teeth of every effort to stop. I sometimes wish I weren’t externally free. ”

“ In 1664 he visited Cambridge, and was entertained at dinner in Catharine Hall. Baxter describes him as ‘an ancient, calm, reverend minister;’ Calamy speaks of his charity and the agreeableness of his conversation. He died early in 1666, and was buried at Hackney on 8 Feb. His only child, William, died at Hackney in March 1654, aged 9. His widow, Sarah became in 1669 the second wife of Anthony Tuckney [q. v.] He died intestate. He founded six almshouses for six poor widows at Hackney, which were finished in 1666, and endowed by his brother and heir, Henry Spurstowe, a London merchant. ”

“ Calamy writes of one of the Norwich ministers, of the name of Cromwell, that ‘he enjoyed but one peaceable day after his settlement, being on the second forced out of his meeting-house, the licenses being called in, and then for nine years together he was never without trouble. Sometimes he was pursued with indictments at sessions, at assizes, and then with citations of the ecclesiastical courts; and at other times feigned letters, rhymes or libels were dropped in the streets or church and fathered upon him, so that he was forced to make his house his prison. ”

“ Mr. Cardan repeated, twinkling. “Out of pure sympathy I was suggesting that we should drink a pint or two of red wine before going to bed. There’s nothing like it for making one sleep.”
Mrs. Aldwinkle turned her bright blue eyes on Calamy, smiled her sweetest and most piercing smile. “Do come,” she said. “Do.” She extended her hand in a clumsy and inexpressive gesture. “And you, Hovenden,” she added, almost despairingly.
Hovenden looked uncomfortably from Mr. Cardan to Calamy, hoping that one or other of them would answer for him.
“We shan’t be long,” said Calamy. ”

“ Cardan emptied his glass and reached out once more for the fiasco.
“You’re fortunate,” said Calamy. “It’s not all of us whose personalities have such a natural odour of sanctity that they can disinfect our septic actions and render them morally harmless. When I do something stupid or dirty I can’t help feeling that it is stupid or dirty. My soul lacks virtues to make it wise or clean. And I can’t dissociate myself from what I do. I wish I could. One does such a devilish number of stupid things. Things one doesn’t want to do. If only one could be a hedonist and only do what was pleasant! ”

“ He had some intercourse with Macaulay, and heard Brougham; saw also Sir Francis Burdett (father of Lady Burdett-Coutts) , a conspicuous radical politician of the day.
Among home friends, Chalmers remained as simple, unsophisticated, and kindly as before. 'Of all men,' said Mrs. Grant of Laggan at this time, 'he is the most modest, and speaks with undisguised gentleness and liberality of those who differ from him in opinion. Every word he says has the stamp of genius; yet the calmness, ease, and simplicity of his conversation is such, that to ordinary minds he might appear an ordinary man.... ”

“ Calamine, kal′a-mīn, n. an ore consisting essentially of carbonate of zinc. [Fr.—Low L. calamina, most prob. from L. cadmia.]
Calamint, kal′a-mint, n. a genus of Labiate plants closely allied to balm and thyme. [Fr.—Low L. calamentum, through L. from Gr. kalaminthē.]
Calamite, kal′a-mīt, n. a fossil plant abundant in the coal-measures, believed to be a kind of gigantic horse-tails (Equisetaceæ) . [Formed from L. calamus, a reed.] ”