Biography of Christopher Love

Language: English

Context and purpose

The manuscript is bound in with twenty-six printed funeral sermons and elegies, and the classmark for the entire collection is 12.50*.4 (previous classmark 12.KKK.4). (When ordering, use the classmark for the collection.) None of the printed works with which the biography is bound relate to it directly, but the sermon placed immediately after the "Life" was preached by Christopher Love's friend and executor, Edmund Calamy, and two others were preached by John Quick, who included a memoir of Christopher Love in his "Icones Sacrae Anglicanae" (Dr. Williams's Library, MS. 38.34). Two letters to the reader, the first signed "M.L." and the second "T.H.", preface the main text (pp.1-241), which is a biography of Mary Love's first husband, Christopher Love. This is followed by the author's P.S. to the reader (p.242). Both extant copies of "The Life of Mr. Christopher Love" include two prefatory letters, one apparently written by the biography's author, Mary Love, and the other signed "T.H.". In this second letter, "T.H." declares that he knows "not how the Intention was frustrated of sending forth this Narrative, about the time of his Ma[jesties] Restauration". Mary Love's celebration of her first husband as one who proved his "fidelity to our now gracious King" corresponds with this suggestion that originally the biography was intended to be read by those welcoming back Charles II (p.86). Yet the "Life" does not appear to have been completed before late 1660: the biography's claim that "if men will not Yet God hath and still will account for that precious blood of his Servt" is possibly a reference to the House of Commons's refusal, on 7 July 1660, to prosecute the judges that had condemned Christopher Love to die, while the observation that "the blood of Kings and Nobles hath been righteously reckoned for" evokes the execution of regicides in October of the same year (p.49). The composition of the "Life" seems to have been prompted in part by Mary Love's frustrated desire to avenge and to vindicate her husband. The work is permeated by bitter verbal attacks on Christopher Love's enemies, attacks that are only highlighted by the author's repeated assertion that she does not harbour a spirit of vengeance. Similarly, while Mary Love asserts that her "chief aime" is to record an exemplary life, rather than "to clear" her husband, she is careful to refute the charges made against him at the time of his death in various anonymous publications such as A Gagg to Love's Advocate, A Short Plea for the Commonwealth and Mr. Love's Case (p.79). She explicitly castigates the "Apostate" author of this last pamphlet, who accuses the condemned man of being without natural affections, since he did not include his wife and children in his scaffold speech (p.130). In response, Mary Love gives a moving description of her last meeting with her husband, in which he warns her that he will not mention his family publicly because he cannot do so without being saddened. This charge of unnaturalness and the final private interview between husband and wife are also mentioned in the anonymous introduction to Love's Name Lives (1651), and it seems likely that Mary Love was involved in this earlier publication. Yet although Love's Name Lives and the "Life" insist that Christopher Love was an ideal husband and father, both works also emphasise the minister's eagerness to be joined with his heavenly bridegroom; all earthly loyalties ultimately pale in comparison to Christopher Love's desire for that which is heavenly. In the same way, despite the biography's overt royalist agenda, Mary Love portrays her husband as dying primarily for the cause of Christ, rather than for Charles Stuart. Christopher Love maintained on the scaffold that he suffered, not "for medling with State-matters", but for "Religion and Conscience" (A true and exact Copie of Mr Love's Speech and Prayer, p.1). His biography supports this claim, arguing that the minister showed his support for the Stuart cause only through legal means and was entirely innocent of the charges brought against him. Parliament's execution of the minister is depicted as simply another example of the ungodly persecuting the godly. Likening her husband indiscriminately to almost every biblical hero from Moses to Stephen, Mary Love repeatedly portrays her husband as a saint and religious martyr. Such a portrait probably would have been welcomed by Restoration Presbyterians, who were eager to prove both their religious integrity and their early support for Charles II. In 1660 Robert Wild published The Tragedy of Christopher Love at Tower-Hill, a poem celebrating the minister as one whose "Presbyterian blood" was shed for God and the royalist cause. Henry Foulis later claimed that at the return of Charles II Presbyterians drew attention to Christopher Love whenever possible, regarding the minister "as a sufficient Asylum, where . . . they [might] handsomly secure a Reputation" (History of the Wicked Plots, p.155). The tone of personal anger and grief that pervades the "Life" distinguishes it from Wild's poem and militates against viewing the biography merely as the creation of Presbyterian propagandists; however, it is possible that Mary Love was encouraged to write about her first husband by people like her second husband, Edward Bradshaw, who supported the Presbyterian cause at the Restoration. If this was the case, then the rapidly failing hopes of Presbyterians following the summer of 1660 may have contributed to the original plans for circulating the biography being "frustrated". Yet while the "Life" may have been suppressed initially, it was not forgotten for long. The attempt made by "T.H." to revive it must have occurred before May 1663, for his prefatory letter presents Mary Love as still living. The placement of Mary Love's letter before "T.H."'s in both extant copies of the "Life" is slightly more suggestive of the two collaborating and writing their letters at the same time, than of "T.H." simply supplying a new preface to a completed work that already included the author's introduction. One possible candidate for collaboration is Thomas Harrison, a Chester minister who married Mary Love's step-daughter, Katherine Bradshaw, in 1660 (Parish records for St Peter's Church, Chester). A letter from Edward Bradshaw to Harrison, dated 19 March 1660/1, indicates that Bradshaw's son-in-law and second wife corresponded and enjoyed an affectionate, familial relationship (State Papers, Domestic, 29.32.99). Bradshaw also describes to Harrison, in a comradely manner, how the election of several "good Presbiterians" in London could serve as a "warning peece for the Bishops", suggesting that, despite Harrison's Independent leanings, the minister was willing to ally himself with the Presbyterians against the Episcopalians. Since Harrison had served as Henry Cromwell's private chaplain and had published a eulogistic funeral sermon for Oliver Cromwell, it might seem unlikely that he would supply a commendatory letter for a biography that equates godliness with royalism. Yet in 1672 Harrison published a similar preface for some meditations written by one identified only as "Philo-Jesus Philo-Carolus". Harrison's application for a preaching license that same year might have prompted this display of love for Charles II, and it is possible that, ten years earlier, the preacher was equally willing to endorse Presbyterian royalism in an attempt to circumvent the Act of Uniformity, by which he and hundreds of other Nonconformist ministers were ejected (A.G.Matthews, Calamy Revised, p.251). Whoever "T.H." may have been, he and Mary Love both indicate that they expect the "Life" to be read, not only by family and friends of Christopher Love, but by strangers as well. Whether or not the biography ever reached a wide audience is difficult to determine. It is unlikely that the incomplete and rather amateurish Sloane MS 3945 was ever circulated; however, the fair copy of the "Life", now in Dr. Williams's Library, could serve as evidence that the biography was revived and circulated during the late seventeenth century, just as Elizabeth Jekyll's spiritual diary was (see entry for Osborn MS b.221). Yet although Christopher Love, his writings, and his wife's petitions and letters are frequently mentioned in various texts throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, no contemporary reference to the "Life" has come to light.