(...)"with great deliverances, or surprising vicissitudes. Their days have been quietly busied in producing those effects which only have made their histories worth inquiring after,— effects for which it was necessary that their habits should be retired and uniform. Nor can we wonder, therefore, that whoever undertakes the biography of a scholar or a theologian,(...)".
Jeremy Taylor was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing. He is remembered in the Church of England's calendar of saints with a Lesser Festival on 13 August.
He went on to become chaplain in ordinary to King Charles I as a result of Laud's sponsorship. This made him politically suspect when Laud was tried for treason and executed in 1645 by the Puritan Parliament during the English Civil War. After the Parliamentary victory over the King, he was briefly imprisoned several times.
Eventually, he was allowed to live quietly in Wales, where he became the private chaplain of the Earl of Carbery. At the Restoration, his political star was on the rise, and he was made Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. He also became vice-chancellor of the University of Dublin.
Taylor's fame has been maintained by the popularity of his sermons and devotional writings rather than by his influence as a theologian or his importance as an ecclesiastic.
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