“Andrew the Great Turk?
I would I were a peppercorn, if that
It sounds not well. Doe’st not?
Slicer. Yes, very well.
Credulous. I’ll make it else great Andrew Mahomet,
Imperious Andrew Mahomet Credulous.
Tell me which name sounds best.
Hearsay. That’s as you speak ’em.
Credulous. Oatmealman Andrew! Andrew Oatmealman!
Hearsay. Ottoman, sir, you mean.
Credulous. Yes, Ottoman.”
“Oatmealman Andrew! Andrew Oatmealman!” seems to have suggested to Thomson that unfortunate line:
“O Sophonisba, Sophonisba O,”
so unkindly parodied into—
“O Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson O.”
From this quotation it will be seen that it is not to the church register alone we must turn, to discover the manner in which these new names were being received by the public. Calamy might wax wroth over the “profane wits” of the day, but one of the severest blows administered to the men he has undertaken to defend, came from his own side; for Thomas Adams, Rector of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf, must unquestionably be placed, even by Calamy’s own testimony, among the Puritan clergy of his day. His name does not appear in the list of silenced clergy, and his works are dedicated to pronounced friends of the Noncomformist cause. In his “Meditations upon the Creed” (vol. iii. p. 213, edit. 1872), first published in 1629, he says—
“Some call their sons Emanuel: this is too bold. The name is proper to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature. It is no less than presumption to give a subject’s son the style of his prince. Yea, it seems to me not fit for Christian humility to call a man Gabriel or Michael, giving the names of angels to the sons of mortality.
“On the other side, it is a petulant absurdity to give them ridiculous names, the very rehearsing whereof causeth laughter. There be certain affectate names which mistaken zeal chooseth for honour, but the event discovers a proud singularity. It was the speech of a famous prophet, Non sum melior patribus meis—‘I am no better than my fathers;’ but such a man will be sapientior patribus suis—‘Wiser than his fathers.’ As if they would tie the goodness of the person to the signification of the name. But still a man is what he is, not what he is called; he were the same, with or without that title or that name. And we have known Williams and Richards, names not found in sacred story, but familiar to our country, prove as gracious saints as any Safe-deliverance, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, or such like, which have been rather descriptions than names.”
I have quoted portions of this before. I have now given it in full, for it is trenchant, and full of common sense. Coming from the quarter it did, we cannot doubt it had its effect in throwing the practice into disfavour among the better orders. But there had been a continued battery going on from a foe by whose side Adams would have rather faced death than fight. Years before he wrote his own sentiments, the Puritan nomenclature had been roughly handled on the stage, and by such ruthless pens as Ben Jonson, Cowley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. A year before little Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes was laid to rest, the sharp and unsparing sarcasm of “The Alchemist” and “Bartholomew Fair” had been levelled at these doings. The first of these two dramas Ben Jonson saw acted in 1610. By that time the custom was a generation old, and men who bore the godly but uncouth sobriquets were walking the streets, keeping shops, driving bargains, known, if not avoided, of all men. In 1610 Increase Brown, your apprentice, might be demanding an advance upon his wages, Help-on-high Jones might be imploring your patronage, while Search-the-Scriptures Robinson might be diligently studying his ledger to see how he could swell his total against you for tobacco and groceries. In 1610 society would be really awake to the fact that such things existed, and proceed to discuss this serio-comic matter in a comico-serious manner. The time was exactly ripe for the playwright, and it was the fate of the Presbyterians that the playwright was “rare Ben.”
In “The Alchemist” appears Ananias, a deacon, who is thus questioned by Subtle: