Very likely Lord Burghley gave Fenner’s selection to the great antiquary.
Coming into London, the following case occurs. John Press was incumbent of St. Matthew, Friday Street, from 1573 to 1612:
“1584. Baptized Purifie, son of Mr. John Presse, parson.”
John Bunyan’s great character name of Hopeful is to be seen in Banbury Church register. But such an eccentricity is to be expected in the parish over which Wheatley presided, the head-quarters, too, of extravagant Puritanism. We all remember drunken Barnaby:
“To Banbury came I, O prophane one!
Where I saw a Puritane one,
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.”
But the point I want to emphasize is that this Hopeful was Wheatley’s own daughter:
“1604, Dec. 21. Baptized Hope-full, daughter of William Wheatlye.”
Take a run from Banbury into Leicestershire. A stern Puritan was Antony Grey, “parson and patron” of Burbach; and he continued “a constant and faithfull preacher of the Gospell of Jesus Christ, even to his extreame old age, and for some yeares after he was Earle of Kent,” as his tombstone tells us. He had twelve children, and their baptismal entries are worth recording:
“1593, April 29. Grace, daughter of Mr. Anthonie Grey.
“1594, Nov. 28. Henry, son of ditto.