The registers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century teem with these; sometimes boys received them. The Rev. Hope Sherhard was a minister in Providence Isle in 1632 (“Cal. S. P. Colonial,” 1632).
We may note that the still common custom of christening trine-born children by these names dates from the period of their rise:[40]
“1639, Sep. 7. Baptized Faith, Hope, and Charity, daughters of George Lamb, and Alice his wife.”—Hillingdon.
“1666, Feb. 22. — Finch, wife of — Finch, being delivered of three children, two of them were baptized, one called Faith, and the other Hope; and the third was intended to be called Charity, but died unbaptized.”—Cranford. Vide Lyson’s “Middlesex,” p. 30.
Mr. Lower says (“Essays on English Surnames,” ii. 159)—
“At Charlton, Kent, three female children produced at one birth received the names of Faith, Hope, and Charity.”
Thomas Adams, in his sermon on the “Three Divine Sisters,” says—
“They shall not want prosperity,
That keep faith, hope, and charity.”
Perhaps some of these parents remembered this.
Faith and Charity are both mentioned as distinctly Puritan sobriquets in the “Psalm of Mercie,” a political poem: