If culture could avail against the deteriorating effects of impecuniosity the career of Orator Henley would have been a different one. The son of a Leicestershire vicar, and educated at St. John’s, Cambridge, he attained considerable eminence as a linguist, and while keeping a school in his native place compiled his ‘Universal Grammar,’ which was written in ten languages. He afterwards came to be regarded as a sort of ecclesiastical outlaw, having a room in Newport Market, Leicester Square, where he started as a quack divine and public lecturer, Sundays being devoted to divinity, Wednesdays and Thursdays to secular orations, the charge for admission one shilling. He afterwards migrated to Clare Market, and became a favourite among the butchers; but though gifted with much oratorical power, he obtained but a precarious subsistence. When at his pecuniary worst he seems to have been at his inventive best, and in proportion to the lowness of his funds his audacity rose. On one occasion when particularly pressed he advertised a meeting for shoemakers to witness a new invention for making shoes, undertaking to make a pair in presence of the audience in an incredibly short space. When the evening arrived, and the room was filled with the followers of Crispin, Mr. Henley simply cut the tops off a pair of old boots, and thereby illustrating the motto to his advertisement, “Omne majus continent in se minus” (“The greater includes the less”).[1]
Dr. Howard, the Rector of St. George’s, Southwark, and Chaplain to the Dowager Princess of Wales, towards the close of the last century, was invariably short of money, a fact pretty well known to his tradesmen. On one occasion he ordered a canonical wig from a peruke-maker’s in Leicester Fields, and the porter had instructions not to leave it till the bill was paid.
Arrived at the rectory, the man asked for the doctor.
“I’ve brought your wig home, sir.”
“Oh, ah,” replied the doctor; “quite right—you can leave it. Just put it down there.”
“No, I can’t leave it, sir—that is, without the money.”
“Oh, very well, then. I’ll try it on.”
The man handed him the wig, and as soon as the doctor put it on, he said to the messenger,—
“This article has been bought and delivered; if you dare to touch it, I will prosecute you for robbery.”
Dr. Howard once preached from the text, “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all”—a passage gratifying to the feelings of an audience including many of his creditors. He dwelt at considerable length on the blessings and duty of patience, till it was time to close, and then said, “Now, brethren, I am come to the second part of my discourse, which is, ‘And I will pay ye all,’ but that I shall defer to a future opportunity.”