For our Memoir of Dr Gilpin we have had literally to do everything, inasmuch as next to nothing has thus far been published concerning him—not even his birthplace, or birth or death dates known. If still we feel the result of our ‘labour of love’ in prosecuting the necessary researches, to be very inadequate, it is gratifying that we have secured so much as we have done.
As in the preparation of former Memoirs, our visits and investigations have brought us much pleasant intercourse and correspondence with descendants, representatives, and reverers of the old Worthy. Family papers of the most private nature have been unreservedly confided to us—as duly acknowledged in each place where referred to or used; and altogether the most ungrudging help has been rendered. The various friends mentioned in the foot-notes of the Memoir will be so good as accept this further general acknowledgment.
It only remains to state that the present volume has been edited on the same principle with Sibbes and Brooks. The text is given with scrupulous integrity; references and quotations are traced, and less known names and dates annotated; every reference or quotation of Scripture verified and filled in; and copious indices are subjoined; the two last the more important, that Dr Gilpin himself seems to have quoted Scripture from memory, and furnished no ‘table’ or index beyond the heading of the several chapters as ‘contents.’
May this revised treatise be used at this later day as in the past, to help in the great warfare against the Adversary.
Alexander B. Grosart.
⁂ It has not been deemed needful to give a list of such slight errata as have come under our eye in preparing the indices; but mark, with reference to the ‘Note,’ page 2, that for ‘Dr’ there is a misprint of ‘Mr,’ and that ‘deficiency’ is spelled with an ‘i’ for an ‘e.’—G.
MEMOIR OF THE REV. RICHARD GILPIN, M.D.
In pursuing our investigations for our Memoir of Richard Sibbes, we found and noted, that his name—in every one of its odd variations of spelling, numerous as those of Shakespeare and Raleigh—had quite died out at once of his native county and country, being traceable nowhere for fully a century of years—the stream which rose at Cony-Weston, Norfolk, in 1524, lapsing in a ‘Richard Sibbes, clerk, rector of Gedding, aged 93, February 2, 1737;’ and the blood thenceforward flowing in the female line.[1]