1: Of Her Parentage and the Occasion of Our Acquaintance
1
OF HER PARENTAGE AND THE
OCCASION OF OUR ACQUAINTANCE
[Margaret’s widowed mother moves to Kidderminster, where Richard is the pastor, and exercises a potent Christian influence there. Margaret joins her.]
As I knew more of this person than any other, for the good of the readers and the honor of God’s grace in her, I shall by God’s assistance truly report the things which I know.
We were born in the same county within three miles and an half of each other; but she of one of the chief families in the county, and I but of a mean low-grade freeholder (called a gentleman for his ancestors’ sake, but of a small estate, though sufficient). Her father, Francis Charlton, Esq., was one of the best justices of the peace in that county, a grave and sober worthy man, but he did not marry till he was aged and gray, and so died while his children were very young, who were three, of which the eldest daughter and his only son are yet alive.
[Baxter now tells in detail how Margaret’s widowed mother became Mrs. Hanmer by remarriage, how during the Civil War her home was burned, and how against Baxter’s advice she subsequently moved to Kidderminster in order to benefit from his ministry.]
When she had been there alone a while, her unmarried daughter, Margaret (about seventeen or eighteen years of age), came after her from her brother’s, resolving not to forsake the mother who deserved her dearest love; and sometime went to Oxford to her elder sister (wife of Mr. Ambrose Upton, then Canon of Christ Church, both yet living). In this time the good old mother lived as a blessing amongst the honest poor weavers of Kidderminster, strangers to her, whose company for their piety she chose before all the vanities of the world. In which time my acquaintance with her made me know, that (notwithstanding she had formerly been somewhat passionate [i.e., prone to violent gusts of emotion, especially anger, and mood swings]), she was a woman of all that manly patience in her great trials, that prudence and piety, and justice and impartiality and other virtues which I mentioned in her funeral sermon. Of her death anon. It is her daughter’s case that this is the prologue to.