chaplain during the year of his mayoralty—a circumstance which
notorious Dr. Hoadley. The history of the first eleven years of his ministerial life is involved in much uncertainty. I am unable to tell the reader who gave him a title for orders, or why he was ordained at Hereford. I can only find out that his first engagement was the curacy of Lewtrenchard, near Okehampton, in Devonshire. He went there on a visit to an Oxford friend, whose father lived at Lidford, and upon the express condition that his friend should find him work. He only remained here about six months. From Lewtrenchard he removed into the diocese of Winchester, and was curate of Banstead, near Epsom, for anything we can see, for an unbroken period of ten years. Much of his after-course in life probably hinged on this curacy. It was here that he became acquainted with Sir Daniel Lambert, an alderman of London, who lived in the parish, and was lord-mayor in 1741. He thought so highly of Romaine that he appointed him his chaplain during the year of his mayoralty—a circumstance which brought him into notice as a preacher, both at St. Paul's Cathedral and in many other London pulpits.
It is highly probable that the ten years which Romaine spent at Banstead were years of deep study and literary pursuits. It was at this time that he published two volumes in reply to Warburton's "Divine Legation of Moses," in which he ably controverted the main positions of that mischievous book. He also prepared for the press a new edition of the Hebrew Concordance and Lexicon of Marius de Calasio, in four large volumes—a work which required very close attention, and which employed him no less than seven years. The small size of his cure at Banstead no doubt left him abundant time for study; and this time was well spent. The extremely firm and unwavering position which he assumed on points of doctrine in afterlife, may be traced in all probability to the quiet ten years which he spent in his Surrey curacy. Foundation-stones are often laid in a young minister's mind during his residence in such a position, which nothing in after-life can ever shake or displace.
One thing, at all events, is very certain, whatever else is uncertain, about Romaine's ministerial beginnings. There never seems to have