Christopher Crell

From SOCINIANISM IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND, 1951 by John McLachlan

In 1666 Christopher Crell was again in England. This time, if not before, he made the acquaintance in London of Mrs. Alice Stuckey, an influential member of John Bidle's old congregation, who only shortly before had lost her son, Nathaniel, a promising youth who had been a pupil of her old pastor. Luckily, an account of his father's travels written years after by Samuel Crell,^[7] the second son of Christopher, senior, has been preserved. From this we learn that Mrs. Stuckey persuaded her Polish co-religionist, an exile and in poverty, to bring over two of his four children to England where she undertook to act as their foster-parent. Two years later (in 1668) their father made the journey with his eldest son, also named Christopher, and his daughter, and left them in Mrs. Stuckey's care. It is this brother and sister who are meant by the reference to 'young Crellius and his wife' in the report already quoted. The two young people were e evidently educated at the good lady's expense, not perhaps without experiencing the bounty also of that generous-hearted philanthropist, Thomas Firmin.

Christopher Crell, junior, later studied medicine at Leyden, graduating M.D. on 6 July 1682,^[] and being admitted Licentiate of the College of Physicians on 2 April 1683.^[] He made his home in England, practising medicine and well known to men like Thomas Sydenham and John Locke. Some verses of his were prefixed to a posthumously published medical treatise of the former in 1695.^[] indicating not only his connexion with the great physician but also his own standing in the contemporary world. He had dedicated his thesis in 1682, amongst others, 'to Mrs. Alice Stuckey, who brought him up ; Mr. Henry Hedworth; and Mr. Thomas Firmin'. To these London friends he evidently wished to repay a debt of gratitude for past kindness to himself and his Socinian compatriots in their need. This young man's tribute reveals the close association and friendship which grew up in these years between English and foreign Socinians, a fact which did not pass unnoticed by contemporaries. Dr. John Edwards of Cambridge, for example, a bitter opponent of Locke, declared in his Socinian Creed (1697), 'We are not sure that some of those who go under the name of English Socinians are not foreigners. Is not Crellius's stock somewhere harbour'd among them?'^[] The remark was somewhat stale in application, but contained a modicum of truth.   (pp. 288-90)

 

Of the active Socinian circle in London Mrs. Stuckey was evidently a prominent member. In one of Hedworth's letters to Knowles written in the autumn of 1662, shortly after the death of Bidle,^[] occur some veiled allusions to contemporaries. Hedworth writes of the departure for Holland of his friend 'Mr. Spinoste' (i.e. Christopher Crell, senior, who evidently adopted the name Spinowski, though his son dropped it, as appears from the roll of the Royal College of Physicians).^[] He then continues: 'Thither your friend Pil. was going this very week and should have put out to sea this day if Mrs. Style had not hindered her Husband, his companion, by her extream importunity. There is nothing els hinders and if y^t can be overcome they wil be gone next week, for they are fully resolved upon it.' On the face of its this passage tells us that a certain lady of strong character had prevented two worthy gentlemen from travelling to Holland land. To the recipient of the letter, however, there would be no mystery about the persons concerned. Hedworth's letters to Knowles invariably contained initials and contractions for friends and acquaintances and were signed only by initials and monograms, a cautious practice deemed necessary at a time when meetings of dissenters were proscribed and Socinians in particular were regarded as beyond the pale of Christian society. Thus he used the letters H. H., H. Hed., He P., H. P., H. H. P. What the P. denoted it is hard to say, but that P. and 'Pil.' are the same person is a fair conjecture. When Hedworth says that 'your friend Pil.' had planned to go to Holland, it is plain that he is speaking of himself, for he did in fact go very shortly aferwards. His companion, we may safely infer, was to have been Mr. Stuckey whose good lady Hedworth indicated under the perhaps not inappropriate pseudonym of 'Mrs. Style'. Hedworth and the Stuckeys must have been on terms of intimacy, and we may assume that Hedworth, the foreign traveller, first introduced Christopher Crell, senior, to Mrs. Stuckey in 1666. Behind this introduction and its consequences, the adoption of Christopher junior and is sister by Mrs. Stuckey, may lie the tragic circumstance of a double bereavement, for she appears to have lost both husband and only son in the previous year, the year of the Plague. Possibly both were victims of the same malady.

(page 292)

Oxford 1951.