William Erbery or ErburyAlso Earbury. (1604 – April 1654) was a Welsh clergyman and radical Independent theologian. He was the father of the militant Quaker Dorcas Erbery.
Life
Erbery was born in Roath, Cardiff. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, England in 1623.Concise Dictionary of National Biography
He was ejected in 1638 from his Cardiff parish of St Mary's, under the Bishop of Llandaff who had branded him a schismatic,CNDB after several citations before the Court of High Commission. His offence was refusing, along with fellow Dissenters Walter Craddock and William Wroth, to read the Book of Sports.Hill, Change and Continuity in 17th-Century England, p. 21. He became chaplain, when the English Civil War broke out in 1642, to the regiment of Philip Skippon in the Parliamentary Army. According to Christopher Hill.The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 217.
From there he retired to the Isle of Ely.Hill, English Bible, p. 146. He was a Seeker; ; Hill, Change and Continuity p. 229. in Ely he expanded the Seekers in the 1640s.Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Penguin edition) p. 47.
He expected that a regime of 'saints' would (in the later 1640s) carry out God's will in England.Hill, Experience of Defeat, p. 82 names William Sedgwick, Peter Sterry and Joshua Sprigge as highest in Erbery’s estimation. He looked to the Army and Cromwell for reforms such as the abolition of tithes and the state church. In 1646 he took part in a high-profile dispute with the orthodox Presbyterian and heresy watchdog Francis Cheynell.
Anthony Wood (1632–1695), the English antiquary, records that Erbery died in London in April 1654 and was buried at either "Ch. Church" or the "Cemiterie joyning to Old Bedlam near London".Wood, Anthony, 1691 Athenae Oxoniense, Vol.2, London, p.105.
Views
With a disillusioned attitude to the movement of the times, though accepting Cromwell's Protectorate, he was a suspected Ranter.Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty, pp. 188–9: William Erbery, for example, had many Ranterish views, and came to visit Clarkson in jail. He was examined by Parliament as a suspect Ranter in 1652.
He favoured broad religious tolerance, and was dismissive of churches, believing that 'apostasy' had set in early in Christian times;Hill, World Upside Down, p. 194; Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (1977), p. 84. and criticized much even in the Independent churches of his time.Hill, Liberty Against the Law (1996), p. 185. He attacked the assumption of the sufficiency of scripture, but doubted the Trinity had Biblical support. He believed free grace had been brought forth by John Preston and Richard Sibbes,Hill, World Upside Down, p. 186. preached universal redemption,Hill, Milton, p. 272-3: Winstanley, Walwyn, Coppin, John Robins, Erbery and the author of Tyranipocrit Discovered thought that all men shall be saved. and denied the divinity of Christ.Hill, World Upside Down, p. 192. His millennarian views included a Second Coming, but realised by and within 'saints'.Hill, Milton, p. 309: William Erbery, Gerrard Winstanley, Joseph Salmon, Jacob Bathumley, Richard Coppin, Laurence Clarkson and other Ranters held the Familist view that the Fall, the Second Coming, the Lat Judgement and the end of the world were all events which take place on earth within the individual conscience. Also p. 304.
He opposed the Baptists, for example in his 1653 pamphlet A Mad Man's Plea.Hill, World Upside Down, p. 281; Alfred Cohen, Two Roads to the Puritan Millennium: William Erbury and Vavasor Powell, Church History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Sep., 1963), pp. 322–338.
Private life William married Mary who survived him. Their children included the Quaker preacher Dorcas Erbery. After William's death, Mary and Dorcas were involved in a show in Bristol with Martha Simmonds and Hannah Stranger that resulted in James Naylor being tried for blasphemy.
References Notes
Sources Hill, Christopher (1984). The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries Chapter 4 I Hill, Christopher (1972). The World Turned Upside Down, Chapter 9 II
External links The Testimony of William Erbery, online text