Simon Patrick: letters to Elizabeth, Lady Gauden

Simon Patrick (1626-1707), Bishop of Ely, was born in 1626 in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, the eldest son of Henry Patrick, a wealthy mercer and merchant. He was given a religious education of protestant piety and Calvinist theology before going to Queens' College Cambridge in 1644 where he acted as scribe to the Master. He graduated BA in 1648, was elected as a Fellow in 1649 and proceeded MA in 1651.

Patrick served his college in the early 1650s being both senior bursar and dean of chapel and also lecturing in philosophy, arithmetic, and Hebrew. He was obliged to take orders and submitted to presbyterian ordination in 1653 before being ordained priest in 1654. In 1655 Patrick became chaplain to Sir Walter St John at Battersea and in 1658 St John offered him the vacant vicarage at St Mary's Battersea which he held until 1675. He wrote his earliest works at this time, most importantly his sacramental treatises Aqua genitalis (1659) and Mensa mystica (1660).

In 1662 he was elected to President of Queens' College by the fellows, but his appointment was overruled by a royalist nominee being installed on king's mandamus. Patrick appealed, but to no avail and he eventually abandoned the case in 1665. In 1662 he was also offered the rectorship of St Paul's Covent Garden by the earl of Bedford where Patrick stayed until 1689. He earned a reputation as an exemplary parish priest, not least because of his decision to stay with his parishioners during the plague of 1665. His correspondence with Lady Elizabeth Gauden dates from this period and provides a fascinating account of his experiences and thoughts during the plague. In 1671 Patrick was made a royal chaplain and on 13 July he received a prebend at Westminster, where he was installed four days later.

Patrick married Penelope Jephson in 1675 at Miserden in Gloucestershire. They had three children, William (b. 1 July 1678), Simon (b. 2 Oct 1680), and Penelope (b. 1 Dec 1685), of whom only Simon survived infancy. Penelope outlived her husband: she died on 10 April 1725.

Patrick became dean of Peterborough in 1679, holding the office together with the rectory of St Paul's before being confirmed as bishop of Chichester on 12 October 1689. He served on the ecclesiastical commission designed to revise the prayer book and was also seen as an expert in the composition of prayers, being instructed to revise the collects with a view to bringing them more into line with the epistles and the gospels. In 1691 Patrick became Bishop of Ely, moving to Cambridgeshire in May 1692 where he reconstructed the bishop's palace at Ely. He also helped establish the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK).

He died in 1707 at the age of 80.

Many of the letters are followed by copies in the hand of Samuel Knight DD. The collection includes three replies by Gauden, a letter from Philip Morant to [S. Knight], 11 Jan. 1754, and a letter from C. Marriott to 'Mrs Knight', 27 Mar. 1838. The list of contents at the front of the volume is in the hand of John Percy Baumgartner.

Belonged to Samuel Knight DD, prebend of Ely and rector of Bluntisham, Hunts. After Knight's death in 1746, the MS. descended to John Percy Baumgartner of Milton, Cambs., who presented it to the Library in 1859.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Simon Patrick: letters to Elizabeth, Lady Gauden, MS Add.19

The letters were transcribed by William Cole (see note to letter 91), and several have been published from Cole's transcripts (B.L. Add. MS 5810) in A. Taylor (ed.), Works of Symon Patrick, vol. 9, Oxford, 1858.

Cambridge University Library also holds other material relating to Simon Patrick at Mss Add. 20, 36, 53, 56, 63-66, 70, 71, 74, 76, 78, 81, 84, 103.

Microfilm available