Featley

Featley (or Fairclough) DANIEL (1582-1645), English divine, was born at Charlton, Oxfordshire, on the 15th of March 1582. He was a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and probationer fellow in 1602, after which he went to France as chaplain to the English ambassador. For some years he was domestic chaplain to George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, and held also the rectories of Lambeth (1619), Allhallows, Bread Street (c. 1622), and Acton (1627), this last after leaving the archbishop’s service in 1625. His varied activities included a “scholastick duel” with James I. in 1625, and the publication of (1) the report of a conference with some Jesuits in 1624, (2) a devotional manual entitled Ancilla Pietatis (1626), (3) Mystica Clavis, a Key opening divers Difficult Texts of Scripture in 70 Sermons (1636). He was appointed provost of Chelsea College in 1630, and in 1641 was one of the sub-committee “to settle religion.” In the course of this work he had a disputation with four Baptists at Southwark which he commemorated in his book Καταβαπτισταὶ καταπτυστοί, The Dippers dipt or the Anabaptists duckt and plunged over head and ears (1645). He sat in the Westminster Assembly 1643, and was the last of the Episcopal members to remain. For revealing its proceedings he was expelled and imprisoned. He died at Chelsea on the 17th of April 1645.