Early Stuart Portraits Catalogue

Uncompromising puritan divine and polemicist; ordained 1638, began lecturing at Kidderminster 1641; sided with Parliament during the Civil War until 1647, but denounced the execution of Charles I; King’s chaplain 1660; refusing to accept the Act of Uniformity 1662, he was indulged by Charles II but under James II persecuted by Judge Jeffreys and briefly imprisoned; of poor health (once diagnosed as ‘Hypochondriack Flatulency’), he was reproved by Clarendon as being ‘severe and strict, like a Melancholy Man’; his many writings include The Saints Everlasting Rest 1650 and an autobiography Reliquiae Baxterianae (first ed. by M. Sylvester, 1696).

‘His person was tall & slender and stooped much, his countenance composed and grave, some-what inclining to smile, and he had a piercing eye’ (Matthew Sylvester, [Baxter’s] Funeral Sermon in the Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1696, and Baxter’s Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Baxter, 1826).

This extended catalogue entry is by John Ingamells, one of a limited number of entries drafted in 2010 for the incomplete catalogue, Early Stuart Portraits 1625-1685, and is as written then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.