John Everard

c.1575-c.1650. English clergyman. Cambridge D.D. and excellent preacher, his preaching on the unlawfulness of matching with idolaters was taken as criticism of the projected Spanish marriage, and he several times went to prison (once for six months) until he apologized. Meanwhile, as reader in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, he attracted fashionable congregations, although he averred that his sermons were aimed at his less sophisticated hearers. By 1636 he had a parish in Essex, but later summoned before the Court of High Commission for heresy, he was found not guilty, yet was later deprived of his benefice, and in 1639 was fined £1,000. He was no favorite of Archbishop Laud,* who “threatened to bring him to a morsel of bread because he could not make him stoop or bow before him.” Those of Everard's sermons that escaped confiscation were published in 1653 as Some Gospel Treasures opened. Their mystical flavor suggests the influence of John Tauler.*