Samuel Annesley was a prominent Puritan and nonconformist pastor, best known for the sermons he collected as the series of Morning Exercises.
Life
He was born in Haseley, in Warwickshire in 1620. He was the son of John & Judith Aneley. His father, a wealthy man, died when he was four years old. He started to read the bible at an early age. In Michaelmas term, 1635, he was admitted a student at The Queen's College, Oxford, and there he proceeded successively B.A. and M.A. He underwent presbyterian ordination, on 18 Dec. 1644, and subscribed by seven presbyterian ministers, having possibly already received Episcopal ordination, and became chaplain to Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, then admiral of the parliament's fleet, on the Globe. He succeeded Griffin Higgs in the living of Cliffe, Kent, when Higgs was ejected for his loyalty to the king and treason to the Commonwealth. On 26 July 1648 he preached the fast sermon before the House of Commons, and around this time Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate. He was also again at sea with the Earl of Warwick, who was in action against the royalist navy. In 1657 he was nominated by Oliver Cromwell lecturer of St. Paul's, and in 1658 was presented by Richard Cromwell to the vicarage of St. Giles, Cripplegate. He was presented again there after the Restoration, but was ejected after the Act of Uniformity 1662. He preached semi-privately, but his goods were distrained for keeping a conventicle, a meeting-house in Little St. Helen's. In 1669 he was preaching in Spitalfields to a congregation estimated at 800.
Death
He died on 31 December 1696, his funeral sermon being preached by Daniel Williams, while Daniel Defoe, a member of his congregation, wrote an elegy on his death: He was buried in St. Leonard's Churchyard, Shoreditch, in an unmarked plot.
Works
His writings consisted of sermons separately published, and in the various collections under the title Morning Exercises at Cripplegate and biographical works including a life of Thomas Brand. In addition to furnishing the first sermon for these Morning Exercises, Annesley edited this volume of sermons from prominent Puritan ministers considering practical issues of conscience and three sequel volumes, for each of which he provided the first sermon.
