Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Peter Gunning (1614–July 6, 1684), was an English Royalist church leader, Bishop of Chichester and later of Ely.
He was born at Hoo, in Kent, and educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1633. Having taken orders, he advocated the royalist cause eloquently from the pulpit. In 1644, during the English Civil War, he retired to Oxford, and held a chaplaincy at New College until the city surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in 1646. Subsequently he was chaplain, first to the royalist Sir Robert Shirley of Eatington (1629 - 1656), and then at the Exeter House chapel. After the Restoration in 1660 he returned to Clare College as master, and was appointed Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity. He also received the livings of Cottesmore, Rutland, and Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire.
In 1661 he became head of St John's College, Cambridge, and was elected Regius Professor of Divinity. He was consecrated bishop of Chichester in 1669, and was translated to the see of Ely in 1674 - 1675. Holding moderate religious views, he disliked equally the extremes represented by Puritanism and Roman Catholicism.
His works are chiefly reports of his disputations, such as that which appears in the Scisme Unmask't (Paris, 1658), in which the definition of a schism is discussed with two Romanist opponents.
A relative of his, Sir Robert Gunning became a famous diplomat.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Peter Gunning, afterwards Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and successively Bishop of Chichester and Ely. He had continued to read the Liturgy at the chapel at Exeter House when the Parliament was most predominant, for which Cromwell often rebuked him. Evelyn relates that on Christmas Day, 1657, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and the congregation taken prisoners, he and his wife being among them. There are several notices of Dr. Gunning in Evelyn’s Diary. When he obtained the mastership of St. John’s College upon the ejection of Dr. Tuckney, he allowed that Nonconformist divine a handsome annuity during his life. He was a great controversialist, and a man of great reading. Burnet says he “was a very honest sincere man, but of no sound judgment, and of no prudence in affairs” (“Hist. of his Own. Time”). He died July 6th, 1684, aged seventy-one.
More information of Peter Gunning from the Diocese of Ely http://www.ely.anglican.org/history/talk19990209/gunning.html
Description of Gunning and pre-Restoration Anglican churchgoing
from Bryant’s Pepys bio:
“…[Pepys] now [1658-59] transferred his affections to that Church in which he had been born… In one or two obscure corners of London there were still cellars and upper rooms… where the ministers of the banished Church defied the law and read the old Prayer Book to Anglican congregations. These Pepys now began to patronize, setting out on a Sunday morning from Westminster to hear Mr Gunning at Cary House by Exeter ‘Change… read his Church’s glorious and forbidden liturgy and preach on such subjects as the blessed widowhood of Anne, the mother of the Virgin.”
John Evelyn’s diary is online at AStext. These are the entries for 1657 including that for December 25th mentioned above.
http://astext.com/history/ed_1657.html (Click on re-FRAME to navigate the site.)
The site includes copies of correspondence between Pepys and Evelyn and an as yet partial searchable database of Pepys’ meals.
1911 Britannica
There is an entry for Gunning in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is available online here:
according to this review Gunning was very pro Rome..’ Dr. Gunning appeared to lean considerably towards a reconciliation of the church of England to Rome. He used, says Bishop Burnet, all the arts of sophistry in as confident a manner, as if they had been sound reasoning, and was very fond of Popish rituals and ceremonies.
Gunning and the