Samuel Annesley occupation Christian minister
Samuel Annesley (c. 1620 – 1696) 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, and christened on the 26th March. He was the son of John and Judith Aneley. Betty Young records the surname as Anerlye (not to be confused with John Annesley, the brother of Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey, a mistake that many historians made). His father, a wealthy man, died when he was four years old, although this is disputed by Young who notes that John Anerlye was signing the parish registers as church warden as late as 1629  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 received his BA on 21st November 1639 In December 1642 he was authorised as special preacher at Chatham He underwent Presbyterian ordination, on 18 December 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 a Fast-day 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 and was on the George off the Netherlands between August and December 1648.Annesley was strongly opposed to the execution of Charles I and held Cromwell in low opinion describing him as "the arrantest hypocrite that ever the Church of Christ was pestered with". He lost the living at Cliffe, and in 1652 became incumbent at St John the Evangelist, Friday Street.
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. Following the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 Annesley was licensed as a Presbyterian 'teacher', but when the Declaration was revoked in 1673 the licence was revoked and this led to the distraint of his fairly considerable property. He continued however with his financial support of others and his support of nonconformity in London with a remarkable reputation as a preacher. Newton notes that 'Annesley's sermons repay careful analysis, for they are choice sample of Puritan preaching: biblical, pastoral, practical, and grounded in the daily life of the people'He was a major influence on the views and perhaps even the prose style of Daniel Defoe. One exercise required Defoe to take notes of the weekly sermons and reconstruct the whole argument point by point from the notes. Defoe wrote in 1697 a pamphlet on "The Character of the late Dr Samuel Annesley by way of Elegy".
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