Christopher Love
1618–1651
Younger Presbyterian; executed by Parliament for royalist plot, 1651.
Biography
Welsh-born, of New Inn Hall Oxford. Love was one of the most popular young Presbyterian preachers in London — chaplain to John Warner before St Lawrence Jewry, and from 1645 minister of St Anne Aldersgate. At Westminster he was one of the younger active ministers and a fierce preacher against the Independents and (after 1649) the Cromwellian government. In May 1651 he was arrested for the 'Love Plot' — a Presbyterian attempt to negotiate Charles II's restoration through London merchants, with funds routed to the exiled queen — and after a long trial before the High Court of Justice was beheaded on Tower Hill on 22 August 1651 aged thirty-three: the first English minister executed by an English government since Mary's reign. His scaffold speech was widely printed; The Whole Workes (1653) and twenty subsequent posthumous editions made him a martyr-figure for the Presbyterian cause.
Principal works
- The Naturall Mans Case Stated (1652)
- Heavens Glory, Hells Terror (1653)
English Presbyterian divine
The great majority of the sitting members were English parish ministers of Presbyterian conviction. They formed the drafting core of the Assembly, manning its three standing committees and supplying most of the text of the Confession, the two Catechisms, and the Directory for Public Worship.