(Gleaned from ONDB)
An Anglican clergyman and poet, Pestell was born c 1586. Son of a tailor adn eldest of 5, he gained a BA (1606) and MA (1609) from Queens College, Cambridge and became rector of Coleorton in his native Leicestershire. Around 1612 he married Sarah Carr ‘disappointing’ a Mistress Stacy and initiating a lengthy feud with her family. They had several children. Two older sons, Thomas and William, went into the ministry.
In 1615 Pestell published The Good Conscience and 2 sermons castigating avarice and oppression. He was chaplain to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and may have written the Spenserian Coleorton Masque performed (1618) to celebrate the wedding of Essex's sister.
Regarding himself as ‘a poor retired Vicar in an obscure angle of the Countrey’ he published
nothing more until persuaded to issue God’s Visitation (1630). In 1633 he produced two elegies for the countess of Huntingdon, which must have had a wider currency. Queen Henrietta Maria was said to have read the elegies.
Pestell was controversial, capable of arrogance and even violence. By 1633 he had been accused of ecclesiastical irregularities but charges against him in the 1640s point to at least a degree of conformity, and he was acquitted, though ordered to apologise to his patrons and pay damages to others. He held a royal chaplaincy 1641-1644. During the civil wars his house was apparently looted 11 times. In 1646 he and his elder son were charged by a parliamentary committee with offences including using the prayer book and keeping hunting beagles that damaged property. They were sequestered and Thomas Sr was ejected from his charge at Packington by soldiers. Several times imprisoned, he was dependent on charity and assumed the pseudonym Perditus.
Sermons and Devotions Old and New (1659) was ‘an oblation of gratitude to all such of the nobility, gentry and clergy as retain the noble conscience of having ministered to the weak condition of the author, now aged 73’. It included a discourse on duels.
In 1659 he became vicar of St Mary's, Leicester and at the Restoration rector of Lutterworth and confrator of Wigston Hospital, where he died in 1667, being buried in the chapel.
An Anglican clergyman and poet, Pestell was born c 1586. Son of a tailor adn eldest of 5, he gained a BA (1606) and MA (1609) from Queens College, Cambridge and became rector of Coleorton in his native Leicestershire. Around 1612 he married Sarah Carr ‘disappointing’ a Mistress Stacy and initiating a lengthy feud with her family. They had several children. Two older sons, Thomas and William, went into the ministry.
In 1615 Pestell published The Good Conscience and 2 sermons castigating avarice and oppression. He was chaplain to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and may have written the Spenserian Coleorton Masque performed (1618) to celebrate the wedding of Essex's sister.
Regarding himself as ‘a poor retired Vicar in an obscure angle of the Countrey’ he published
nothing more until persuaded to issue God’s Visitation (1630). In 1633 he produced two elegies for the countess of Huntingdon, which must have had a wider currency. Queen Henrietta Maria was said to have read the elegies.Pestell was controversial, capable of arrogance and even violence. By 1633 he had been accused of ecclesiastical irregularities but charges against him in the 1640s point to at least a degree of conformity, and he was acquitted, though ordered to apologise to his patrons and pay damages to others. He held a royal chaplaincy 1641-1644. During the civil wars his house was apparently looted 11 times. In 1646 he and his elder son were charged by a parliamentary committee with offences including using the prayer book and keeping hunting beagles that damaged property. They were sequestered and Thomas Sr was ejected from his charge at Packington by soldiers. Several times imprisoned, he was dependent on charity and assumed the pseudonym Perditus.
Sermons and Devotions Old and New (1659) was ‘an oblation of gratitude to all such of the nobility, gentry and clergy as retain the noble conscience of having ministered to the weak condition of the author, now aged 73’. It included a discourse on duels.
In 1659 he became vicar of St Mary's, Leicester and at the Restoration rector of Lutterworth and confrator of Wigston Hospital, where he died in 1667, being buried in the chapel.
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