Life

The son of Edward Bury

Edward Bury (minister)

Edward Bury , was an English ejected minister.-Early Life:Bury was born in Worcestershire in 1616. According to Walker, he was originally a tailor, and was put into a home in Great Bolas, Shropshire, in place of a deprived rector...

, he was born at Great Bolas

Great Bolas

Great Bolas is a small village in rural Shropshire, England, north-west of the town of Newport, in between the rivers Meese and Tern. It is part of the civil parish of Waters Upton...

, Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

, where he was baptised on 21 April 1663. He was educated at Thomas Doolittle

Thomas Doolittle

-Early life:Doolittle was the third son of Anthony Doolittle, a glover, and was born at Kidderminster in 1632 or the latter half of 1631. While at the grammar school of his native town he heard Richard Baxter preach as lecturer the sermons later published as ‘The Saint's Everlasting Rest’ . These...

's academy, at that time in Islington

Islington

Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...

. Here he was contemporary with Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry was an English commentator on the Bible and Presbyterian minister.-Life:He was born at Broad Oak, a farmhouse on the borders of Flintshire and Shropshire. His father, Philip Henry, had just been ejected under the Act of Uniformity 1662...

, who entered in 1680, and made friends with Bury. Edmund Calamy

Edmund Calamy (historian)

Edmund Calamy was an English Nonconformist churchman, divine and historian.-Life:A grandson of Edmund Calamy the Elder, he was born in the City of London, in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury. He was sent to various schools, including Merchant Taylors', and in 1688 proceeded to the university of...

, who entered in 1682, speaks of Bury as a student of philosophy, not divinity.

Bury's first settlement was at Bury St Edmunds, before the Toleration Act

Toleration Act

Toleration Act may refer to:* Act of Toleration 1689, in England* Maryland Toleration Act, of 1649...

 of 1689. In 1690 a house in Churchgate Street was bought, and converted into a place of worship, with a substantial congregation. In Samuel Tymms's Handbook of Bury St. Edmunds it is stated that Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

 was an attendant on his ministry.

In 1696 Bury was engaged in collecting a list of the nonconforming ministers; Oliver Heywood

Oliver Heywood

Oliver Heywood was an English banker and philanthropist.Born in Manchester, the son of Benjamin Heywood, and educated at Eton College, Heywood joined the family business, Heywood's Bank in the 1840s....

 supplied him (14 August) with the names in Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 and Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, through Samuel Angier

Samuel Angier

Samuel Angier was an English nonconformist minister, one of the first after 1660 to receive presbyterian ordination.-Life:The nephew of John Angier, he was born at Dedham 28 August 1639, and was a pupil of Richard Busby...

. On 11 August 1700, John Fairfax

John Fairfax (minister)

-Life:Fairfax was the second son of Benjamin Fairfax , ejected from Rumburgh, Suffolk, who married Sarah, daughter of Roger and Joane Galliard, of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, was born in 1623. Theophilus Brabourne, the sabbatarian, was his uncle by marriage...

, ejected from Barking-cum-Needham, Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, died (aged seventy-six) at his house in that parish; Bury preached two funeral sermons for him; the one at the actual funeral at Barking was, by an unusual concession, delivered in the parish church.

A chapel in Churchgate Street was built in 1711, and opened 30 December. Bury preached the opening sermon. Bury, who was tortured with the stone

The Stone

The Stone is a not-for-profit experimental music performance space located in the Alphabet City neighborhood in New York City. It was founded in April 2005 by musician John Zorn, who serves as the artistic director.-Location:...

, went with his wife to Bath in the autumn of 1719, on a journey of health. Just before he set out on his return home, he received overtures from Lewin's Mead, Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

. This was the larger of the two presbyterian congregations in Bristol, and it had been vacant since the death of Michael Pope in 1718. It counted 1,600 adherents. Bury agreed to go to Bristol for six months ‘to make a tryal of the waters there.’ He arrived there on 8 April 1720. In little more than a month he lost his wife. His stay at Bristol was permanent; he had as assistant (probably from 1721) John Diaper, who succeeded him as pastor, and resigned in 1751. Under Bury's ministry the congregation increased both in numbers and in wealth.

In the Hewley suit, 1830–42, efforts were made by the Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 defendants to collect indications of concession to heterodox opinion on the part of Bury, as a representative Presbyterian of his time. Thomas Smith James's History of the Litigation and Legislation respecting Presbyterian chapels claimed that the ‘Exhortation’ at Savage's ordination, quoted to prove opposition to the Calvinistic doctrine of election

Doctrine of Election

Doctrine of Election, the doctrine that the salvation of a mandepends on the election of God for that end, of which there are two chiefphases: one is election to be Christ's, or unconditional election or Doctrine of Free Will,...

, was not by Bury, but by John Rastrick, M.A., of Lynn (died 18 August 1727). In a farewell letter from Bury to his Lewin's Mead congregation, he says, ‘I never was prostituted to any party, but have endeavoured to serve God as a catholic christian,’ and speaks of requirements which have no good Scripture warrant, as making ‘apocryphal sins and duties.’ The address is practical, avoids controversy, and is evangelical in tone.

Bury died 10 March 1730, and was buried in St. James's churchyard, where formerly was an altar tomb with Latin epitaphs to Bury and his wife. He married, on 29 May 1697, Elizabeth Bury

Elizabeth Bury

-Early Life:Bury was baptised 12 March 1644 at Clare, Suffolk, the day of her birth having probably been 2 March. Her father was Captain Adams Lawrence of Linton, Cambridgeshire; her mother was Elizabeth Cutts of Clare, and besides Elizabeth there were three other children. In 1648, when Elizabeth...

, second daughter of Captain Adams Lawrence, of Linton

Linton

-Places:Australia* Linton, Victoria* Linton bushfireCanada* Linton, Ontario* Linton, QuebecEngland* Linton, Cambridgeshire* Linton, Derbyshire* Linton, Essex* Linton, Herefordshire** Linton, Bringsty near Bromyard, Herefordshire...

, Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

.

Works

Bury published:

• ‘A Scriptural Catechism, being an Abridgment of Mr. O. Stockton's, design'd especially for the use of charity schools in Edmund's-Bury,’ 1699.
• ‘A Collection of Psalms, Hymns, &c.,’ for private use, 3rd ed. 1713.
• ‘Θρηνωδία. The People's Lamentation for the Loss of their Dead Ministers, or Three Sermons occasioned by the death of the late Reverend and Learned Divines, Mr. John Fairfax and Mr. Timothy Wright,’ 1702.
• ‘A Funeral Sermon for the Rev. Mr. Samuel Cradock,’ &c. 1707.
• ‘Two sermons preach'd at the opening of a new erected Chappel in St. Edmunds-Bury,’ &c., 1712.
• ‘A Funeral Sermon for Robert Baker, Esq.,’ &c., 1714.
• ‘The Questions’ at the ordination of S. Savage, printed with John Rastrick's ‘Sermon’ on the occasion, 1714.
• ‘An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs. Elizabeth Bury, &c., chiefly collected out of her own Diary,’ Bristol, 1720, 4th edit. 1725.