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OR,

LIVES,

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL,

OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS OF ALL AGES, COUNTRIES, CON-
DITIONS, AND PROFESSIONS,

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PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATER-NOSTER.ROW;
AND G. KEARSLEY, FLEET-STREET-ALSO FOR BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH;

AND COLBERT, CAPEL-STREET, DUBLIN.

1802.

By T. Davison, White-Friars.

MEM WORK

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY.

C.

CLA

CLAGETT, WILLIAM, an eminent divine

of the church of England, was born in 1646 at St. Edmund's-bury, where his father, the Rev. Nicholas Clagett, was preacher. He was educated at Emanuel college, Cambridge, where he took his regular degrees, and was made doctor in divinity in 1683. He commenced a preacher at his native town; whence, in consequence of the esteem and attachment of some gentlemen of the law who attended at the assizes, he was removed to Gray's-inn, of which society he was elected preacher. He also obtained the rectory of Farnham-Royal, Bucks, and the lectureship of St. Michael Bassishaw, London. He was made one of the chaplains in ordinary to the king, and was rising in reputation as a writer and preacher, when he was carried off by the small-pox in 1688, in his forty-second year. His wife, a relation of lord-keeper North, died of the same disease eighteen days after him. Dr. Clagett was a person highly respected both in his moral and professional character, and bishop Burnet enumerates him among those clergymen who did most honour to the church at that period, by their lives and labours. He published several pieces in controversy, of which the earliest related to the points in dispute between the established church and the dissenters; the latter, to those between the protestants and Romancatholics; for he lived long enough to become fully sensible of the danger to which the church was exposed from a popish sovereign, and opposed it with great vigour. After Dr. Clagett's death, his brother, Nicholas Clagett, also a distinguished divine, published four volumes of

VOL. III.

CLA

his sermons. Among these was a paraphrase,

with notes, of some of the first chapters of St. John's gospel, which was part of the task Dr. Clagett had undertaken, as his share in a design then adopted by some divines of the church of England, of commenting upon the whole Bible. Dr. Clagett is accounted a clear and excellent reasoner, with much candour of spirit, and a perspicuous style. Biogr. Britan.-A.

CLARA, a saint of the Roman-catholic church, and foundress of an order, was born in 1193 at Assisi; of which town her father, Favorino Sciffo, was an illustrious citizen. She was bred in the principles of strict piety, and at an early age was so impressed with the holy life of her townsman, St. Francis, that she resolved to renounce the world under his guid ance. She prevailed upon her sister Agnes, and several other young women of quality, to follow her example, and resided in various religious houses, till St. Francis gave her the church of St. Damian. Some of her companions were invited to settle in other convents, and they spread to Spain in 1219, and, to France in the following year. Ciara, however, had instituted no rule, and had soiely engaged herself to obey St. Francis. Some of her fol lowers adopted that of St. Benedict; but,, at.. length, they were all united under the rule of St. Francis, which was solemnly approved in 1246 by Innocent IV. Rigorous as this was, Clara did not think it enough so; and her director, St. Francis, was obliged to moderate her zeal, and constrain her to continue abbess of St. Damian, though she would have preferred being a simple nun. She descended to the

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