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brother John; at any rate, the elder son was apprenticed in his fourteenth year, 1648, to his uncle Ramskar, in Sheffield, Apprentices usually boarded in those times with the master's family, and attended with the household at the Parish Church on Sundays. So that young Thomas would thus early come under the Puritanic ministry of the Rev. James Fisher, vicar of Sheffield, and of his no less Puritanic curates. True, these Puritan ministers were destined in about fourteen years to be ejected from the Parish Church, and became exposed to imprisonment and privation, but, thank God, their Scriptural teaching had good time to take deep root in Sheffield, and produce a large crop of Nonconformists, conspicuous for conscientious zeal and considerable numbers. Vicar Fisher was of the Independent religious party rather than an adherent of Presbyterianism. His preaching founded on the gospel according to the orthodox interpretation of a John Owen and John Howe (the latter, Cromwell's favorite domestic chaplain) appears to have made the deepest impression on the heart of the young apprentice, who was led in his after religious development to become an adherent of the Baptist persuasion. On account of this young man's thoughtfulness and trustworthiness, and before the completion of his apprenticeship, uncle Ramskar sent this nephew, having the utmost confidence in him, to manage a cutlery business started by him in the Minories, London. At the time of his arrival in London, 1654," says Giles Hester, the eminent Nonconformist historian of Sheffield, "there were many Baptists in the neighbourhood of the Minories. Hanserd Knollys, a native of Lincolnshire, had kept a school on Great Tower Hill, and at a subsequent date became head master of the Free School in St. Mary Axe, where, in addition to his ordinary scholars, he had a considerable number of boarders. Later on he exercised his ministry in a building adjoining the church known as Great St. Helens. All these places are in the neighbourhood of the Minories, and it is possible that Thomas Hollis was baptized by Hanserd Knollys." Four years after his arrival in London Thomas Hollis was married to Anne, the sister of Robert Thorner, numbered among the early benefactors of Harvard College, of America. Though a Baptist by pro

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fession it does not appear that Thomas Hollis attached himself to any particular Baptist Church in London. He preferred to make Pinner's Hall his regular place of worship, which was, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, one of the most celebrated places of worship for Nonconformists generally to gather at in London. The leading Dissenting Divines of the day preached there in turns. Independents occupied the Hall on Sabbath mornings; the Baptists and other Dissenters during the remainder of the sacred day. There Thomas Hollis and his family had the privilege of sitting with the great Oliver to hear the scholarly Dissenting Divine, John Howe, and on other occasions to hearken to "holy Richard Baxter, who did his loving utmost, by word and example, to maintain one united national church, without all the sects and divisions that followed the Restoration. Baxter was a pleading and soul-winning preacher. As a religious writer his voluminous publications became the popular and general religious reading of not only Nonconformists but also of all the churches. When Boswell asked Dr. Johnson what works of Richard Baxter he should read, the great lexicographer, who was also the staunchest of churchmen, answered, "Read any of them, for they are all good." A recent biographer of Baxter well applies to him the following beautiful lines of a modern poet :

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"I, who bow not to the priest

Lean, or fed to sleekness,

Bend to one who holds of Christ
Wisdom, love and meekness.
When his intercession mild

Hushed the critic's pœan;
He had caught a gentle tone
From the Galilean."

Thomas Hollis's attachment to Pinner's Hall is shown by his taking a lease of the Hall for ninety-nine years. Although he was so devotedly engaged in the exercises of religion, and occupied by the activities of his most flourishing business, that son of the Rotherham whitesmith kept a warm heart for his Yorkshire friends. This is evidenced by his large contribution to the building of Sheffield's first Nonconformist Chapel, at the bottom of Snig Hill, which was afterwards converted by him into Almshouses, when the

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