Here dwelt the Rev. John Cotton, vicar of the parish and already
obnoxious to the Bishops.

No man among the Nonconformists had had more brilliant reputation
before the necessity of differing came upon him, and his personal
influence was something phenomenal. To the girl whose sensitive,
eager mind reached out to every thing high and noble he must have
seemed of even rarer stuff than to-day we know him to have been.

At thirteen he had entered Emmanuel College at Cambridge, and
adding distinction to distinction had come at last to be dean of
the college to which he belonged. His knowledge of Greek was
minute and thorough, and he conversed with ease in either Latin or
Hebrew. As a pulpit orator he was famous, and crowds thronged the
ancient church of St. Mary in Cambridge whenever he preached. Here
he gave them "the sort of sermons then in fashion--learned,
ornate, pompous, bristling with epigrams, stuffed with conceits,
all set off dramatically by posture, gesture and voice."

The year in which Anne Dudley was born, had completed the change
which had been slowly working in him and which Tyler describes in
his vivid pages on the theological writers of New England:

"His religious character had been deepening into Puritanism. He
had come to view his own preaching as frivolous, Sadducean,
pagan." He decided to preach one sermon which would show what
changes had come, and the announcement of his intention brought
together the usual throng of under-graduates, fellows and
professors who looked for the usual entertainment. Never was a
crowd more deceived. "In preparing once more to preach to this