Ofspring Blackall
), daughter of Charles Ofspring, rector of St Antholin, Budge Row, and trier of the second presbyterian classis (or eldership) of London.Blackall's father owned land in several counties as well as property in the city,[1] and although he conformed to the established church may have retained some puritan sympathies.[2] He was educated in nearby Hackney, perhaps at the free school of which Robert Skingle was master, before being admitted as a pensioner to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, on 26 April 1671.[5] To supplement his episcopal revenues he was permitted to hold, in addition to his bishopric, the deanery of St Buryan, Cornwall, the rectory of Shorbrook, Devon, and the offices of archdeacon and treasurer of Exeter.In a brief aside Toland remarked that if such a recent deception could remain undiscovered, it was not surprising that the dubious authorship of some ancient Christian writings had likewise gone undetected.Toland replied with Amyntor, or, A Defence of Milton's Life (1699), which attacked Blackall in a highly personal manner and accused him of theological ignorance.The numerous pamphlets which were published on either side during the ensuing controversy included an anonymous work in support of Blackall, entitled The Best Answer Ever was Made (1709), by the Irish nonjuror and formidable controversialist Charles Leslie.Ironically Blackall's same accession-day sermon of 1705, The Subjects Duty, had been attacked on its first publication by tory patriarchalist writers, who accused him of being a republican.[10] In fact Blackall was a consistent 'revolution tory' and maintained the high-church doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance to sovereign powers, while denying the Filmerian tenet of divine hereditary right.By holding that sovereignty was always absolute, but that it belonged in the English constitution to the monarch in parliament, Blackall was articulating an important theory by which tories reconciled themselves to the revolution.