English Puritan divine. Noted as this worthy was in his own time, and representative in various ways, he has often since been confounded with others, e.g., Robert Abbot, bishop of Salisbury. He is also wrongly described as a relative of Archbishop Abbot, from whom he acknowledges very gratefully, in the first of his epistles dedicatory of A Hand of Fellowship to Helpe Keepe out Sinne and Antichrist (1623, 4to), that he had received all his worldly maintenance, as well as best earthly countenance and fatherly incouragements. The worldly maintenance was the presentation in 1616 to the vicarage of Cranbrook in Kent. He had received his education at Cambridge, where he proceeded M.A., and was afterwards incorporated at Oxford. In 1639, in the epistle to the reader of his most noticeable book historically, his Triall of our Church-Forsakers, he tells us, I have lived now, by Gods gratious dispensation, above fifty years, and in the place of my allotment two and twenty full. The former date carries us back to 15881589, or perhaps 15871588the Armada yearas his birth-time; the latter to 16161617 (ut supra). In his Bee Thankfull London and her Sisters (1626), he describes himself as formerly assistant to a reverend divine now with God, and the name on the margin is Master Haiward of Wool Church (Dorset). This was doubtless previous to his going to Cranbrook. Very remarkable and effective was Abbots ministry at Cranbrook, where his parishioners were as his own sons and daughters to him. Yet, Puritan though he was, he was extremely and often unfairly antagonistic to Nonconformists. He remained at Cranbrook until 1643, when, Parliament deciding against pluralities of ecclesiastical offices, he chose the very inferior living of Southwick, Hants, as between the one and the other. He afterwards succeeded the extruded Udall of St. Austins, London, where according to the Warning-piece he was still pastor in 1657. He disappears silently between 16571658 and 1662. Robert Abbots books are conspicuous amongst the productions of his time by their terseness and variety. In addition to those mentioned above he wrote Milk for Babes, or a Mothers Catechism for her Children (1646), and A Christian Family builded by God, or Directions for Governors of Families (1653).
AUTHORITIES.Brooks Puritans, iii. 182, 3; Walkers Sufferings, ii. 183; Woods Athenae (Bliss), i. 323; Palmers Nonconf. Mem. ii. 218, which confuses him most oddly of all with one of the ejected ministers of 1662.