Farry was in the habit of often visiting Mr. Beaumont's
fsimily, and he was paying his addresses to Agnes. Money,
it seems, was his great motive in courting her, and such was
his avarice, that he prevailed upon her father, whose good
graces he had gained by flattering his humour, to make his
will, leaving the greater part of his wealth to her, in the ex-
pectation that one day it would become his own ; for he had
no doubt of obtaining her consent, though he does not ap-
pear to have ever secured her affections. He himself drew
up the will and saw it duly signed by the old man, and at-
tested by witnesses. This was about the year 1675.
Farry was a scoffer at religion and religious people. He
seemed never more in his element than when endeavouring
to infuse into the minds of others his own contempt for reli-
gion and the religious. To poison the mind of Mr. Beau-
mont he was constantly, in his intercourse with him, speak-
ing against Bunyan and the firequenters of conventicles, re-
counting as truths all the calumnies wickedly invented and
industriously circulated against that great and good man by
his detractors, adding new ones of his own invention, and
maligning Bunyan's followers as arrant hypocrites, who under
the cloak of religion practised every sort and size of vice,
concerned only to keep it hidden from the world. The effect
of all this upon the mind of, Agnes's father was, that credu-



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214 WOMEN OP THE PUBITAN TIMES.
