Catherine Evans
ODNB (ID: 9235); ACAD (Venn) (ID: FK628C)
The eldest of five children of Edward Feake and Anne Shaw of Godstone, Surrey. Exact date of birth is unknown, but one Christopher Feake was baptised on 31 May 1612 at St Mary Magdalene, Milk Street. He entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge at the age of 16 in 1628 and graduated BA in 1632, and MA in 1635. By 1637 he had married Jane Man, daughter of John Man of Paul's Wharf, London. They would have eight children by 1653. He was vicar of Elsham, Lincolnshire from 1637, and in January 1646 he gained the sequestered vicarage of All Saints, Hertford. Here the unorthodox nature of his practice became clear: he brought psalm-singing and the Lord's prayer to an end and preached against the monarchy and aristocracy. Following the sequestration of William Jenkyn, the incumbent minister, in 1647 he became vicar of Christ Church, Newgate. He would shortly gain livings as lecturer at St Ann Blackfriars and All Hallows the Great, which he forfeited by 1654 as he was "obnoxious to the government". In the early 1650s he used his pulpit and his skills as an orator to try to destabilise the government and began to preach in support of the fifth monarchy prophesied by Daniel, giving sermons on this before the Mayor and House of Commons. He became one of the Fifth Monarchist leaders and an outspoken critic of Cromwell, denouncing the protector as the "dissemblingest perjured villaine in the world". Following this, he and Vavasour Powell, who had also preached at the same meeting, were arrested and briefly imprisoned. He was imprisoned again in 1654 in Windsor Castle, later being moved to Carisbrooke Castle, but led the Fifth Monarchy movement from prison, publishing letters through his congregation and his two most influential works, "The New Non-Conformist" (1654) and "The Oppressed Close Prisoner". After he was released in December 1656 he returned to London and publicly opposed Cromwell. Following the Restoration he attempted to continue the Fifth Monarchist movement. He was arrested again in 1663. He was licensed as an Independent preacher in 1672, and is last known of preaching in 1682 on London Bridge. His death date is unknown, but his property was passed on to his son in 1683.