Stuckey Nathaniel

Stuckey Nathaniel  was born in the year 1640, and was the son of a pious woman, who was in the habit of attending the ministry of John Biddle. One of Mr. Biddie's last employments was to instruct him in Grammar and Logic. At the early age of fifteen he translated Mr. Biddle's "Twofold Catechism" from English into Latin, in order to facilitate its circulation in foreign countries.

The translation was printed in 1664, 8vo.; and he added to it an original composition in the same language, entitled, "Oratiuncula de Passione et Morte Christi," together with a Latin Letter from Jeremiah Felbinger to John Biddle, written from Dantzic, Aug. 24th, (O. S.,) 1654. (Vide Art. 315, No. 10.) Had this youth lived, he would probably have left behind him other monuments of his learning and application: but an early death cut short the career, which he had so auspiciously begun. He is supposed to have fallen a victim to the plague, which was raging with great violence at the time of his death. In the "Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum" it is stated, that he died about the year 1678; but Anthony Wood, who had access to the best sources of information, informs us, that he died at the age of sixteen, on the 27th of September, 1665, and was buried close to the grave of Mr. Biddle, in corroboration of the truth of which assertion, he refers to the inscription for him, at the bottom of Mr. Biddle's own monument. This account is confirmed by a letter of the celebrated Samuel Crellius, who says, that when his father, Christopher Crellius, with other Unitarians, was driven from Poland, he became acquainted, during his residence in London, with a pious woman, who had been a hearer of John Biddle, and was called Stuckey, the mother of Nathaniel Stuckey, a youth of bright hope, who very prematurely died, in the sixteenth year of his age. This excellent woman, he further says, addressed his father in these terms. "You, my dear Crellius, wander now as an exile, in poverty, a widower burthened with four children: give me two of these, a son and a daughter, and I will take care of their education." Crellius thanked her cordially, and promised to give her proposal his best consideration. When he returned into Silesia, he consulted his friends, and departed, with his eldest son and daughter from Breslau, through Poland, towards Dantzic, to embark thence for Holland, and so to England. This second journey to England was undertaken in the year 1668. The former one was in 1666, the year after Mrs. Stuckey had lost her own son; and as Christopher Crellius is not known to have had more than two sons, the elder of whom was Samuel, it seems not improbable, that it was he, of whom the mother of Nathaniel Stuckey so kindly took charge.

(Vidend. Sandii B. A. pp. 159. 172. Bock, Hist. Ant . T. I. pp. 159. 969. Wood's Athen. Oxon. Vol. II. p. 30. Mon. Rep. Vol. XI. p. 633; Vol. XIII. p.)