F.Augustine or David Baker was the son of William Baker Gent by his Wife, the sister of Dr David Lewes, Judge of the Admiralty, and was born at Abergavenny in Monmouthshire on the 9th of December 1575. When he was eleven years old he was sent to Christ Church Hospital in London and in about four years after that, he became a Commoner of Broadgates Hall at Oxford; at which time he was observed to be naturally of a good disposition, but falling into ill company he acquired many vicious habits and committed many youthful disorders and gradually fell to an utter neglect of all duties of piety and religion: yet there remained in him a natural modesty whereby he was restrained from a scandalous impudence in sin. His Father who was Steward to Lord Abergavenny had a plentiful fortune: his eldest son Richard was a Counsellor at Law and he had intended his son David for the Church, but difficulties arising at the time when he should have entered upon a rich Benefice, his Father altered his resolution and sent for him home after he had been in the University two years to study the Law under his elder Brother. He continued four years with his Father and was then sent to the Middle Temple when he was twenty one years of age, where he applied himself with great attention and diligence to the study of the Law; so that many eminent persons judged him in a probable way by his more than ordinary capacity and skill of arriving ultimately at high preferment in his gainful profession. It was at this time that he began to entertain doubts concerning Divine Providence and the existence of a Supreme Being, to which his ill morals had in a great measure contributed, and which were not entirely removed until that Providence he doubted of came to his assistance in a very extraordinary manner.

Memorial to Baker's brother Richard & family tomb at Abergavenny, Wales

After the death of his brother Richard, his Father was desirous of his company in the country, that he might be an assistant to him in his business which was to keep courts for him under Lord Abergavenny; and to give him full employment, he procured him to be made the Recorder of Abergavenny.

Now it happened that returning home from a commission and his servant having ridden considerably before him, he, having his head full of business, or other thoughts, and not marking the way by a ford, by which he might pass the river, suffered his horse to conduct him by a narrow beaten path which at last brought him to the middle of a wooden foot bridge, which was large enough to pass over as you entered but growing still narrower as you proceeded, and of an extraordinary height above the water he perceived not his danger till the horse, by stopping, suddenly and trembling, gave its rider notice of the danger which he soon perceived to be no less than sudden death. To go forward or backward was impossible, and to leap into the river, which being narrower there was extremely deep and violent in its course, besides the greatness of the height seemed to him who could not swim all one as to leap into his grave. In this extreme danger, out of which neither human prudence; nor indeed any natural causes could rescue him, necessity forced him to raise his thoughts to some power and help above nature. Whereupon he made this resolution within himself, `If I escape this danger I will believe there is a God who hath more care of my life and safety than I have heed of his love and worship.' Thus he thought, and in a moment without his perceiving how it was done, he found his horse's head was turned the other way and himself and horse out of all danger. He never had any doubt but that his deliverance was supernatural, and it had such an influence upon him, that he not only altered his way of thinking regarding Divine Providence, but took a resolution to serve God who had so mercifully contrived his escape in the best manner he was able.

He had formerly been accustomed to read Law Books and others which could make no impression upon him in regard of religion; but now he frequently entertained himself with books of morality, and sometimes considered what was said on both sides the question in regards of the differences between the Catholic Church and others separated from her. He had also the curiosity to hear and enter into conferences upon the subject, till at length by the conversation he had with a learned Missioner in those parts, he was reconciled and became a member of the Catholic Church and at the same time he became quite another man as to his morals as appeared from his discourse and behaviour. From the time of his reconciliation he had signified to his Confessor his desire of retiring wholly from the world, and requested to be put in a way how to effect it. The Priest told him there were several Regulars in London, who were capable of assisting him as they were persons who by their profession had entirely renounced the world. Upon this he took a journey to London, where he met with some Benedictine Fathers of the Cassin Congregation, by whom he was encouraged in his good design, and as one of them was on the point of returning into Italy upon the affairs of his order, he readily accepted of the offer of accompanying him. On their arrival at Dover he wrote a letter to his Father to inform him of his departure out of England, without giving him any further notice of his intention than that he went to travel. .

Having crossed the sea, they made the rest of their journey to Padua, where he was received and admitted to the holy Habit of religion by the Abbot of St Justina on the 27 of May 1605, being then about thirty years of age and took the name of Augustine in religion

Church of S.Giustina, Padua  

It was during his Noviceship that he discovered the great affection he had for mental prayer in which he improved himself daily and carried it on to a great height during his whole life. Before the time of his Noviceship was expired, he was visited with a tedious fit of sickness, which, as the Physicians gave their opinion, was occasioned by the difference of the climate and for want of exercise, and that nothing could reestablish him in his health but the air of his own native country. Upon this he was permitted to return to England without giving up his religion Habit until his health was recruited. He performed his journey with unusual expedition, a thing he often wondered at, not being able to give any reasonable account of it: he appeared as if impelled on by certain blind impulse which waged him on so forcibly that he never ceased posting till he came to London, where on his arrival he heard the sad news that his Father was dying. Wherefore hastening down into the country he became the happy instrument of bringing over his Father to the Church before he died and this he ever after looked upon as the providential effect of his expedition upon the road.

Having buried his Father and settled a handsome provision upon his Mother and settled his own estate as well as for the present he could, he returned to London and put himself under the charge of the Fathers of the Cassin Congregation. And fearing lest he might be interrupted with solicitations about his estate which was in land he sold it; and having done so he appears to have made his Profession in London to F Preston the Superior of the Cassin Fathers without returning to Italy and gave to him a good account of his temporals.

At this time F Preston, who had in 1604 obtained the sanction of his Superiors in Italy to bring about the aggregation of some of his subjects to the Abbey of Westminster, was busily engaged in this important business and he now availed himself of the services of Br Augustine in maturing his plans, who some time after the first aggregation of F Robert Sadler and F Edward Maihew by the venerable Buckley, made a transition with the leave of his Superiors into the English Congregation. Br Augustine had all along been desirous of retirement, and as he had the means of supporting himself, his Superior no longer having a call for his service permitted him to follow the bent of his inclinations.

He first occupied a private lodging with a young gentleman, the son of one of the most eminent Noblemen in the Kingdom, who having shortly before reconciled to the Catholic faith, was very anxious to lead a retired life with him. But this society did not continue long; for partly through a suspicion conceived by the Gentleman's Father that Br Augustine was a Priest, and was the cause of his son's continuing a Catholic, and so consequently of depriving him of a fair state intended for him, but principally through the dissatisfaction that Br Augustine had in the conversation and ways of the young Gentleman, whose fantastical way of devotion made him prognosticate would end unfortunately as it did in process of time for he ultimately became weary of his devotions and of his faith also.

Br Augustine after this retired to the house of Sir Nicholas Fortescue and seriously renewed his exercise of mental prayer. This extraordinary character in the course of his life made three several attempts upon the practice of internal prayer, which in the language of asceticism, he terms conversions. His first attempt was during his Noviceship at Padua and continued for three years. His second began about 1608 when he was residing with Sir Nicholas and lasted for twelve years. And his third began about 1620 when he was about forty five years of age. He usually devoted six or seven hours a day to mental recollection. At the beginning of his second conversion, he fell from his primitive state of contemplation and experienced great dryness and aridity in prayer, and thinking he might obtain grace by receiving Holy Orders and so be enabled to recover the degree from which he was fallen, he retired into France and at Rheims was promoted to the priesthood and then returned to England, but continued until his third conversion as tepid and indevout as he had been before his ordinations.

About 1613 when F Leander the Vicar General admitted the members of the old English Congregation to an equal participation with the Spanish in the property of the Convent of St Laurence's at Dieuleward, he was aggregated to that Convent. On the promulgation of the Union, F Augustine was the first of all the Benedictines on the Mission who accepted of it; and being asked by a friend what had made him so forward, all the answer he gave was a Domino egressus est sermo &c the matter hath proceeded from our Lord neither could I do anything beyond or against his will.

F Augustine about the beginning of his third conversion in 1620 was settled in the west country by F Robert Sadler the Provincial of Canterbury, in the house of one Philip Fursden a resident gentleman in that part where he would have all conveniences for his design of recollection. The year following his Superior called him up to London, where he lived privately employing his time in writing several Treatises on mystic ways and subjects. But it was not long before his Superiors employed him in a more important way. The new Congregation of his Order had been attacked by F John Barnes and F Francis Walgrave, who denied the existence of an English Benedictine Congregation before the Reformation, and who maintained that the English Benedictines had been subject to the authority and jurisdiction of the Cluny Congregation, so that he was commissioned to visit various Libraries and search the records of the Tower and other Public Depositaries of ancient manuscripts, to disprove the statements of his alienated brethren and to establish the credit and former independence of the Benedictines. During two years or more he devoted himself to these literary pursuits, and with incredible pains and at the cost of almost two hundred pounds which he willing sustained himself, he furnished sufficient matter for the two first Tracts of the work, which was afterwards published under the title of Reyner's Apostolatus. Soon after his labours were completed, President Barlow, considering his abstracted life disqualified him for the Mission, and intending to employ him in compiling an Ecclesiastical History, for which he knew he was plentifully provided with materials collected out of ancient Records, kindly invited him over to Doway in 1624.

At first he did not accept of the offer, but afterwards fearing trouble from a proclamation set forth for the banishment of Priests and being urged on by an interior impulse to cross the seas, he proceeded to the President at Doway; but not finding the place suitable to his mind, he went to the new Convent which was beginning at Cambray and was made the Spiritual Director to the Benedictines Nuns, although he was never appointed their regular Vicar. He now devoted himself to prayer and contemplation, giving up his leisure hours to the instruction of the nuns, to the composition of his ascetic works, and to the compilation of an Ecclesiastical History which filled six volumes in folio. At the Chapter of 1629 F Francis Hull, the new appointed Vicar to the Nuns put in his claim to be a great master of spirituality. His system did not coincide with F Augustine's and a controversy arose between them, which continued during the quadriennium. Both Fathers attended the following Chapter; and F Francis Hull brought the subject of F Augustine's writings and method of prayer under discussion as containing some hidden danger in them. They were both ordered to frame a brief account of the manner which each of them respectively pursued in conducting religious souls tending to contemplation. As soon as these were examined the writing of F Augustine's unanimously approved and the following form was subscribed by both parties.

Both of them do accord that the divine calls inspirations, inactions, influences of God's grace, joined with the humble frequent use of the sacraments of Christ, are the most noble and sublime means to spirituality; without which to endeavour after contemplation and perfection, were to fly without wings. And that those calls, or holy lights and inspirations are always to be regarded, but chiefly in prayer and conversation with God. And that whosoever neglecteth his interior not hearkening to the interior voice or allocution of the Holy Ghost, nor labouring to direct his external observances, to taste God more sweetly, to see him more clearly, to love him more ardently, and enjoy him more intimately in his soul and spirit, can never attain to purity of intention, and the spirit of contemplation, though he be never so exact in external observances, and in austere corporal mortifications &c.

F Augustine sat in this chapter as Definitor and having one day in consequence of long consultations lost the opportunity of saying Mass, he was much afflicted, affirming it was the first time he had done so for five or six years; and to prevent a similar occurrence, he obtained leave to be absent from the morning consultations whenever his presence was not absolutely necessary. As his abstracted life disqualified him from discharging the duties of a Chapterman he ceased from this time to be a Capitular Member of the Body.

After he had spent nine years with the Nuns to the great comfort of Mother Catharine Gascoigne the Abbess, who was a faithful follower of his system of prayer, he was removed by President Bagshaw to the Convent of St Gregory's at Doway, where he remained five years devoting his time to prayer and to his writings. His constitution was nearly worn out with corporal austerities and his feeble frame was nearly exhausted.

In his work on the Mission which he finished in 1636 he says, `I can promise no man's not going and passing to England, save my own, whose body is so extremely decayed, that if it intended such a thing it would not suffice for it but would fail by death ere it could reach half the way.' But notwithstanding this F Clement Reyner the President ordered him in 1638 to repair to the Mission in England. At first he represented his desire to die amongst his Brethren, and his friends attested his extreme weakness and utter inability with present danger to his life to abide the travail of such a journey especially by sea. But when Superiors still persisted in their commands, he without reply obeyed verily believing he should never be able to reach to the end of his journey. Yea when he was advised by some special friends to seek a just and necessary remedy by Appellation to higher Superiors, he made such a worthy account of obeying according to the Rule even in things impossible, that he protested if the Pope were then at Doway and would certainly for his asking free him from that obedience, he would not demand of him. He however stood the journey better than could be expected, and on his arrival in London he was placed in the family of Mr Watson who had been Surgeon to his late Majesty, whose Lady took every care of him. Being now utterly disabled from writing his only exercise was prayer, which was prolonged to a greater prolixity than ever it had been before, so that he would devote above eleven hours in the day to contemplation.

He took his last journey out of Bedfordshire to London in the company of his charitable hostess in 1641 in those troublesome times, which followed the meeting of the long parliament, when the pursuivants were busy in their search after Priests. On one occasion they were in search of him, being betrayed as was supposed by perfidious discovery of a certain person, and he was forced several times to change his lodgings, but was constantly pursued. When he had taken refuge in one of these hiding places, the officers beset the House and were ready to break open the doors, when a person in the street called out to them, bidding them be aware how they entered a house suspected with the plague in which only one woman dwelt who was then abroad; so that upon this warning, the officers fled and he was rescued from the dangers which beset him. These sudden removals and the excitement attending them brought on a distemper which in four days terminated in a pestilential fever so violent that it terminated the life of this holy man in a very short time and he died in his 66th year on the 9th of August 1641.

[All the above mentioned] works and others amounting to fifty Treatises of his own composition, besides others compiled and translated by him amounting to as many more were preserved in 9 large tomes in folio MSS in the Monastery of the Benedictine Nuns at Cambray. Six MS tomes in folio of Ecclesiastical History and other Antiquities were collected by him out of the best Libraries and Archives having been assisted therein by the learned Camden, Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Henry Spelman, John Selden and Dr Francis Godwin Bishop of Hereford to all of whom he was familiarly known. He wrote also two Treatises of the Laws of England while he was of the Middle Temple, which after his death being left in the hands of his kinsman F Leander Pritchard were ultimately destroyed at the pillaging of the house and chapel of St John's in Clerkenwell when King James II left England in December 1688.

I shall conclude this life by giving F Augustine Baker's own opinion on his own spirituality a little before his death. `A certain religious priest, who was a person of note in the Mission, desired earnestly to know wherein consisted the difference between the spirituality, which Mr Baker taught, and the spirituality of others, who opposed or misliked him: and this he desired to have in writing. Mr Baker being at that time not able to pen any thing himself commended that affair to one, whom he thought able to give good satisfaction. And hereupon a little short writing was drawn up and some differences signed, and the paper concluded very dispatchingly: viz That the difference was not between spirituality and spirituality but between spirituality and no spirituality, for his adversaries did neither teach any spirituality nor required any in their subjects or disciples; only they did forbid and hinder any body to withdraw themselves from under their magisterium. And as they now disliked any body that did betake themselves to Mr Baker's instructions, so would they dislike any that should resort for spiritual information to any body else, as well as Mr Baker.'