Building a New Jerusalem 9780300188851

Citation preview

B uilding

a

N e w J er u s a lem



B uilding a N ew J erusalem John Davenport, a P uritan in T hree Worlds  F rancis J . B remer

New Haven & London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. Copyright © 2012 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Adobe Caslon Roman type by Newgen Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bremer, Francis J. Building a new Jerusalem : John Davenport, a Puritan in three worlds / Francis J. Bremer.    p. cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-300-17913-2 (cloth : alk. paper)   1.  Davenport, John, 1597–1670.  2.  Puritans—New England—Biography.  3.  Puritans— Connecticut—New Haven—Biography.  4.  Puritans—England—Biography.  5.  Puritans— Netherlands—Biography.  6.  New England—Church history.  7.  New England—History— Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775.  8.  New Haven (Conn.)—Church history.  9.  New Haven (Conn.)—History—17th century.  10.  New Haven (Conn.)—Biography.  I.  Title. F7.D185B74 2012 285′.9092—dc23 [B] 2012006783 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Frontispiece: “Davenport Limner,” Reverend John Davenport (1597–1669/70), Yale University Art Gallery. Probably painted in Boston shortly before Davenport’s death in 1670.

publication of this book is enabled by a grant from

Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford

For Churchill, Stephen, and John Davenport, keepers of the flame

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Why John Davenport?

1

Chapter 1. Coventry

5

Chapter 2. Oxford

26

Chapter 3. Hilton Castle

35

Chapter 4. London—The Early Years

51

Chapter 5. London Rector

64

Chapter 6. Campaigning for Reform

83

Chapter 7. Nonconformity

100

Chapter 8. The Dutch Interlude—Controversy in Amsterdam

109

Chapter 9. The Hague and Rotterdam

130

Chapter 10. Boston

144

Chapter 11. A New Heaven in a New Earth

167

Chapter 12. The Quinnipiac Jerusalem

181

Chapter 13. Everyday Life in Mr. Davenport’s Town

193

vii

viii

Contents

Chapter 14. From Town to Colony

205

Chapter 15. Cracks in the Foundation

220

Chapter 16. Beyond New Haven

237

Chapter 17. Defending Congregationalism and Baptism

254

Chapter 18. The End of the New Haven Colony

277

Chapter 19. The Fight Continues

304

Chapter 20. Boston Divided

314

Chapter 21. The Last Struggle

339

Epilogue

351

List of Abbreviations Notes Index

355 359 409

Acknowledgments

W

hen I first began my studies of early New England, as a student of Alden T. Vaughan in the late 1960s, I was fascinated by John Davenport. My first published article was a study of the New Haven Colony and Oliver Cromwell, in which Davenport played a large role. I had hoped to write a biography of the clergyman, but publisher interest in such a project was lukewarm at best. I went on to write a number of other books on puritanism, and Davenport made a number of cameo appearances (as he often does in such works). But I never lost my interest in a book that would focus on the New Haven founder. Following the completion of my biography John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (2003), I was approached by Churchill Davenport, representing many members of the Davenport family who had long hoped for a biography of their ancestor. Over the following few years, Churchill, together with his brothers John and Stephen, spearheaded a family effort that created an independent fund at Millersville University of Pennsylvania to support my research on the topic. On various occasions they helped to organize gatherings that allowed me to share my findings and test some interpretations. At no point did any of the Davenports seek to shape or influence my findings. I can assert this, because I know that in some key matters, Churchill, who has deeply immersed himself in the sources, has a different understanding of events from that which is presented in this book. Their assistance has, however, made it possible to visit more sites and to read more sources than would otherwise have been possible in the time that it has actually taken. The Davenports come first among those needing to be thanked. ix

x

Acknowledgments

But as with all scholarly projects, the lists of those who have contributed to this book is so long that I fear that in listing them, some will be omitted. Nevertheless, it is important to try. As always, John Morrill, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tom Webster, Michael Winship, Michael McGiffert, and John Coffey have offered encouragement and have been willing to answer questions and refer me to experts in various fields. Tim Wales has been a major help in pointing me to various materials. Walt Woodward, who has done much to expand our knowledge of early New England beyond the Massachusetts story, has also provided encouragement. Robert Davenport and Fred Hart, who have conducted their own research into the Davenport family, have been valuable contacts as I have sought to understand some of the family relationships. In the early stages of my research Kate Harvey helped in tracking down archival sources available in England. Susan Ortmann was of great help in transcribing some of the Davenport sermon manuscripts. My understanding of the Davenports in Coventry was aided by communications with Anne Hughes, Charles Phytian-Adams, and Rob Orland. Marcus Lynch provided access to the portrait of Christopher Davenport, which was not on public display when I visited. Tom Freeman pointed me to Lady Bowes’s connection with Coventry and her support of evangelical clergy in the north of England. Nicholas Tyacke, Toby Barnard, J. R. L. Highfield, Julian Reid, Robin Darwall-Smith, and Laurence Brockliss helped me with my investigations into Davenport’s time at Oxford and Magdalen Hall. I benefited from visiting Hilton Castle, where Davenport first preached, and I am thankful for the assistance of Pam Tate and Maurice Bates in showing me some of the area. Gill Cookson and Christine Newman helped me to understand the region both before and after my visit. Dave Bushby was of assistance in investigating the Eaton Soccon church registers for the wedding of John and Elizabeth Davenport. Andrew Fitzmaurice helped me to understand why Davenport’s sermon to the Virginia Company may not have been published. Joel Halcomb provided me with a copy of the Bradford manuscript that deals with the English Church in Rotterdam. Jeremy Bangs was of great assistance during my visit to the Netherlands. He helped guide me through the Amsterdam archives and gave me the benefit of his vast knowledge of the English churches in the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century. John Cowie gave me a tour of the English Church in Amsterdam. Guus van Veldhuizen assisted me in identifying the site of



Acknowledgments

xi

the English Church in Rotterdam whose congregation was ministered to by Hugh Peter and John Davenport. John Archer, whose work on the pattern of the New Haven town plan did much to focus my own investigations, was helpful in discussing the matter further. Jeffrey Jue and Harold Hotson were of assistance in trying to advance my investigations of Davenport’s links to John Dury. Jeffrey also read drafts on my work on Davenport’s millenarian outlook. Scott Mandelbrote was extremely helpful in my assessment of the importance of the Jerusalem temple in the thought of the period, and particularly for Davenport. Diarmaid MacCulloch pointed out the importance of such models in the Spanish colonies in the New World. Anton Klas facilitated my obtaining a copy of the Templo print used as an illustration. A number of people assisted me in trying to understand Davenport’s medical condition. These included Andrew Wear, Kevin Siena, Robert Charles Anderson, and Norman Gevitz. Winfried Herget pointed me to unpublished notes of some Davenport sermons. In exploring the accuracy of the Morgan thesis, I benefited greatly from the willingness of the following to read my drafts and offer their comments, negative as well as positive: Michael McGiffert, E. Brooks Holifield, Michael Ditmore, Michael Winship, Joel Halcomb, Hunter Powell, Jeff Cooper, Crawford Gribben, Mark Peterson, and Tom Webster. Over the course of this research I have visited all the sites of Davenport’s life and immersed myself in countless archives. I would like to thank the librarians and archivists of the following: Coventry Public Library, British Library, Dr. Williams’s Library, Lambeth Palace Library, National Archives at Kew, the Guildhall, the Greater London Record Office, the London Society of Antiquaries, the Bodleian Library, Merton College Library, the Litchfield Record Office, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the New Haven Museum, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Houghton Library at Harvard. All dates have been adjusted for a new year beginning on January 1. Spelling and capitalization of original sources have been modernized for consistency and ease of reading.

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Introduction Why John Davenport?

A

lthough many have debated whether the influence of puritanism on American society is a positive or negative one, the significance of  that heritage has never been in doubt. Yet the puritans, their beliefs, and their actions are as misunderstood as they were when the historian Samuel Eliot Morison entitled a 1931 essay “Those Misunderstood Puritans.”1 Appreciation of these early Americans remains clouded by the stereotypical attacks launched on them and their legacy by H. L. Mencken and other twentieth-century critics. Students still read poems of Anne Bradstreet in literature classes. Some may have heard of John Winthrop and his call that the New England colony become “a city upon a hill” in his “Christian Charity” sermon; others recognize Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams as in some way pioneers of religious freedom. But most Americans know little about the men and women who laid the foundations of colonial America. And stereotypes of Cotton Mather are more likely than not to persuade them that they don’t want to know more about these strange folk. Despite this, in recent years there have been some signs of a renewed interest in the colonists of seventeenth-century New England. Biographies of John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, and Samuel Sewall and a well-told narrative of the Pilgrim’s settlement have won readers beyond the realms of academe. Cable documentaries have explored anew the Salem witch trials and the desperate crossing of the Mayflower. Renewed interest in America’s religious heritage invariably brings us back to the puritans. The issues that those colonists wrestled with, including how to balance the needs of the community with the aspirations of individuals and how to temper the value of newcomers and new ideas with the security of the state, seem as relevant to us as they did to the people of John Winthrop’s world. 1

2

Introduction

This biography is an attempt to communicate a portion of the world of the puritans to Americans of the twentieth century. The subject, John Davenport, may seem to be an unusual choice. His name is familiar to scholars of colonial New England and to those who reside at the Yale residence hall named after him, but to few others. Nevertheless, there are reasons that make his story engaging as well as important. Davenport was born at a time when Protestant Englishmen, recently freed from the persecutions of Mary Tudor, explored how they could advance God’s kingdom on earth individually and collectively. Some reformers came to believe that with the aid of the Holy Spirit, they could move England and all of Europe closer to the New Jerusalem foretold in the Scriptures. Davenport was one of those who believed in the Middle Advent, an explosion of supernatural power that would enable men to restore the institutions and practices that God had established in the Israel of the Old Testament and that were found in the apostolic church. Throughout his life he would be committed to the task of seeking such a heavenly reform. As a clergyman in England, Davenport labored for two decades to unite Protestants at home and abroad in focusing on the tasks necessary to bring men to God. From the very beginning of his ministry he was committed to the importance of preaching as the ordinary means used by God to effect men’s salvation. His was what might be called a large-tent approach to reform. He was willing to conform to disputed religious practices and to tolerate minor doctrinal differences in order to maintain unity on the essentials of faith. He became a leader of the English reform movement that others would call puritanism, and he was a well-known supporter of international Protestantism. Changes in what the English Church leadership required of its clergy in the early 1630s pushed Davenport to a point at which he could no longer in conscience perform his ministerial duties. He left London and spent a few years in the Netherlands. There, his exposure to new ideas and new controversies led him to reject the desirability of the episcopal, parish form of church government that he had grown up with and to advocate for independent, covenanted congregations of godly men and women. This, he came to believe, was the best way to mobilize Christians to move toward the New Jerusalem—reformed congregations of exemplary men and women would manifest the spirit of the true church. Initially, Davenport had hoped that the changes that had forced him from England would be reversed, thus allowing him to return to his home-



Introduction

3

land. When that proved unlikely, in 1637 he led a migration of like-minded believers to the New World, eventually founding the town and colony of New Haven. Just as his experience in the Netherlands had led him to develop and systematize his views on church governance, so the challenge of forging a new colony led him to formulate a system in which godly magistrates and pious ministers cooperated in what he called a theocracy. Along the Quinnipiac River, Davenport crafted a town that was designed to evoke in its citizens the responsibilities involved in striving for biblical perfection. The very town plan was evocative, derived from contemporary models of what was believed to be the organization of the Old Testament Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon. The law code and system of justice owed more to the Mosaic law than did those of any other colony. Davenport’s historical reputation as the most puritan of New England puritan leaders has an element of truth, but it obscures much about him that should interest us. He had a strong commitment to education, and particularly to the educational reforms advocated by Jan Amos Comenius, who believed in the education of women as well as men, poor as well as rich. Davenport struggled unsuccessfully to establish a model college at New Haven, but the seeds he planted would eventually grow into Yale University. His interest in new ideas, including the new science, made him a respected member of the circle of international thinkers that centered on Samuel Hartlib. His commitment to the cause of reform outside of as well as inside New England led him to actively engage with the leaders of England’s Puritan Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s, and to be a lifelong supporter of the ecumenical efforts of John Dury. In the last decade of his life, Davenport saw the colony he had created and shaped folded into neighboring Connecticut through the decisions of a hostile royal government. He witnessed a decline in the religious zeal of ordinary colonists and what he considered the abandonment of congregational principles by many of his fellow clergy. With progress toward the New Jerusalem threatened, he moved to Boston, the hub of New England. There he spent his last months till his death in 1670 waging a desperate struggle to preserve the old New England Way. The life and career of John Davenport is one filled with drama and with stories that evoke human interest. But his biography also opens an unparalleled window onto his times and onto the transatlantic puritan movement of the seventeenth century. His career in England helps us assess what it meant

4

Introduction

to be a puritan in the England of Queen Elizabeth and James I. His Dutch sojourn sheds light on the origin of what became the distinct English polities of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. Because he long outlived his more famous contemporaries such as John Winthrop and John Cotton, his life, more than theirs, allows us to better understand not only the unity but also the diversity of New England puritanism, and to see how the puritan experiment evolved and changed over the course of the seventeenth century. By focusing on New Haven, his story helps us to understand that New England was more than Massachusetts and to see what made each of the Bible commonwealths unique. Finally, his story is truly that of a man who lived in three different cultural worlds. It is a true Atlantic biography, demonstrating both the uniqueness of each of those societies but also their connections.

Ch a pt e r 1

Coventry

J

ohn Davenport was born in April 1597 in Coventry, England, and baptized on the ninth of that month in Holy Trinity Church by the parish vicar, Richard Eaton. Coventry had been the major urban center of the English Midlands in the late medieval period and a center of provincial trade routes. By the time of Davenport’s birth the city was in decline, though still significant.1 Today, visitors of the city are drawn to the preserved ruins of the cathedral of St. Michael’s, destroyed by incendiary bombs in a German air attack in 1940, and to the modern cathedral next to it, which was built after the war. But walking the streets, one is still able to find remnants of the city in which John Davenport spent his first seventeen years. St. Mary’s Guildhall, where his uncle Christopher and his father, Henry, were elected mayor, still stands. Holy Trinity Church is still a place of worship four hundred years after John was baptized there. A walk along Spon Street reminds the modern visitor of the physical appearance of the shops and housing of the early modern period. It offers a useful supplement to the archival records scholars explore as they seek to understand John Davenport’s experiences in the city and how they prepared him for his future.

Coventry is in the northeastern part of the county of Warwick. It was described in Davenport’s time as “sweetly situated on a hill” on a bend of the River Sherborne, which flows through the city.2 Along with a pair of brooks and streams the Sherborne formed a system of waterways that powered mills and provided water for the town residents.3 The surrounding countryside had enough woodlands to fill some of the city’s needs for fuel and building timber.4 One of the notable features of the city in Davenport’s time was the imposing wall that encompassed the community.5 A visitor in 1639 called 5

6

Coventry

Map of England and the Netherlands. Map by Dana Edsall, Geography Department, Millersville University.

Coventry “a fair, famous, sweet, and ancient city, so walled about with such strength and neatness as no city in England may compare with it.”6 A soldier who saw the city during the 1640s believed the wall to be comparable to that of London in breadth and height.7 It was approximately nine feet thick and fifteen feet high, extending two and half miles in length, with twelve gates and more than twenty defensive towers.8 In the 1590s another notable feature of the city landscape was the large amount of open space within the walls. Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries had led to the destruction of the extensive properties of the Benedictines, the Greyfriars, and the Whitefriars, and most notably St. Mary’s Cathedral.9 Coventry had risen to be the principal city in the English Midlands in the fifteenth century, with an economy centered on the purchase and selling of wool and the making of cloth. The city’s merchants and craftspeople had been able to capitalize on its location on the main road that connected London and Lancaster, as well as the route from London to Chester and North Wales. It had ranked fourth among all English provincial ­cities in



Coventry

7

the revenue assessed for the government’s subsidies in 1523–1527. But shortly thereafter the city entered a period of economic decline. By the midseventeenth century it barely ranked in the top-twenty provincial cities.10 Much of the decline was attributable to changes in the cloth trade and the failure of Coventry’s clothiers to meet the challenge of new foreign imports. The closure of the religious houses in the city during the early decades of the English Reformation also disrupted the local economy, as did outbreaks of plague. The economic slump was matched by a sharp decline in the city’s population, which in turn inhibited any new building. Some of the former priory land was used by the city’s butchers to keep hogs.11 Despite its declining importance, the city was still impressive. From a distance travelers saw the spires of Holy Trinity and St. Michael’s parish churches rising side by side over the town walls. A visitor in 1634 commented on the city’s “fair streets and buildings.” For the most part the houses were “built the old wooden way.”12 As for the streets themselves, the municipal authorities had taken steps to have them paved with stone as early as 1333.13 Homes were multiple-story structures with shops on the ground-floor front, and living quarters behind and above, as was typical of the period. The homes of the merchants tended to be three stories, whereas those of artisans were two stories. The upper stories projected out above the lower floors. All visitors to Coventry remarked on the complex of buildings that was St. Mary’s Hall. Originally built for the Guild of St. Mary in 1340, the hall was transformed into the center for civic government following the Reformation. It was there that the city housed its armory, there that the council met in Davenport’s time, and there that visiting dignitaries were housed and entertained. All mayors were sworn in at the guildhall, and city regulations were proclaimed from a balcony. The actual hall where public feasts were held contained a large tapestry celebrating the visit of Henry VI and his queen to the town, as well as other “rich hangings” and “fair pictures,” and a timber minstrels’ gallery.14 Coventry was known to many as the place where Lady Godiva took her famous ride. Although historians question whether such an event ever took place, the legend was firmly established by Davenport’s lifetime. The tale focused on Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Godiva (Godgifu originally). The two had endowed a monastery in 1041 in what evolved into Coventry. More than a century after their deaths a story was written down about how, to free the residents of Coventry from some form of oppressive feudal tax or dues imposed by her husband, Godiva had agreed to ride on horseback

8

Coventry

through the town wearing no clothes. The legend took on a life of its own as a means of providing Coventry with a sense of self-identity and as a way of celebrating the community’s freedoms (owed to Godiva’s sacrifice). A thirteenth-century stained-glass window in Holy Trinity celebrated the tale. In William Camden’s 1586 edition of Britannia, he wrote that “a procession or cavalcade is still yearly made in memory of Godiva, with a naked figure representing her riding on horseback through the city.”15 Visitors to the city took note of the story in their accounts.16 One, in 1634, mentioned a painting in St. Mary’s Hall “of a noble lady [Lady Godiva], whose memory they have cause not to forget, for that she purchased and redeemed their lost, infringed liberties and freedoms.”17 The English Reformation was still being contested at the time when John Davenport was born. While Henry VIII (1509–1547) had broken with Rome in the 1530s and had Parliament declare him the head of the new Protestant Church of England, the character of that church was still being vigorously debated. Despite the urgings of his archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, Henry had been slow to adopt the positions of the leading Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. Henry’s son, Edward VI (1547–1553) encouraged a more thorough reformation during his brief reign, but many laypeople and clergy were still dissatisfied with the pace of reform, calling for a more complete purifying of the church by ­removing all remnants of Roman Catholic faith and practice. Edward’s death at the young age of fifteen brought to the throne his older sister, Mary Tudor (1553–1558), who tried to restore Catholicism as the nation’s faith, in the process forcing more than eight hundred Protestants into exile and committing more than three hundred to death by burning at the stake. Mary’s death brought to the throne the last remaining child of Henry VIII, Elizabeth (1558–1603). The Protestant Church of England again became the national church, and all Englishmen were required to be members. The quarrel over the definition of that church resumed, with the proponents of more thorough reform coming to be known as puritans. Puritanism was a movement within the church, lacking the coherence that would be expected of an institutionalized faith. There were varieties of puritanism, and different emphases depended on local cultures and changing circumstances. In general, however, puritans called for adoption of a Calvinist theological definition of English faith, an educated preaching minister in every church, the broad dissemination of an English-language Bible to a



Coventry

9

literate laity, a purging of ceremonial practices connected with the Catholic past (such as the wearing of priestly vestments and kneeling to receive the Lord’s Supper), and a vigorous anti-Catholic national foreign policy. When Queen Mary’s death brought Queen Elizabeth to the throne, the Coventry chronicle recorded that “the Book of Common Prayer & the administration of the sacrament in the vulgar [vernacular] tongue was restored as to being in Edward VI’s time, and popery put down.”18 The following year the chronicle reported, “This year the mass was put down, all images and popish relics beaten down, and burnt in the streets; the gospel preached freely.”19 Organs were removed from the churches, and religious paintings whitewashed over—including The Doom, the vivid depiction of the Last Judgment over the chancel arch in Holy Trinity. The mayor and aldermen invited a number of zealous preachers to settle in the city, where they were liberally maintained by a levy on the householders. The foremost of these clergymen was Thomas Lever, one of the returning exiles, who assumed the ministry of St. John’s, Bablake, Coventry, and was appointed archdeacon of Coventry by his friend, Bishop Thomas Bentham. In reporting his move, Lever referred to Coventry as “a city, in the middle of England . . . in which there have always been, since the revival of the gospel, great numbers zealous for evangelical truth.”20 Earlier, during the reign of King Edward, Lever had distinguished himself by his preaching on the need to apply the proceeds from the dissolution of religious houses to social needs and for denouncing the covetousness of the wealthy. He continued his strong advocacy of reform in his new position.21 Lever was clearly identified with those who were beginning to be referred to as puritans, arguing for an educated preaching ministry, calling for ceremonial reforms, and demonstrating his own position by refusing to wear the prescribed ecclesiastical vestments, instead choosing to officiate in his simple black gown.22 To enhance the knowledge of other local ministers, Lever organized clerical exercises called prophesyings. A prominent preacher, sometimes Lever himself, would preach a sermon on a given scriptural text to the gathered assemblage of clergy, magistrates, and interested laypeople. Such prophesyings were an important part of the reform agenda throughout the nation, but in May 1577 Queen Elizabeth ordered all such exercises to cease because of her fear that they were subversive. Lever was opposed to the ban but died two months later, before his obedience was tested. Another major figure in the puritan movement came to Coventry when Humphrey Fenn was appointed vicar of Holy Trinity, Coventry, in 1581. His

10

Coventry

patron, the Earl of Leicester, was the foremost advocate of religious reform at Elizabeth’s court, and on one occasion Fenn accompanied Leicester to petition the queen for changes in the national church. Fenn became a close friend and ally of Thomas Cartwright, who was one of the foremost puritan clergy of the late sixteenth century. The two men organized a classis (an organization of local clergy) in Warwickshire in the early 1580s. Fenn was suspended from his living in 1583 for his refusal to subscribe to the Three Articles, Archbishop John Whitgift’s effort to enforce conformity, but he was reinstated two years later through Leicester’s intercession. In 1585 the Queen dispatched Leicester and a force of English volunteers to assist the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands, and Fenn accompanied the force as one of the chaplains.23 During the late 1580s there was a renewed effort to advance reform in England, and on his return to Coventry from the Netherlands, Fenn bent his efforts to the cause. Together with other leading puritans he subscribed to the “Book of Discipline,” a platform for the Presbyterian reform of the English Church. He hosted a regional classis in the city in April 1588.24 But some of the more extreme attacks on the national church backfired, alienating many moderates and infuriating the bishops. As a suspected ringleader of the Presbyterian movement, Fenn was arrested, committed to the Fleet Prison in London, and deprived of his living. He was finally released on bail in 1591 and returned to Coventry, but not to Holy Trinity, where Richard Eaton had succeeded him. Lectureships were appointments funded by lay patrons that involved a clergyman undertaking the task of preaching sermons apart from regular religious services, sometimes on a Sunday but often on weekdays. In 1608 the mayor of Coventry paid for a lecturer to preach at St. John’s Bablake on Saturday afternoons, for the “better fitting of the people for the Sabbath.”25 It is possible that this is where Fenn preached after his return to Coventry; his son Humphrey was named lecturer there in 1624. The elder Fenn also ran an informal type of seminary to assist young men aspiring to ministerial careers.26 Julines Herring, whose father served terms as sheriff and mayor of Coventry, had been educated in the city before going off to Cambridge. He returned to Coventry to study with the elder Fenn before launching his own career as a prominent puritan clergyman.27 Lever and Fenn were responsible for much of the community’s shift toward a puritan culture. The godly were opposed to many of the celebrations of the communal year that they believed were tied to the Catholic past. In



Coventry

11

1579 the city authorities brought the regionally famous Corpus Christi plays to an end. Another traditional Catholic play, performed on Hock Tuesday, was suppressed shortly thereafter. The mayor and aldermen banned the raising of maypoles in 1591. Other communal entertainments that were viewed as unseemly were also banned—in 1585 citizens were prohibited from playing football in the city streets.28 By the seventeenth century Coventry could be described by an unsympathetic bishop as “a second Geneva.”29 This was the city where John Davenport was born. The Davenports were prominent members of the Coventry community. Edward Davenport first appears in the historical record in the lay subsidy rolls in 1524. He leased an estate of about seventy-four acres from the priory in the years just before the English Reformation.30 Edward appears to have been a pewterer by trade, and he was chosen city chamberlain in 1534. In 1540 he was chosen sheriff, and ten years later he was chosen mayor of Coventry. In 1553 he was one of Coventry’s two representatives to Parliament. He died in February 1558.31 Edward and his wife, Margaret, had eight children, three of whom died young. Christopher followed his father’s trade as a pewterer. He became one of the wealthier citizens of the city and a substantial property holder. At the time of his death he owned properties in the city proper on Cook Street, as well as properties in the near suburbs outside Gosford Gate and in Harnall Fields and Swan’s Croft, both of the latter lands to the north of the city walls.32 In 1602 Christopher was chosen mayor. Years later he would be named one of the permanent aldermen of the city. He was noted for his charity and support of godly religion, having donated money for sermons to be preached at Holy Trinity. He was especially concerned with “the estate and condition of poor men’s children, how they are rudely brought up and ignorantly, without the knowledge of god or their duties towards men.” He believed that “the better education and bringing up of them would tend to the glory of God, and their own good,” and he donated the considerable sum of two hundred pounds “for the maintenance of a free school in the said City of such poor children whose parents are not able and cannot spare a penny a week for their learning.”33 Henry Davenport, a younger brother of Christopher, was apprenticed a draper, someone who was engaged in the sale of woolens. In the fourteenth century Coventry had been the principal center for the production and distribution of wool in all of England, noted especially for its nonfading Coventry-blue cloths. By Henry Davenport’s time the English woolen

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industry was in decline, its international sales reduced by new, lighter-weight cloths produced on the Continent. The change was largely responsible for Coventry’s economic decline. As did his brother, Henry also played an important role in the city’s civic affairs. He was chosen sheriff of Coventry in 1602, and he was elected mayor in 1613 and a permanent alderman under the new charter of 1621. Henry married Winifred Barnaby in 1584. The couple had five sons, John being the fifth. Within days of John’s christening, his mother was buried. Death in or as a consequence of childbirth was not uncommon in this time. Reading between the lines of the surviving evidence, it is possible that Henry and John’s older brothers (the youngest of whom was ten) resented the child who had deprived them of Winifred. Henry quickly remarried, and he would soon have another son with his new wife. John may well have found more family warmth in the household of his uncle Christopher and his wife, a childless couple with considerable resources. It was Christopher who would later pay for John’s university education and who would leave bequests for John in his will. Supporting this possibility is the fact that there is no surviving evidence of contact between John and his father or siblings after he left for Oxford University, and in his will Henry left John only half as much (ten pounds) as he bequeathed on his other surviving sons.34 Henry Davenport lived in the Smithford Street ward of Coventry, on Earl Street.35 Smithford Street was a major thoroughfare, traversing the city from the marshy land of Bablake in the west to Gosford Gate in the east. The ward was also one of the more prosperous of the city’s ten wards. John Speed’s 1610 map shows many of the homes in this area to have been the three-story structures that we know were typical of the residences of the prosperous members of the town’s craft guilds such as the drapers and clothiers. John’s uncle Christopher lived in the Bishop Street ward in the northern precincts of the city, the neighborhood of the ironmongers and other metal workers. Bishop Street was one of the least prosperous of the wards, but like all of them it had a mixture of rich residents and poor, containing a number of houses of substantial size.36 Between the homes of the two Davenports were the parish churches of Holy Trinity and St. Michael’s, placed closely to each other in the center of the city. Some of the homes of prosperous citizens such as the Davenports were built of stone, whereas others were still timbered. The inventory of Henry Davenport’s Earl Street house when he died in 1627 indicated a hall and great parlor on the ground floor, with chambers above and a large quantity



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of furnishings and luxury goods.37 Many such homes had cellars and small gardens in the rear of the property. The windows were likely to be glazed but also to have had shutters that could be closed. A large fireplace in the hall would have provided heat and would have been where food was cooked and bread baked. Wood was likely the primary fuel in Coventry, although some families might have burned coal. The world of John Davenport was one that was shaped by natural factors to an extent that we must make an effort to imagine. In the depth of winter the sun did not rise in Coventry until after 8 a.m., and it set before 4 p.m. In sharp contrast, in July the sun was up before 5 a.m. in the morning and didn’t set till after 9 p.m. Year round, at 4 a.m. the bells were rung in each of the churches, alerting the inhabitants to the start of a new day. The watch, which had patrolled the streets during the nighttime hours, was dismissed. The city gates were opened and the conduits unlocked so that residents could draw water for their needs. In winter the workday was expected to begin by 6 a.m., with unemployed laborers showing up in the marketplace in the hope of being hired for the day and journeymen and apprentices making preparations in their master’s houses for their labor. In summer the workday customarily began an hour earlier. For most the workday continued till 6 or 7 p.m., broken for three meals. At 9 p.m. the ringing of the church bells signaled the start of curfew. The conduits and city gates were locked. The night watch assembled to patrol the streets. Lanterns hanging outside inns and private residences were to be extinguished at that hour.38 Weather posed challenges to the citizens of Elizabethan Coventry. Freezing cold weather and snow were part of winter life. On at least one occasion in this period, the local chronicle recorded that snow covered the ground for seven weeks.39 In 1607, when John was ten, the Sherborne overflowed and 250 dwellings were flooded. Because the river flowed under Smithford Street, which was near the low-lying Bablake neighborhood, it is likely that the Davenports were among those affected.40 Growing up in an urban environment, John Davenport would have associated the days of the week with distinctive activities, each with its own appearance and sounds. Monday was the corn market, with farmers from the surrounding region bringing their grains into the city to sell at the open-air marketplace. The following day butchers and tanners appeared in the marketplace, selling meat and animal hides. Wednesday saw area bakers bring their goods for sale. This was also the day when the mayor and aldermen met at the council house to receive petitions from the inhabitants. When his

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father or uncle were serving in these posts, it is likely that John witnessed some of the sessions. Thursday was another meat market, and Friday a fish market. Friday was also the principal market day in Coventry, with a variety of goods being offered for sales, including books. Market activities spilled over onto Saturday, with the last sales at 4 p.m. on that day. On Friday large cloths could be sold only in a covered market known as the Draperies, with twenty bays that stretched from Bailey Lane to Earl Street. Nearby was the Searching House, where cloths made in the city had to be examined and approved as matching set standards. With the population of the city supplemented by the large numbers of citizens from the countryside who flocked to the Friday market, the city officials prohibited carts from the streets on that day.41 On Thursdays and Fridays, bulls were baited in the bullring that was near the old priory. The contest between bulls and dogs was a spectator sport, but bullbaiting was also supposed to tenderize the meat (in 1423 butchers had been ordered not to slaughter bulls that had not been baited), and so was practiced just before the animals were to be slaughtered.42 Close by the ring was a scalding house where the hides would be treated before they were put on sale in the Saturday market. The sounds of the contests in the bullring and of the subsequent slaughter of the animals could be heard throughout the streets of the city.43 His urban upbringing meant that John was exposed to a whole variety of everyday sights, sounds, and smells that differed from those that were common in the lived environment of Englishmen dwelling in more rural settings. Walking through the streets of Coventry he would have heard the sounds of the various crafts being pursued—the thumping sounds of coopers making barrels, the striking of hammer on anvils in the smithies, the tapping noise of shoemakers’ hammers, and many more. On occasion he would hear the bleating of sheep as he approached the sheep fair inside Gosford Gate. The names of some streets—such as Cook Street, Butcher Row, Ironmonger Row, Poultry Street, and the Draperies—announced the types of activities to be found in the various neighborhoods. The angry sounds of bullbaiting were only to be heard on one or two days, but the penned bulls and the dogs in their kennels were everyday sounds. Bearbaiting and cockfighting were among sports of the time that carried their own noises. John would have been aware of the sound of water rushing through the conduits that supplied the city. The streets were filled with horses, some being ridden and others drawing carts. Shopkeepers shouted out to passersby. The city’s numerous



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alehouses and inns—the Bear, the Star, and the Angel, among many others— would have been noisy gathering places. But all of this clamor would stop at curfew, replaced by the deep nighttime silence that was broken only by the sounds of the church bells and the watchman who patrolled the streets. The smells of bread baking and ale being brewed might have been enticing to a young man, but the majority of smells encountered in Tudor Coventry would have been less pleasant. A municipal order of 1552 stipulated that there were to be no swine sties within sixty feet of any street. This, and a provision that swine and ducks were to be kept from wandering the streets, may have kept the creatures out of sight, but it would have done nothing to moderate the smell of their presence in the city.44 Soap manufacturing, tanning of hides, and other early industrial processes added to the stench. Despite regulations seeking to control the disposal of rubbish and waste, streets and yards were frequently littered with animal dung and decaying fish, meat, and vegetables. Home owners and shopkeepers were assessed for the cost of paying cartmen to carry away their refuse, but the system was far from regular and perfect. There was no indoor plumbing or municipal sewers. Human waste was collected in chamber pots and carried to latrines and cesspits.45 And, of course, the social attitudes of the time and the physical obstacles to maintaining anything like modern standards of personal hygiene meant that most people, by our standards at least, stank. Other sights, sounds, and smells would have all been present at plays performed in the city during Davenport’s youth. Although many of the pageants and performances of pre-Reformation Coventry had been suppressed because of their Catholic message, some continued to be performed with modifications.46 In 1584 the city officials commissioned a new, theologically respectable play The Destruction of Jerusalem, which was written by an Oxford scholar. By then companies of actors were also visiting Coventry to put on secular plays.47 The Davenports likely attended such performances, including appearances by companies that included William Shakespeare in 1594 and 1603.48 There were, of course, other entertainments available for the residents. Football games were played, although this was largely a sport for the laboring classes. There were bowling greens and archery butts. Animal baiting was popular with all classes. John Davenport would have been very aware of the political world of Coventry. The election of the mayor was held annually on January 25 in St. Mary’s Hall. In 1600, when John was three, his uncle was at the center of a ­political

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controversy in which the chief men of the town favored Christopher Davenport to be the mayor, whereas the majority of the freemen voted for Richard Smith, a vintner, who was elected.49 Two years after the controversy, Christopher was chosen mayor and John’s father, Henry, elected as one of the sheriffs.50 In St. Mary’s Hall the mayor presided over the sessions of the court, which regulated not only the city’s affairs but also those of the surrounding communities that had been placed under the city’s jurisdiction in the fifteenth century. The officials enacted regulations seeking to keep the city clean and safe, such as requiring citizens to keep the streets free from refuse and prohibiting the dumping of any forms of garbage into the river. They also served as justices of the peace, policing minor civic offenses as well as public morality. In 1611 they ordered new stocks to be erected in Vicar Lane for the punishment of those who violated the ordinances for the disposal of waste.51 The city also had a pillory and whipping posts for other offenders. John learned early on the importance of municipal order and the role played by godly magistrates. Prior to a redefinition of responsibilities in a new royal charter granted to the city in 1621 the duties of the mayor were numerous. Growing up, John would have observed his uncle Christopher handling these responsibilities. The mayor was the city’s chief justice and presided over the meetings of the courts. He was required to supervise the markets and the crafts. He was in charge of organizing assessments. He oversaw the aldermen in their activities, which included supervision of the various wards and warning out strangers so that they would not be a burden on the city. And he was the city’s representative to the crown and the central government.52 Economic hard times placed strains on the community that broke through the surface on more than one occasion during John’s youth.53 Although he would have witnessed the tensions that divided Coventry, he also would have seen and perhaps learned from the ways in which some elements of the community were bound together. The Drapers, to which his father belonged, was one of the craft guilds in the city whose members met regularly to choose their officers, order their own affairs, and commit themselves to projects for civic improvement. But all the members of different ranks, from the master craftsmen to the journeymen, also came together on two or three occasions each year to bind themselves together as a community by dining together.54 John was likely present at Coventry Cross on the afternoon of March 24, 1603, when his uncle Christopher proclaimed James VI of Scotland to be



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England’s new monarch, James I. A few weeks later Elizabeth Stuart, the eldest daughter of the king, who was resident in nearby Combe Abbey, came to Coventry. She was received by the leadership of the various craft guilds; listened to a sermon in St. Michael’s Church; and dined with Mayor Davenport and other city dignitaries, who presented her with a silver cup to commemorate her visit. Too young to have participated in the solemnities, John must have heard about them from his father and uncle, both of whom would have been involved.55 The months that followed the accession of James I brought the citizens of Coventry a harsh dose of reality as the plague spread its reach to the city. A total of 494 inhabitants succumbed to the dreaded disease, including all the residents of St. John’s Street, not too far from the home of Christopher Davenport.56 This was the first time that John Davenport would be exposed to the threat of plague, but not his last. The disease raged in Coventry again in 1605, and an outbreak in London in 1625 would challenge him at the time he assumed the ministry of St. Stephen’s Coleman Street. In 1604 the princess Elizabeth visited the city again, stopping at St. Mary’s Hall; riding to the Coventry Cross; and then stopping at the library recently established at the grammar school, where she donated books.57 In 1605, as news of the Gunpowder Plot spread, there were fears of a Catholic uprising in the county. Princess Elizabeth was moved to the city and put under protective guard in what became known as Palace Yard. It is likely that on one of her visits John was introduced to the princess or at least saw her. Years later, following her marriage to the elector of the palatine she would take up residence in The Hague, where John would meet her again in the 1630s. Like other English youths, John Davenport would have received his first instruction in reading and religion in the household. Around the age of seven he was enrolled in the town grammar school that had been founded by John Hales after he purchased the medieval hospital of St. John in 1545.58 Entrance to the grammar school required the ability to read and write, which John would have acquired in his home or through a private tutor. From November 1 until Easter the Coventry school day began at 7 a.m.; after that scholars would be expected in the school at 6 until the long fall and winter nights pushed the start back to 7 again. They would study until 11 a.m., when they would return home for dinner. At 1 p.m. they returned to the school and remained there until 5. There was a break from the Wednesday before Christmas until the Monday after twelfth day, about a week at Easter, and brief breaks at Shrove

The Coventry Grammar School that John Davenport attended. Photo by the author.



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Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday) and Whitsundtide (Pentecost Sunday). The school week included Saturdays, although there was time allocated for recreation on Thursday and Saturday afternoons.59 John’s school day began and ended with communal prayer. In between, the headmaster and the usher were required to “teach and instruct all the scholars impartially (yet preferring the sons of citizens) in the best method they can with due diligence, making choice of the most approved authors for necessary literature and good manners, so also in the grounds of religion, and especially in the catechizing of them, and choosing such catechisms as shall be fit.”60 In his first year John would have been taught the fundamentals of Latin. Second-year students in most such schools commenced their study of the classics—Terrence, or perhaps Plautus. In subsequent years they would typically read Aesop in translation, Ovid, Sallust, Caesar, and Juvenal.61 There is no direct record of Davenport’s academic success. On a number of occasions in the future he did demonstrate a proficiency in reading and writing Latin, but one (admittedly hostile) observer would raise doubts about his proficiency in speaking that language.62 Two afternoons of the week were devoted to singing instruction. As students advanced they also learned oratory and rhetoric and were introduced to disputation as a means of learning. The students in Coventry were set learning tasks as they sat in what had formerly been the choir stalls of the hospital chapel.63 There were ­dictionaries chained in the room for their use, and a library attached to the school. A number of prominent individuals, including Humphrey Fenn and Princess Elizabeth, had made contributions to the collection, but it was primarily for the use of the staff and not the students. The schoolroom was heated by charcoal and illuminated by candles. The headmaster and usher were expected to correct their charges not only in the school itself but also wherever they encountered them, “as also in the streets and such like places, but especially in the churches, that the licentiousness of youth may be restrained, and greater faults punished.” They were instructed to use “fit correction, not beating with the hand or fist about the head, or pulling children by the hair, ears, or such like, but with the rod only.”64 Given his future significance as a leader of religious reform, John’s spiritual upbringing in Coventry would have been significant, though not necessarily decisive in shaping his later views. Some of that upbringing took place in the grammar school. But much of it occurred in the city churches. Henry Davenport and his family were members of Holy Trinity parish, where they attended weekly services. St. John’s Bablake was close to Henry’s home.

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Given the family’s reform sympathies they would have been likely to be among those who assembled there for Humphrey Fenn’s weekday lectures. Richard Eaton, the vicar of Holy Trinity who baptized John, had moved to Coventry in 1591, replacing Fenn in that post. Eaton had a large family and John would have contacts with a number of his children over the course of his life. Theophilus would eventually become his strongest supporter, but it is unlikely that they were close in Coventry because Theophilus was seven years older than John and left the city when his father accepted a living at Great Budworth when John was only seven and just preparing to enter the Coventry Free School. John was more likely to have spent time with Samuel Eaton, who may have been his own age, although of course both would have been very young. It was common for puritan families to prepare for the Sabbath by praying in their homes before the services, taking notes on sermons in the church, and then reviewing the sermon in a family setting, with the head of the household answering questions that his family members might have. Discussion of sermons was one of the ways in which John Davenport’s religious character was shaped. Like many puritan preachers, Richard Eaton focused on instructing his parishioners on how to live. His surviving sermons reveal him to be one of those puritans who urged on his listeners a social gospel. Eaton reminded them that “there shall be no difference between the rich and the poor in the grave” and that “in the end we see that wise men and likewise the ignorant and foolish perish,” and he urged them to treat one another with Christian charity.65 He was sharply critical of overindulgence, warning that “the pleasures of this world are but the painted face of Jezebel.” The wicked, he said, had “a worm that gripeth and gnaweth them inwardly,” and he urged his listeners to shun excess and live godly lives.66 When Eaton left Coventry he was replaced as vicar by Thomas Cooper.67 Eight-year-old John Davenport would have been in attendance at Holy Trinity when Cooper preached the sermon later printed as A Brand Taken Out of the Fire, or, the Romish Spider . . . , with His Web of Treason (1606). The occasion was the successful thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot, a Catholic plan to blow up English Parliament with the king in attendance. The threat to the country had been driven home to citizens of Coventry when Princess Elizabeth had been placed under secure guard in the city to protect her against any conspirators. In this and in other sermons at Holy Trinity, Cooper was zealous in his attacks on Roman Catholicism. In the epistle to the published sermon, directed to the magistrates of Coventry, he praised



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those leaders for their “protection of a gracious Princess.”68 It was, he told his listeners, “the Lord our God who looketh continually upon us” and who had “watched over us in this deliverance.” Had he not “been on our side, and watched over us when these snares were privily laid against us, surely they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us.”69 He evoked images of previous threats, such as that of the Armada in 1588, when the Catholic Spaniards had “brought whips and other instruments of torture to execute their cruelty against us.”70 As did many pastors, Cooper sought to guide his flock toward an understanding of the state of their souls and the responsibilities of the Christian life. His message would be echoed in the preaching of the mature John Davenport in England, the Netherlands, and New England. Cooper reminded those who had received God’s grace that it had been “the special providence of the Almighty . . . leading them to perfection” and warned them lest the sense of election, “through the subtlety of Satan, be an occasion of much spiritual pride.”71 He counseled them that they would not always “feel . . . that joy and inward comfort” which they once had; that the “extraordinary sweetness” of the presence of grace would not always “so abound and run over,” but that they should not lose their faith in God’s love.72 Those who received the gift of saving grace could not lose it altogether. A “true grain” always remains with the elect, which “if not so much as we have had, yet so much as shall serve both to keep [men] from final apostasy and further to eternal glory.”73 The fact that they would occasionally sin should make them “more fit for grace by making them more humble and hungry after it.” Being humbled, they would be “more merciful to others, and therefore moving the Lord to have more compassion upon them.”74 He urged them to “have compassion, to put on meekness of spirit, and tenderness of heart,” and to be active in “relieving and raising up his afflicted brother, that so the communion of saints may by maintained by the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”75 The Coventry cleric was an advocate of puritan reforms, but he also stressed the importance of Protestant unity to “fight the good fight of faith.”76 In words that suggest a position Davenport would himself take in later years, he insisted that “we, which are the children of light, [must] much more be knit together in the bond of peace, that we may jointly bend our strength against the common enemy,” rhetorically asking, “Shall the shadows separate us, when the substance is endangered?”77 Although puritans had considerable influence in Coventry, their role was not unchallenged. In 1610 Francis Holyoake published a sermon he

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had preached during an archdiaconal visitation of Coventry.78 Titled A Sermon of Obedience, Especially unto Ecclesiastical Authority, the sermon argued against the puritan insistence on a preaching ministry and their rejection of nonpreachers, and their identification of those who failed to preach twice on a Sunday as “dumb dogs.”79 Holyoake claimed that the sacraments, not sermons, were the essence of worship and that clergy who could read printed homilies and administer the sacraments were perfectly acceptable. He defended the prescribed ceremonies and condemned those who failed to conform. This did not sit well with those raised on the preaching of Fenn, Eaton, and Cooper. William Hinton, archdeacon of Coventry and vicar of St. Michael’s parish in the city, reported that the sermon had been attacked by the puritans as heretical, even treasonous. Some, he said, had wanted to pull Holyoake from the pulpit. Hinton referred to the reformers as “giddy heads” and complained that in a past outburst of iconoclastic frenzy they had removed a picture of Christ from the market cross “as a monument of superstition” and put in its place an image of Lady Godiva, and how on another occasion puritan iconoclasts had “defaced the picture of a dove which had hung over the [baptismal] font” of St. Michael’s.80 Richard Neile, a notorious opponent of puritans, was appointed bishop of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in 1610, and this might have resulted in Cooper’s departure in that same year. Neile was already known as one of the churchmen who was willing to chip away at orthodox Calvinist teachings while also promoting the “beauty of holiness,” a program that involved the restoration of discarded Catholic ceremonies and practices. As part of this effort he was determined that believers in his diocese should receive the Lord’s Supper while kneeling, which had not been the practice under Cooper and his predecessors at Holy Trinity. Holyoake had criticized the failure of parishioners to kneel for the sacrament in his Sermon on Obedience. When Cooper was replaced as vicar by Samuel Gibson, Neile made sure that the new vicar had subscribed and would support the demand that communicants kneel to receive the sacrament. In making his demand, Neile had the king’s authority, but Coventry’s godly resisted. The city chronicle reported that the command was “to the grief of many.”81 Among those who challenged the order were Henry and Christopher Davenport.82 Neile secured an order from James I requiring the city corporation to comply. Years later, attempting to demonstrate his own conformity, John Davenport would claim that he “had persuaded many to conformity, yea mine own father and uncle.” One can doubt how signifi-



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Portrait of Christopher Davenport. Sometimes identified as a portrait of John Davenport’s uncle, mayor of Coventry in 1602, it is more likely a portrait of John’s older brother, mayor in 1641, with whom John had little known contact. St. Mary’s Guildhall, Coventry City Council.

cant a role this fourteen-year-old would have had in persuading his elders to conform, but it is clear that he was aware of the controversy and engaged in the discussions. And it is clear that his father and uncle did bow their knees under pressure.83 It is likely that John had imbibed Cooper’s belief that Protestant unity was paramount and should not be jeopardized over ceremonial differences. Certainly, he would be willing to accept the legitimacy of kneeling for the sacrament in his own early ministry. There was yet another Coventry clergyman who may have had an impact on Davenport. Some scholars have suggested that John studied under

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Robert Cawdrey. Cawdrey had held a living in Rutland in the early 1570s and had angered the authorities there by refusing to read the prescribed homilies, criticizing the hierarchy of bishops, and referring to the Book of Common Prayer as “a vile book.”84 This led to drawn-out proceedings against him in the ecclesiastical courts and his deprivation from his church living. At some point he settled in Coventry as a schoolmaster. He was there when he published his Table Alphabetical . . . of Hard Usual English Words (1604), the first monolingual English dictionary. Cawdrey had also published a number of religious tracts in which he sought to advance puritan beliefs, including A Short and Fruitful Treatise of the Profit and Necessity of Catechising (1580), which went through a number of editions.85 There is no evidence that he taught at the Coventry Grammar School, but he might well have tutored Davenport.86 Despite having been deprived of his living, Cawdrey had powerful connections, including Lord Burghley, one of Queen Elizabeth’s principal counselors, and Lady Anne Dudley. He would have mingled freely with the Coventry puritan elite such as the Davenports. John would have known Cawdrey’s son Daniel, and their paths would cross a number of times in the London puritan community of the 1620s. While growing up in Coventry it is also likely that John came into contact with other men and women who would later further his career. Edward ­Conway had been born near Coventry in Arrow, Warwickshire. He commanded a regiment in the siege of Cádiz in 1596 and was knighted by the Earl of Essex. He then continued to pursue a military career in the Netherlands, where he became noted for his strong Protestant sentiments. Over the following years his sister Mary married Sir Horace Vere, one of his fellow officers. His own daughter, Brilliana, married Sir Robert Harley. Conway sat in the first Parliament of James I and would eventually rise in influence, culminating with his appointment as secretary of state in 1623. He was a member of the Warwickshire Commission of the Peace and well known for keeping his county connections and helping men from Warwickshire advance at court and in London.87 The secretary of state would play a critical role in advancing John Davenport’s career in London in the 1620s. In 1606, when John was nine, a significant religious meeting occurred in the Coventry house of Lady Isabel Bowes. Lady Bowes was a noted promoter of puritan reform in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. She and her sister were particularly active in seeking to enhance the quality of the preaching ministry. Together with her sister, she financed the univer-



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sity education of Richard Bernard, who became a prominent puritan clergyman. Lady Bowes was a patron of John Darrell, a clergyman who gained attention for a number of successful exorcisms. She supported the ministries of prominent ministers such as Paul Baynes and Arthur Hildersham. Her marriage into the Bowes family of Streatlam Castle, Durham, had kindled an interest in advancing Protestantism in the north, where Catholicism was still deeply rooted. Lady Bowes and her husband had been outspoken in their disappointment with the failure of James I to accede to puritan reforms requested at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. Like many puritans, she at least considered the legitimacy of separating from a church that continued to resist reform. In keeping with this she gathered a group of clergy—including Hildersham; Bernard; John Dod; John Smyth; Thomas Helwys; and possibly Thomas Cooper, Humphrey Fenn, and Robert Cawdrey—to discuss the issue of separatism. Smyth and Helwys both advanced the idea that because the Church of England had refused to purify itself, true Christians were obliged to leave the church and establish their own purified congregations. Bernard was undecided on the legitimacy of this course at this time. The majority of the attending clergy argued that divisions in the Protestant movement would only encourage the Catholic enemy.88 Their position, that conformity to a less-than-perfect church was a necessary price for pay for Protestant unity, would remain the stand of the puritan majority until the mid-1620s. Even if John Davenport was not aware of the meeting when it was held in 1606, he would have learned of the positions advanced there, and he likely also had contacts with Lady Bowes, who appears to have remained in Coventry until at least the death of her husband in 1611, and possibly till her third marriage in 1616.89 Equally important, she may very well have recognized the talented young man and fostered his interest in pursuing a ministerial career.

Ch a pt e r 2

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n 1613 John Davenport left Coventry to study at Oxford University. This likely indicated that he had already decided to enter the ministry. At the time college was a place for sons of the upper classes to attain polish, for individuals planning a career in the church, and for talented youths of modest backgrounds seeking opportunities to advance themselves. Those seeking to enter a trade learned from apprenticeships. If John had planned to follow his uncle Christopher as a pewterer or his father as a draper, he would have already been apprenticed to learn the skills of such a trade, as his siblings and cousins had. It is likely that his potential had been recognized by his teachers and the puritan preachers of Coventry, and that they had encouraged his family to send him off to university. Accompanying John was his nephew Christopher, the son of his oldest brother, Barnabas, although Christopher was a few years older than John. Oxford was south of Coventry and sixty miles west of London in the Thames Valley. One contemporary chronicler who had been born and raised there called it a place with “sweet, wholesome, and well-tempered air.”1 Like Coventry, Oxford had experienced a sharp decline in population in the latter years of the Middle Ages; the total population had dropped to a low of three thousand in the 1520s. It had, nevertheless, acquired the status of a city when Henry VIII made it the see of the newly created Diocese of Oxford in 1542. Over the remainder of the sixteenth century the population grew dramatically; the city had perhaps ten thousand residents when the Davenports arrived. Over this period the buildings owned by the various religious orders were torn down and the stone was used in the expansion of the colleges. The medieval town wall was partially dismantled to provide further building materials. Gradually, open spaces and gardens disappeared.2 26



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Despite having been referred to in the sixteenth century as a place where God himself would choose to live were he to dwell on the earth, there is ample evidence that the city was far from ideal in the 1610s. Both the medieval wall and the castle were in disrepair. Aside from the Carfax, the streets were unpaved or badly paved, poorly drained, and littered with rubbish. Butchers dumped their offal outside their shops. There were public dunghills near the city gates and up against some of the colleges. New college and domestic building added to the city’s congestion. Some of these had protruding upper stories that crowded out the light. Shop signs, pumps, and other protrusions obstructed movement. At the heart of the city was the university, at this time a collection of seventeen colleges and seven academic halls, the oldest of which dated from the thirteenth century. The total academic population was just more than 2,900. The two Davenports matriculated at Merton College, which had been founded in 1264, and was one of the smaller colleges when they entered. It was located in the southeastern sector of the city. The warden, the head of the college, was Henry Savile, who had initiated a major building program to enlarge the college, including a new quadrangle completed in 1610.3 Together with former Merton fellow Thomas Bodley, Savile had also been engaged in planning new university buildings, including the library that would be named after Bodley. Every member of the college community had a place that reflected his status and determined his privileges. The head (titles varied, with the common ones being head, warden, president, master, and principal) presided over the college. Instruction was carried out by fellows, some of whom served in college offices as well. Students entered with a status that determined their costs and privileges. Fellow commoners were the sons of nobles and gentlemen. They were allowed to dress more elaborately than other students, paid the highest fees, and dined with the fellows of the college. Commoners, sometimes called pensioners, paid the established fees. They ate the same food as the fellow commoners but sat at separate tables in the hall. Scholars had the same status but had their fees paid by the college. Servitors or battelers paid lesser fees and carried out various tasks for the students of higher status. The Davenports matriculated as battlers and took their meals in the kitchens with the cook rather than in the hall. Why Oxford? Why matriculate as battlers? In the absence of any direct statements by Davenport about these matters, the answers must be speculative, but we can establish a number of factors that shaped these decisions.

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Geography was undoubtedly an important consideration. Oxford was the university of choice for most young men from the Midlands of England. Religious factors may also have played a role. John’s father and uncle were both associated with religious reform, and the Coventry clergymen and schoolmasters likely to have been consulted were also reformers. During the Elizabethan age Oxford had achieved a reputation as a center of the puritan efforts to advance reform, that cause being especially promoted by Laurence Humfrey, who had been Regius Professor of Divinity and president of Magdalen College. Humphrey maintained extensive contacts with Reformed divines in Germany, France, and Switzerland and hosted them when they visited England. As Regius Professor he helped establish Calvinism as the dominant outlook of the Church of England. John Reynolds, president of Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, was one of the puritan spokesmen at the Hampton Court Conference when the reformers sought to persuade King James I to make changes in the church. Oxford’s Henry Airey and John Prideaux carried this tradition into the seventeenth century.4 The question of the Davenports’ matriculation status is more speculative. Neither John’s father, Henry, nor Christopher’s father, Barnabas, contributed to the costs of their sons’ Oxford education. Those were borne by John’s uncle Christopher, and he may simply have been looking to minimize the expenses of sending both to college by enrolling them as battelers. The cost of attending Oxford was considerable. University and college fees, books, the cost of the chamber (more if furnished), and academic garb were among the items to be paid for.5 By lodging together, the cost of accommodation and fuel for the Davenports would have been be lower. This is why brothers were often sent to the university together.6 Whatever the reasons for enrolling the Davenports as battelers, the experience would have been a difficult one. In a status-conscious society, the two young men were in a situation where they would have been expected to carry out menial tasks for college fellows but also for students who may well have been of a lower social standing. Peter Heylyn, a contemporary at Oxford who would later prove an enemy of John Davenport, deeply resented his own enrollment at Oxford as a batteler, and Davenport may have as well.7 For those who sought the BA, particularly those such as the Davenports who aspired to clerical careers, a statutory period of four years or residence was required for graduation. Each of the academic years was divided into three terms. Michaelmas term began on the tenth of October and ran until the sixteenth of December. Hilary, or Lent, term extended from the thir-



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teenth of January to the second Friday before Easter. Easter term began on the eleventh day after Easter and continued till commencement in July. There was nothing comparable to the modern course and credit system of marking progress. Formal academic activities included attending lectures by professors, delivering formal presentations (declamations), and engaging in moderated disputations on set topics. Each of these occurred both in the general schools of the university and in the individual colleges. As a batteler, John would also have had various chores to perform for the fellow commoners during the course of the day.8 In the mix of university and collegiate education that was Oxford, the role of the college tutor had steadily increased in the sixteenth century. Fellows of the college, each tutor supervised the studies of a group of undergraduates, led them in their prayers, and provided guidance as they adjusted to college life. This last duty was made easier by the fact that tutors were among the younger fellows. At Merton, the two Davenports were assigned to Samuel Lane, who had received his MA and been chosen to the college fellowship in 1602.9 Competency in Latin was expected of all who entered the university. Once there, the focus of the curriculum was language, logic, ethics, and mathematics. The study of language involved grammar and rhetoric, with Latin and Greek prose and poetry as the primary texts. Embedded in these studies was a fundamentally humanist examination of moral philosophy and history. Because of Warden Savile’s own interests, Merton was one of the Oxford colleges that paid some attention to mathematics and new discoveries in the physical sciences, the latter being a subject that Davenport would later show interest in. A number of Davenport’s contemporaries left records that enable us to re-create what his typical day might have been like. He would have arisen at five or six in the morning to prepare for the day and to say his private prayers. Formal prayers and a homily in the college chapel would be followed by breakfast, probably bread and beer. The morning could be a time to attend lectures or to meet with other students in the tutor’s room to read and discuss an assigned text. Disputations were generally held after the noontime dinner. Supper was followed by time to review the day’s studies and by prayers in the tutor’s rooms at eight. Most students went to bed by ten, when the college gates were also closed.10 Religion was an important part of the college experience. All students attended daily chapel services and were gathered by their tutors for evening

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prayers. Matters of faith and doctrine were among the subjects studied and the topics set for disputations. Merton’s warden Henry Savile had been one of the translators of the new, authorized translation of the Bible (the King James Version) and the Greek group that worked on translating the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and Revelation had worked in his lodgings in the college.11 Throughout the day the student was being tested by his tutor and his peers. Facility in Latin was tested continuously, since conversation, including that at meals, was expected to be in that tongue. Tutorials put the student on the spot to articulate and defend his opinions. Disputations were formal public occasions that challenged the student.12 A form of student hazing existed at Merton at the time. Every night in December, it was reported, “the senior undergraduates would bring into the hall the juniors or freshmen.” Each was to “speak some pretty apothegm, or make a jest or bull, or speak some eloquent nonsense to make the company laugh. But if any of the freshmen came off dull, or not cleverly, some of the forward or pragmatical seniors would ‘tuck’ them, that is set the nail of their thumb to their chin, just under the lower lip, and by the help of the other fingers under the chin, that would give him a mark, which sometimes would produce blood.”13 Some excelled under these pressures, whereas others crumbled. Years later, when he was in Amsterdam, questions were raised about Davenport’s facility in conversational Latin. If this was true, when he was at Oxford it would have caused him considerable embarrassment.14 The tensions of academic life were alleviated by opportunities for recreation. Plays, often written by college members, were performed in the halls. Musical performances were common. Many colleges had areas set aside for bowling and tennis. Students played chess and card games in the privacy of their rooms and in the town taverns. Boating and swimming in the river were popular on hot days. There are records of footraces and wrestling. Though frowned on by university authorities, football games were played, some pitting townsmen against students.15 On entering Merton through the gateway on St. John’s Street (now Merton Street), the Davenports would have found themselves in the front quadrangle of the college. Extending left from the gatehouse along the north side of the quadrangle was a range that included the Warden’s Hall, which had been erected a few years earlier by Henry Savile. To the right, along the west side of the quadrangle, was the college chapel. Opposite the gatehouse was the dining hall. Beyond the hall, reached by a passageway to the east of



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the hall, was the new Fellow’s Quad that Savile had built. A passage between the chapel and the hall led to another quadrangle. Called the Mob Quad today, this contained the library and rooms for the undergraduates. The Davenports may have been assigned a chamber there, although it is more likely that they were accommodated in the college buildings across St. John’s Street from the gateway.16 Other features of note were the college tennis courts, also across the street from the main college buildings, a garden extending between the various quads and the town wall, and a grove to the west of the chapel where students occasionally played ball. Early in his wardenship, Henry Savile had sought to recruit students from the gentry to raise the college’s image. He may well have been annoyed that the son and grandson of Coventry’s newly elected mayor were at the college in the most humble standing available to a student. This may explain why he insisted that they become commoners or leave the college.17 Youngsters who were enrolled below their appropriate status were disruptive of the proper order in the college. The lack of university records for this critical period makes it difficult to determine the events that followed, other than that both of the Davenports left Merton. The contemporary historian Anthony Wood asserted that it was in John’s second year at Merton that Savile issued his ultimatum.18 In May 1614 a Christopher Davenport was allowed to apply fifteen months of residence as a student of Trinity College, Dublin, in pursuit of his Oxford degree at Magdalen Hall. Anthony Wood states that this was not the same Christopher Davenport, but what we know of John’s nephew fits with it being the same man. If this was, contrary to Wood, the same Davenport, it would mean that Christopher would have started his pursuit of a degree in Dublin and then joined his uncle at Merton when that seemed an economical way to send both boys to Oxford. The crediting of prior experience would explain how Christopher received his BA from Magdalen Hall in 1614. In that same year he accepted a post teaching at Atherstone Grammar School in Warwickshire, just north of Coventry.19 John transferred to Magdalen Hall at about the same time, although the actual date does not survive. Magdalen Hall, which no longer exists as a separate college of the university, had originated in the late fifteenth century as a grammar school affiliated with Magdalen College.20 In the sixteenth century Magdalen Hall expanded physically and in its purpose, assuming the function of preparing students for university degrees, the collegiate hall emerging side by side with the Magdalen College Grammar School, which

Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Photo by the author.



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still continued to function.21 During that century there was a strong Lollard influence at the hall. The reformer and Bible translator William Tyndale studied there and received his BA in 1512. In 1602 the chancellor of the university assumed the right to appoint the principal, the head of the hall, which is generally considered the start of its full independence. In 1605 John Wilkinson was appointed principal, and under his direction Magdalen Hall became the most significant puritan center in the university, referred to by Wood as a “nest of Precisians.”22 University regulations required morning and evening prayer to be conducted in all colleges, but Magdalen Hall did not have a chapel, and Wilkinson took no steps to add one. Because services were held in the dining hall, which was unconsecrated, it was possible to modify the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer in a way advocated by the reformers.23 The temptation is to say that John Davenport (or his uncle Christopher) chose Magdalen Hall as the place to resume his studies because of its puritan orientation. But caution must be used because we have no clear evidence of when John became someone who would be recognized as a puritan. His exposure to Humphrey Fenn, Thomas Cooper, and Robert Cawdrey while growing up in Coventry may have inclined him to see the need for further reforms in the church, and in this context, the choice of Merton and then Magdalen Hall can be considered expressions of such a view. Yet his nephew Christopher, who had a similar upbringing and attended the same schools at Oxford, left his teaching post in Atherstone and entered the Catholic college at Douai in August 1616. In October 1617 Christopher was admitted to the Franciscan religious order as Franciscus à Sancta Clara. Over the following decades he would emerge as one of the foremost English Catholics, his activities a counterpoint to those of his equally famous puritan uncle.24 What is striking about John Davenport’s Oxford tenure is how little direct and indirect evidence there is to indicate its impact on him. He doesn’t refer to the experience in any of his works. In his later correspondence and writings he never referred to his tutors or any admired members of the university community. The biography of almost any other English or American puritan clergyman of the seventeenth century abounds with references to connections made at the university that continued to be important in later years.25 Men such as John Cotton and John Preston became members of religiously defined social networks from which they drew material and spiritual support as they pursued their careers in the English Church. It is hard to find a single individual with whom Davenport worked over the course of

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his life whom he first met and befriended at Oxford. The only possible such connection is that with Philip Nye. Nye matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in June 1616, and shortly thereafter he transferred to Magdalen Hall, graduating in 1619. If Davenport and Nye did not know each other at Oxford, they would at least have had common experiences to discuss when they were both part of the London clerical community in the 1620s.26 John would also have been aware of William Laud, who was president of St. John’s College, Oxford, during Davenport’s residence at the university. This hardly would have been an acquaintance he would have cultivated, since Laud’s views were already the target of attacks by puritans such as Henry Airay.27

Ch a pt e r 3

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n the fall of 1615, John Davenport left Oxford. His uncle had decided to no longer fund his studies, other members of the family were not willing to support him, and he needed to earn a living. It was not unusual for someone to take leave from the university to make money. But what made Davenport’s decision challenging was that, though he wished to find a preaching position, he was only eighteen years of age, and thus not old enough to be ordained. With the intervention of friends, he was able to obtain a position as chaplain at Hilton Castle, near Monkwearmouth, outside Sunderland, in County Durham.

The Hilton family was one of the ancient baronial families of the Palatinate of Durham, and Hilton Castle had been their seat since at least the twelfth century. The castle commanded a crossing of the River Wear a few miles west of where it flowed into the sea. Close to the mouth of the river was the site of the monastery of Wearmouth, which had been established in the seventh century as one of the northern outposts of Christianity, famous for its association with the Venerable Bede, the author of the medieval Ecclesiastical History of the English People, who entered the monastic life there. Hilton Castle was part of the parish that centered on the monastic church, St. Peter’s, although the Hiltons had a small chapel adjacent to the castle for family devotions.1 Following the dissolution of the monasteries, the Hilton family acquired the advowson for the parish of St. Peter’s, giving them the right to appoint the parish priest and to collect tithes. Although they profited from the Reformation, the family was not sympathetic to all of the new religious directions being pursued by Henry VIII. In 1536, Sir Thomas Hilton was one 35

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of the prominent leaders of the northern Catholic uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This region of England was a conservative stronghold where Catholic sympathies remained strong throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth. One scholar has estimated that at this time, less than 5 percent of northerners had accepted Protestantism.2 In 1569 Sir William Hilton played a key role in defeating the rebellion of the Catholic earls of Northumberland and Westmorland against Elizabeth. For his services he was rewarded by appointment to a variety of government posts. Yet as late as 1593 the wife of Sir Robert Hilton was reported to the crown for having a Catholic mass celebrated at the castle, and a family tradition claims that members of Catholic and Protestant branches of the family came to blows inside the church of St. Peter’s in Monkwearmouth. Sir William’s son Thomas married Anne Bowes, the daughter of another prominent Durham family, which was noted at that time for its strong support of Protestant religious reform.3 The couple had eight children. Thomas died in 1697, three years before the death of his father, so that on Sir William’s death the estate passed to his eldest grandson, Henry, who was then a minor. The history of the castle over the following two decades is difficult to disentangle, but an effort must be made if we are to establish how John Davenport found himself there in 1615. Thomas had named his father and his Bowes kin as the executors of his estate. Thomas’s son Henry, as heir to the title but a minor, became a ward of Queen Elizabeth, who in 1598 placed him under the supervision of Henry Robinson, the bishop of Carlisle. Presumably Henry’s mother, Anne Bowes Hilton, continued to reside at the castle with her other children at least until Sir William’s death in 1600. In 1602 Talbot Bowes, Anne’s brother, agreed with Sir Richard Wortley, of Wortley, Yorkshire, for Wortley to hold the Hilton estate during the remaining minority of Henry Hilton. This agreement makes it likely that young Henry had already been betrothed (if not actually married) to Mary Wortley, Sir Richard’s daughter. After coming of age in 1608, Henry never took up residence at Hilton, preferring to reside in Kent. He had no children. Some of his brothers did remain. George Hilton, who received his BA from Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1600 and then studied law at the Middle Temple, was eventually buried at Monkwearmouth in 1616. Francis Hilton received a BA from University College, Oxford, in 1611 and his MA three years later. He served as rector of Kirkhaugh, Northumberland, in the Diocese of Durham. John Hilton survived all of his siblings and eventually gained possession of Hilton Castle.



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In the early 1610s the Hilton estate may very well have been inhabited by some combination of Hiltons, Bowes, and Wortleys, any one of whom may have taken an interest in finding a chaplain, but also someone who could preach in St. Peter’s, as the parish living had been vacant for some time. Any one of them may have been involved in hiring Davenport. One thing that they had in common was a commitment to the Protestant cause, which was challenged in the region by a population still in sympathy with the old faith. If Bishop Robinson had any influence on his ward, Henry Hilton, he might have identified Davenport to the young baron. Robinson had been principal of St. Edmunds Hall at Oxford, and then provost of Queen’s College. He had served as a chaplain to Edmund Grindal, the reform-minded archbishop of Canterbury. Robinson had been named bishop of Carlisle in 1598. He found himself in charge of a diocese with a large number of Roman Catholic recusants (individuals who recused themselves from the mandated services of the Church of England); few competent clergy—he wrote that most were “utterly unlearned, unable to read English truly and distinctly”; and a general population that was ignorant of the basics of the faith. To remedy this, he became noted for promoting the appointment of university graduates to pastoral posts in the diocese and for urging them to preach and catechize their flocks.4 If consulted by Henry Hilton or one of his kinsman, he certainly had the Oxford connections to identify and recommend Davenport. It is more likely, however, that Davenport was suggested by Lady Isabelle Bowes. Lady Bowes, the sister-in-law of Anne Bowes Hilton, was noted as a promoter of reform. She had resided for a time in Coventry and in 1606 had hosted the conference at which various clergy had debated the issues of conformity and separation. She earned a reputation for promoting godly preachers. She supported the ministry of Richard Rothwell, who became known as the “Apostle of the North” for his fiery advocacy of Protestant reform in the region.5 Lady Bowes would have known the Davenport family from her Coventry connection, and she would have been familiar with the situation at Hilton Castle from her Bowes kin. Although something needed to be done to assert Protestant reform, the position of chaplain at Hilton Castle was not likely to have been one that would have paid very well, and the audience for a preacher would have been modest at best. Someone such as Rothwell would not have been attracted to the post. But Davenport was, and he was willing to leave Oxford to accept it. Earning a living while not giving up his

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hopes for a ministerial career was John’s primary concern. Without a degree and without being old enough to be ordained, something like the Hilton chaplaincy was likely the best that Davenport could aspire to. Although his approval was not required for such an appointment, the bishop of Durham, William James, may well have been consulted and certainly would have shown an interest in who was named the Hilton family chaplain. James was a staunch Calvinist who was eager to roll back the Catholic influence in his diocese. He had been a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford; master of University College; and vice chancellor of the university. Like Bishop Robinson, James maintained his Oxford connections and looked to the university to fill vacancies in his diocese. He had also served as archdeacon of Coventry from 1577 to 1684, where he would have become familiar with the Davenport family. But regardless of how Davenport’s appointment came about, the chaplaincy of Hilton Castle was the beginning of his ministerial career. The Hilton estate at the time was a considerable one. The large three-story tower house that still remains on the site was the original, self-contained family residence. Archaeological investigations have shown that when Davenport was there, a medieval hall to the east of the tower had been expanded into a large manor house overlooking a garden to the south. There were also barns, a separate kitchen, and some other outhouses. St. Catherine’s Chapel was on the north side of the complex, on a higher terrace. The addition of two bays in the sixteenth century gave the chapel a cruciform look and provided space for the family members to worship separately from their tenants in the nave.6 In addition to the larger chapel adjacent to the castle, there appears to have been a small chapel appropriate for private devotions within the tower, on the second floor, just above the entrance. A room above this small chapel, on the third floor, has been identified as belonging to the family chaplain. For someone whose life to this point had been spent in the city of Coventry and at Oxford, this was a new and not-very-welcome situation. When Frances Matthews had journeyed to Durham in 1583, following her husband Toby’s appointment as dean of that diocese, she expressed her dismay at the region, wondering “why came we hither” and begging “for God’s sake get us gone hence.”7 John may well have come to share the same outlook. As chaplain to the Hiltons, he would have likely spent most of his time on the estate and in St. Peter’s parish. Although the nearby port of Sunderland was

Hilton Castle, Northumberland. Photo by the author.

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on the cusp of becoming an urban community, there were fewer than two hundred households there in 1615, and only eighty-seven in the nearby parish of Monkwearmouth.8 Though the ferry crossing of the Wear at Hilton was used by those traveling along the major highway connecting Newcastle to the north and Durham to the south, both of those cities were more than a day’s journey away. There is no evidence of any area clergy who might have provided congenial companions or sounding boards for the young preacher. The castle itself was isolated on one of a series of terraces leading to the river. It was open to the weather, especially the winter gales that swept in from the North Sea. Like all preachers at this time, when Davenport stood in the pulpit, he would have faced a mixed body of English men and women. Some few were individuals who had experienced what they believed was God’s caress. Davenport would be expected to provide them with spiritual food to nourish their faith. The godly might bring their Bibles with them to check the scriptural references and a notebook in which to record the key points of the sermon so that they might review it later in the company of their family and fellow saints. At the other extreme, mixed in the congregation, were those who were ignorant of all but the most basic concepts of Christianity. They might have memorized the Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, but they had little comprehension of what it all meant. It was the task of the preacher to get such parishioners to understand and internalize the principles of faith. More challenging for a clergyman were those who were often referred to as mere professors—men and women who understood the faith and acknowledged the need to serve God but who didn’t think that God demanded as much of them as the clergy maintained. These were men and women who were likely to disrupt the service by chatting with those around them or, on occasion, to miss the service to bowl, fish, or devote their Sabbath to other recreations. Often the preacher would seek to indict the behavior of such lukewarm Christians, verbally lashing their shortcomings. Designed to break through their self-satisfaction, such attacks could also breed resentment among those targeted and thus lead to friction in the parish. Such individuals posed the greatest challenge to puritan clergy in England’s southern and eastern counties, where the Reformation was generally accepted. In the north, where Davenport found himself, an even greater problem was the many individuals still attached to the old faith. Uprooting Roman Catholic beliefs and practice was the first priority for leaders of the church in the region such as Bishop James and local preachers such as Davenport.9



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Davenport’s job was thus to educate the laity in religious truth. But what was true doctrine? The history of the Church of England from the 1590s through the 1640s has often been depicted as a struggle between the dominant Calvinism that had characterized the church in the reign of Elizabeth and a growing tide of anti-Calvinism. Because Davenport’s career would evolve against the background of this controversy, it is important to understand what the dispute was all about and where he stood as he began his career. While essentially correct, the danger of focusing on Calvinism and antiCalvinism as the choices facing English Protestants is that doing so can lead to a simplification of Calvinism. The Genevan reformer and his successor Theodore Beza were major influences on the development of English Protestant thinking, but English theologians also engaged with the writings of theologians in the Netherlands, Scotland, and southwestern Germany.10 The complexities of what was labeled “Calvinism” are nowhere more evident than in the doctrine of predestination, which is often seen as the hallmark of that theology.11 At the heart of this teaching was the belief that although all men deserved damnation because of their sins, God in his mercy would save some through the application of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross. Man could not influence God’s decisions, nor could man cause God to change his mind. Calvin himself had discouraged efforts to probe too deeply into why God chose those he did and when, but his followers disregarded these cautions. Some asked questions such as whether or not God’s foreknowledge meant that the divine decrees were determined before Adam’s fall, whether or not individuals who were condemned to hell were judged on the basis of sins God knew they would commit, and whether Christ’s sacrifice through which the elect were redeemed was sufficient to have saved all. The Cambridge theologian William Perkins elaborated a system that many English divines of the latter seventeenth century accepted. Following the lead of Theodore Beza, Perkins asserted that before the creation God “did upon his mere pleasure elect some and reject others eternally, not moved or urged by anything whatsoever outside of himself.” This was classic double predestination—God not only decreed who would be saved; “he suffered some men to fall into sin, and inflicted the punishment for condemnation of sin.” Furthermore, Perkins asserted that Christ died only for those who were elected and predestined. For the reprobate, God “gives them no Savior, for Christ is only the redeemer of the elect, and of no more.”12 Christ

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represented only the elect in his suffering and death. This was essential for Perkins’s position, for if Christ had died for all men, then why weren’t all men saved? While the gospel was to be preached to all, not all were included in its promises. Although many took Perkins’s position as English orthodoxy, it was challenged by other theologians. In the broader Reformed community various individuals sought to modify the extreme views of Beza and Perkins and to offer a more moderate, balanced understanding of these matters in keeping with Calvin’s original teachings. Along the spectrum of moderate predestinarian ideas was the assertion that God did not actually decree that some men would go to hell but that he excluded them from the decree of salvation extended to the elect. Another formulation was that those who were reprobate were condemned because of God’s foreknowledge that they would sin. The English theologian John Preston argued that Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to save all men, although God provided only the elect the grace to accept the offer of salvation. This was the position adopted by Davenport when he preached as the Hilton chaplain. What united these and other positions, however, was that the elect were the elect and the reprobate were the reprobate—nothing could alter God’s eternal decrees. What were the implications of this for the preacher in the pulpit? It was, first of all, his task to convince those who attended on his words, elect or not, that they were subject to God’s law. He was to explain how, as a result of the taint of original sin, each person would break the commandments and, having broken the law, deserved to be punished, to be damned. The preacher sought to undercut any belief that an individual might have that anything he or she could do would enable them to merit salvation. Having brought his hearers to acknowledge their sinfulness, the preacher would seek to console them by explaining that God was benevolent as well as just, and that he offered to the elect a second chance and the grace to accept that offer. For the believers who accepted the justice of damnation, the burning question was how could they know if they were saved. Early in the seventeenth century many puritan clergy had shaped a practical divinity that sought to answer this question and provide assurance to their flocks. They stated that if a person received God’s gift and was justified by saving grace, he would be transformed or sanctified. A saint was reborn with a greater ability to discern right from wrong and would continue to receive grace that would enable him or her to live better, or sanctified, lives. Puritan clergy such as Richard Rogers and Arthur Dent preached and published sermons



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that elaborated the character of a godly life. By measuring oneself against the standards of such a life, the individual could gain confidence in his or her election. Such preachers and writers sought to make clear that godly behavior could never be the cause of salvation but only the fruit to judge the tree from. The intricacies of predestination were not likely to be the subject of Sabbath day sermons, and they were not elaborated on in the many catechisms published at the time to help laypeople understand the faith.13 In practical terms, the pastor or lecturer sought to make people aware of their sinfulness, to offer hope that they might be redeemed, and to call all to lead the exemplary, godly lives that all people—saved and reprobate—were commanded to by God. Without being ordained, Davenport would have been unable to administer the sacraments. His tasks would have been preaching, leading the family in prayers, and providing counsel on religious matters. A manuscript notebook contains the texts of forty-three sermons that he preached at Hilton between November 1615 and March 1616.14 Many, if not all, of these were likely delivered at the parish church of St. Peter’s. An examination of the texts make it clear that he generally preached twice on a single day. In later years, he was noted for careful preparation of his sermons. Although he undoubtedly labored over those he delivered at Hilton Castle, he would have had to do so without the books he would be able to rely on later in his career. As a struggling Oxford student he would have been unable to acquire many books of his own, and there is no indication of a library at the castle. This probably accounts for the fact that his Hilton Castle sermons include far fewer references to authorities such as the church fathers and the leading Protestant reformers than would be the case in sermons he preached in later years. The fact that Calvin was the author whom he most frequently cited suggests that he may have possessed an edition of that divine’s writings, or that he had taken extensive notes from them while at Oxford.15 Beyond the lack of appeals to authorities, Davenport’s Hilton sermons are noted for the self-confident assertions of the preacher. They are filled with anti-Catholic rhetoric, which is hardly surprising for a young and zealous Protestant who found himself in one of the remaining Catholic strongholds of the nation. His very first sermon was on Deuteronomy 28:1—urging his flock to diligently obey the voice of God. Every man must hear the word of God if he was to obey. He stressed the importance of ministers who were holy, since they are “the voice of God,” and the sermon offers insight into how he

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viewed the ministry. He referred to ministers as “God’s ambassadors, bringing with them God’s embassy,” and he said that men ought to show “as great reverence to their message as if God himself had spoken it.” He urged his fellow preachers to “be bold in the Lord’s cause, not fearing the faces of men, knowing that the cause is God’s.” They were to “preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, improve, rebuke, exhort, . . . suffer adversity, [and] do the work of an evangelist.” Ministers were to be holy, but “if he be holy and ignorant, that man is zealous but without knowledge, and unfit to make an enlightener of others when he lacks knowledge, unmeet to reprove others when he is reprovable.” Like John the Baptist, a clergyman was to be “a burning and shining lamp, burning with zeal in himself, shining and imparting his knowledge and light to others, that they, seeing his good works, might glorify God in the heavens.” The fourth week that he preached he openly confronted those in the parish and warned them of God’s anger at them. When they had “had the word preached,” they gave themselves “to pleasures on the Lord’s day, and neglected the house of God, and cared not for a sudden amendment of your wicked ways, thinking you might hear the word” eventually. They had shown themselves to be “sinners, malicious, grudging, unwavering enemies to the cross of Christ, carnal, sensual devils.” “God, seeing this, took his candlestick from you, and left you sometimes without the very reading of the word in the house of God, and even to this time”—Davenport’s own ministry—“granted you no more but the reading ministry.” They had been careless and negligent, yet God, seeing “the miserable condition that then you were in, perishing for want of knowledge,” “enlarged his bounty again unto you by calling . . . me, his most unprofitable servant from a far country.” “Let,” he said, “God’s gracious bounty, showed in my weak ministry, . . . strengthen or stir up your thankful acknowledgment of God . . . and provoke in you . . . a hunger and thirst after the food of your souls, a labor and endeavor to conquer and subdue the corruption of your nature, your accustomed sins.” He recognized that Catholic teachings were deeply rooted in the region. He condemned the “damnable position of the Papists,” who asserted “that a man by his works may merit good from God,” and the idea that salvation could be achieved “by weeping and wailing, and indulgence, and crossing and pilgrimages.” On another occasion he condemned the “papistical delusion” that outward prosperity is a sign of God’s approval—one may, he said, have “goods without goodness.” He took a swipe at the veneration of saints, claiming that “papists” make “the virgin Mary [and] saints, idols” and



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“copartners” with God.” In addition to their doctrinal errors, Catholics were responsible for the Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, the “poisoning of peace” and “civil discords.” Knowing that there were recusants in the community, he lashed out at them as people “whom the devil has blinded and committed them to their blind priests to be led blindfolded to the cliff of destruction!” The pope, he told them “receives his authority from Satan, with all power, and impurity, and lying wonders.” Davenport’s challenge was to stimulate men to righteous behavior while cautioning (as a good Calvinist) that works do not save. He was clear that “without faith”—which is a gift of God—“we cannot walk steadfastly before God in keeping his laws.” Faith is a “blessing from God, not of merit, . . . or else grace is no grace.” Yet at the same time he warned his listeners not to neglect good works—they were called to demonstrate sobriety in themselves, righteousness toward their neighbors, and godliness in respect of God. In one of his early sermons he said that “man’s life is but a race, and heaven is the goal. . . . The prize cannot be obtained by those that are obstinate and will not run, or faint and cannot, or fearful and therefore dare continue no more.” A few weeks into his series of sermons he confronted the charge that emphasizing behavior suggests justification by works and thus contradicted the teaching of the Church of England. He emphasized that the works he calls for are those that are the expressions of a living faith, a faith that is a gift of God. Joining such “faith with work hand in hand [is what] . . . leads us the straight way to heaven.” “Works themselves merit not any good from God. I say ‘in themselves’ to show that they ought to be joined with faith.” In a rare excursion into the detailed theology of predestination, he espoused hypothetical universalism in stating that “Christ died for all in general sufficience or sufficiently, but only the faithful and his children as effectually.” “God so created man,” he said, “that he was able to absolutely fulfill” all the commands of God, “but man by his fall debilitated himself, and lost that power.” As a result, “our corrupt nature, striving with that small strength of spirit in us, being so infected with original sin, . . . when we think of God, we be troubled with many evil fancies, and when we have any good motion, we are called back from it.” He called upon “you old men, that you be not as heretofore covetous, perverse, forward, examples of lewdness, profaning of the Lord’s day, swearing and filthy communication to the younger sort. I speak unto you young men that you be not voluptuous, breakers of the Sabbath, malicious covetous scoffers, and the like. I speak unto you married, that you be not as heretofore quarrelsome, railing, contentious, burning,

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­ urmuring, grudging one against another. I speak unto you that are unmarm ried that you be not (as heretofore) desirers of unlawful pleasures.” Davenport sought to move men to God by fear. “The least sin,” he argued, “is found worthy of an infinite punishment, being committed against an infinite majesty.” That punishment consists of the actual fires of hell, but also the torment of grief stemming from the deprivation of heaven, which is worse than “10,000 hells.” He was concerned with England as well as with individual souls. He warned of the penalties suffered by those people who forget God, referring to the “last judgment that befell Jerusalem whereof Josephus makes mention.” God’s hand, he observed, had been stretched out against the “whole land in general,” citing as evidence unseasonable extremities of heat and cold such as Englishmen had not seen in many ages, as well as “divers diseases, plagues, pestilence, death, famine, and pox.” Yet he held out hope, for, as he said, “the love of God to his people may well be eclipsed, but it can never be quite extinguished.” He preached a social gospel and a gospel of unity reminiscent of that which he had heard as a youth in Coventry and which he would espouse throughout his life. “Behold,” he said, “how good and comely a thing it is for brethren to dwell together” in grace. He stressed unity among believers—“it is a sure token that their religion is not sound when the professors disagree.” “God is not the author of confusion but of peace. Because we are all members of one body, whereof Christ is the mystical head, . . . if the members of God’s church have jars among themselves, can the worship of God be performed faithfully?” “I beseech you brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there be no dissensions among you, but you be knit together in one mind, in one judgment. . . . Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in love, and the God of love and peace shall be with you.” He urged his listeners to turn to one another and strengthen their faith through “conferences with others.” Toward the end of his stay at Hilton Castle, Davenport addressed the issue of the Lord’s Supper, although he would not have been authorized to administer the sacrament himself. His views are worth spending a few moments on because many puritans complained that too many unworthy parishioners presented themselves to receive the sacrament. Davenport starts by asserting that “every man is bound in conscience by the commandment of God to approach the grace of God offered in the sacrament.” He noted the arguments of those who claimed that those “who are not cleansed as they



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ought to be” should not dare to participate, but answers “Did not our Savior converse with publicans and sinners? . . . Who stands more in need of the physician than the sick? Who desires more the surgery than the wounded? Who wants comfort more than the helpless distressed?” He asserted that Christ had promised men that “I will ease you” and urged them to “come and eat.” Yet Davenport offered “reproof for those who rush unto the Lord’s table . . . like swine into the rose yard, without any preparation, or like a man into a banquet with a full stomach, glutting himself with superfluous bodily nutrients.” “Whoever would be a worthy partaker of God’s graces offered in the sacrament must come worthily,” so that “everyone must fit themselves to come.” Men and women, “their imperfections never so many, or their sins never so great,” should “come with boldness and joyfulness,” being “sure of their comforts [since] they have obeyed God’s commandment and showed themselves dutiful to him.” They should prepare themselves at home with prayer and meditation, and they should come to the table in good company. And they should “keep this feast not with the old leaven of maliciousness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” “Our savior counsels” us, Davenport said, to “let your light shine before men, that they seeing your good works, may glorify your father which is in heaven.” There is no direct evidence of the effectiveness of Davenport’s preaching at Hilton and Monkwearmouth. In the years after his departure the religious strife in the region became more heated. The rector of nearby Bishopswearmouth at about the time of Davenport’s stay was a supporter of the doctrinal and ceremonial innovations that puritans believed marked a drift toward Rome. At one point he was “mocked for bowing so low before the altar that his nose touched the ground.”16 George Lilburne (uncle of the future Leveller John Lilburne) and others who were dissatisfied with what was going on in that parish crossed the river to attend services at St. Peter Monkwearmouth. Whether this dispute had started while Davenport was in residence is impossible to know, though it is plausible to assume that Lilburne had at least come to listen to some of the young preacher’s sermons. And the seeds planted by Davenport did continue to grow. In the 1630s John Hicks, Lilburne’s father-in-law, was the incumbent at St. Peter’s, and in the words of a critical neighbor, that parish was where “came the Sunderland puritans like rats over the water.” He identified the town of Sunderland itself as “where . . . all these pestilent nests of puritans hatched . . . , where they swarm and

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breed like hornets in a dead horse’s head.”17 Perhaps this was, in part, Davenport’s legacy. The last recorded sermon preached by Davenport at Hilton Castle was in March 1616. There is no known reason for his departure, although he may have longed to move back to the south. He would soon be old enough to be ordained, and that would open more attractive opportunities for him. Interestingly, on the ninth of March an individual named George Carte died in St. Catherine’s Chapel when a stone fell on him during vespers. A coroner’s inquest was held by Radalph Bowes at Hilton on March 20.18 How this may have disrupted the castle community and what, if any, impact it may have had on Davenport will likely never be known. John Davenport left Hilton Castle in March 1616. Surviving records allow only glimpses at his activities over the following year or so. It is quite likely that he spent some of the following months in Coventry. In October 1616 he was ordained deacon by John Overall, the bishop of Coventry and Litchfield. A few months later, in January, Bishop Overall ordained him a priest.19 In both cases this required him to subscribe to the Three Articles, established as a requirement for ordination by Archbishop John Whitgift during Elizabeth’s reign and enforced with more regularity on the orders of Archbishop Richard Bancroft after 1604. Two of the articles were relatively uncontroversial, asserting the royal supremacy over the church and stating that the Thirty-Nine Articles that defined the beliefs of the Church of England were acceptable to the word of God. The third caused more difficulties for puritans, as it required them to swear that the Book of Common Prayer contained nothing contrary to the word of God and to stipulate their willingness to use the forms of worship set out in the prayer book and no others. On March 12, 1617, Davenport surfaced in Eaton Socon, a town in Bedfordshire, where he married Elizabeth Whaller (or Whalley).20 Davenport had no known connections with the town, although he may have been familiar with the family of Peter White, who had served as vicar of Eaton Socon and the neighboring town of St. Neot’s. White had precipitated local opposition in the 1570s when he had stripped the church of what he viewed as popish ornaments such as the rood. He defended himself in a sermon preached in January 1581 that was published as A Godly and Fruitful Sermon Against Idolatry. White had five sons follow him into the ministry. One of them, John White, was a vigorous anti-Catholic polemicist who was engaged in heated published exchanges with the Jesuit William Wright and



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other Catholic authors that ended with his death in 1615. Francis White wrote a lengthy defense of his brother that was published in 1617 which, given Davenport’s anti-Catholic views, may have attracted his interest. A third son of Peter White, Robert, followed his father as vicar of Eaton Socon and would have presided over Davenport’s marriage. Robert had received his education at Cambridge but had been incorporated at Oxford in 1606, making it possible that there was a connection with Davenport. There were other Whites with connections to Merton and Magdalen Hall, including a Francis White who was master of the Magdalen Hall grammar school when Davenport was there and Thomas White, who was later benefactor of Sion College in London. It is not clear whether either of these was connected to the Eaton Socon Whites, though most biographies of Thomas White state that he was a kinsman. As hard as it is to find any clear connection between Davenport and Eaton Socon, it is even harder to find any information on his bride. There is a record of Wallers (or Whalleys) in Eaton Socon, but no specific record of Elizabeth. It is at least possible that she may have been related to the Whalley family that would play a role in John’s future. A Jane Whalley married William Hooke, an English clergyman who shared the ministry of New Haven with Davenport in the 1640s and early 1650s. Jane was a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. Her brother, Edward Whalley, rose to become one of Cromwell’s major generals. Condemned as a regicide at the Restoration, he fled to New England and was sheltered by Davenport. A family connection would certainly have contributed to the decisions of Hooke and later Whalley to join Davenport at New Haven. What little direct evidence exists about the relationship between John and Elizabeth points to a strong and mutually supportive relationship. They appear to have accepted the new views of companionate marriage that had become popular in puritan circles at the time. Traditional Christian values were based on the notion that celibacy was a superior moral state and that sexual acts of any sort involved gratification of sexual desires that could easily become sinful. Many medieval churchmen cautioned that while sex within marriage was allowed (and necessary) for procreation, engaging in sex frequently, or for the purpose of enjoyment, was sinful. This began to change in the Reformation era, a major shift occurring when Luther rejected the idea of clerical celibacy and embraced marriage as the normal state of life for a Christian. Although procreation was still considered an important function of marriage, greater emphasis was placed on the importance of the union in

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providing companionship and support. Intercourse between husband and wife was encouraged not simply as a means for having children but also as a joyous expression of love that bound the couple together.21 Puritans were among those who advanced the new views on marriage and sex. While clearly some men and women in puritan societies still held to traditional positions, clergy could be heard reminding their parishioners of the duty to desire. The minister William Gouge wrote that intercourse between man and wife was to be conducted willingly, often, and cheerfully. A Massachusetts man would be excommunicated by the Boston church for withholding his sexual favors from his wife. The letters of John Winthrop and his wife, Margaret, reveal their physical yearning for each other when they were apart. The New England poet Anne Bradstreet referred to her husband, Simon, as her missing sun, whose warmth melted the frigid colds of New England and whose heat gave them their children. Although these men and women viewed intercourse between husband and wife as the proper use of the sexual drives God gave them, they viewed any other form of sexual activity as an abuse. Puritans condemned fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and other sexual indulgences outside of marriage. Such temptations were to be fought, and the London puritan Nehemiah Wallington reminded himself that one who even looked on a woman with lust had committed adultery with her in his heart. But such condemnation was the reverse side of a celebration of marital sex, a celebration underlined by the comparisons puritans drew between the joy experienced in union with Christ and the joy of sexual love between husband and wife. These views underlay the understanding of marriage advanced by William Gouge in his popular treatise Domestical Duties (1622), which originated as sermons on the responsibilities of various members of the household. The work set forth the mutual duty of husband and wife to love and desire each other and to share in family obligations. The family was as a little commonwealth, and “if the head and several members of a family would . . . perform their own particular duties, what a sweet society and harmony would there be.”22 This was the ideal that John and Elizabeth would try to live up to. Davenport had gained experience as a preacher and obtained ordination as a clergyman of the Church of England. He had married a woman who would share with him the trials and successes that lay ahead. It was time for him to truly launch his career as one of God’s ambassadors.

Ch a pt e r 4

London—The Early Years

A

t some point following their marriage, John and Elizabeth moved to London, an expanding city with many opportunities for young preachers. London life would have seemed familiar to Davenport, the city in many ways being a much larger version of Coventry, with a population of more than half a million. Surrounded by a wall, the city had burst from those bounds, with much of the population living in neighborhoods that had grown up outside of its protection. Some of the principal streets were cobbled, and others were paved with a mixture of limestone and flint. Ordinary streets were unpaved, muddy quagmires in bad weather, and in all weather they were usually littered with garbage. Most of the homes were wooden, though brick and stone were beginning to be used for domestic dwellings as well as public buildings. Water was secured from conduits and carried to homes. As in the case of Coventry, there were designated marketplaces for the sale of various items and designated market days. The sounds of craftspeople manufacturing goods and peddlers hawking their wares would have been familiar. Curfew was rung at nine o’clock in the evening in summer, and at dusk in winter; the gates were closed and entry forbidden till six o’clock in the morning. Urban pageants and processions were similar to those of Coventry, though larger and more frequent.1 Nothing would have prepared Davenport for the many languages spoken, however. There were inhabitants of the British Isles drawn to the capital who spoke Welsh, Scottish and Irish variants of Gaelic, and Manx. But the importance of the city as a center of international trade brought visitors and residents from most of the countries of Europe, each speaking his or her native language.2 There were other features of the city that would have been unfamiliar. The burning of sea coal for heating contributed a distinctive 51

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smell and added to the foglike haze that cloaked the city.3 Life in Coventry would not have prepared Davenport for the number of brothels and playhouses occupying Southwark, on the south side of the Thames. On a more positive note, he would have welcomed visiting the large number of bookshops around St. Paul’s and on Paternoster Row.4 Protestantism had a long and varied history in London. Some of the earliest advocates of fast-paced reform in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI had been located in the capital. During the Marian persecutions puritans like John Winthrop’s uncle William maintained an underground religious existence in which they could continue to worship as they believed proper. During Elizabeth’s reign clergymen like John Field took the lead in organizing petitions to Parliament and coordinating the ties between regional clerical conferences. The government allowed the establishment of so-called stranger churches—congregations of foreign nationals who were allowed to worship in accord with the forms of their native faiths—and these provided Londoners with a chance to observe more thoroughly reformed systems at close hand. This is not to say that the various monarchs and church authorities approved of puritan influence in London. But the very size of the city and the fluidity of its population made controlling the various religious elements a challenge that few in authority were inclined to take up.5 Some of the best and the brightest puritans found positions there in the early decades of the seventeenth century. A number of parishes had the right to choose their own clergy, and some chose reformers. Additional opportunities were to be found in lectureships, as lecturers did not have to perform the ecclesiastical ceremonies and thus could avoid some episcopal supervision. By 1628 there were almost as many lectureships as there were parishes. Sabbath sermons and supplemental lectures were scheduled in such a way that it was possible for those especially eager to hear the preached word of God to attend three or even four sermons on certain days.6 The close proximity of the parishes meant that zealous laypeople could easily find a church where the religion presented met their personal preferences. The ability of London puritans to largely go their own way also had something to do with the character of the men who served as bishop of London and archbishop of Canterbury during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Many of these men were either sympathetic to reform or not inclined to exert themselves to enforce conformity.7 The support of prominent laymen also protected godly clergy.8



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The same factors that made close supervision of its inhabitants impossible make it difficult to clearly trace Davenport’s earliest activities in the city. In October 1617 he was discovered lecturing without a license at St. Mary Aldermanbury and was suspended by the London Consistory Court.9 St. Mary had been a center of Lollardy in the years before the Reformation and had earned a reputation in Elizabeth’s reign as sympathetic to the puritan reformers of the time. In 1587 the parish agreed to fund a lectureship, with the lecturer to preach twice on Sundays, at nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. Further indicating its reform sympathies, at the same time the parish voted to move the pulpit to a more convenient location and to whitewash over the remaining wall decorations.10 Nearby the London Guildhall, it was an attractive area for both trade and the location of wealthy residences.11 The chronicler John Stowe wrote that on Aldermanbury Street there were many “fair houses on both the sides, meet for merchants or men of worship, and in the midst thereof a fine conduit.”12 Robert Harland had been appointed curate and lecturer of St. Mary’s in 1593. He died in October 1617, and it is likely that Davenport was asked to officiate during his final illness.13 Proper procedure required Davenport to have a license from the bishop of London, which the parish evidently had not secured. But while his preaching was not licensed, it would have brought the young clergyman to the attention of various influential men, and it likely helped him secure his first official post. In January 1618 John was licensed as curate and lecturer for the parish of St. Michael in Wood Street, also called St. Michael Huggen Lane because of an opening to the church on that street.14 In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the advowson (the right of appointing a cleric) had passed to a group of trustees on behalf of the parish, and they would have been the ones who offered Davenport the post, though his appointment would still had to be approved by the bishop. The church itself was a few blocks north of the harbor slip of Queenhithe on the Thames. A sixteenth-century plan of the city shows the church having a somewhat larger tower than normal for what was in fact a secondary-level church. The parishioners paid to repair and beautify the fabric in 1620. This was after Davenport had left, but it is possible that his preaching drew more listeners to the parish and led to this effort.15 The neighborhood surrounding St. Michael’s was one in which one would find painters, vintners, chandlers, haberdashers, and plumbers, with the guildhalls of each of those groups a few blocks from the church. According to a statement by the parish authorities in 1638, “the parishioners for the

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most part are handcraftsmen.”16 There were approximately 113 houses and 500 communicants.17 It was a poorer neighborhood than that of St. Mary’s, and it is likely that Davenport was preaching to a more working-class population. There is no reason to assume that his message changed from what he had preached at Monkswearmouth, although there would have been far fewer Catholic recusants to arouse his ire.18 Based on a presentment to the London Consistory Court in 1622, Davenport appears to have also taught school previous to that date in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields.19 It is possible that this was a means of supplementing his income during his first years in London. Teaching was something that a number of prominent puritan clergy turned their hands to at this time, an example being Alexander Richardson in Barking, a town to the northeast of London. St. Martin’s was a church in a rural suburb—literally in the fields to the west of the city. In 1614 a tiny school had been established in a new vestry hall that was on the south side of the church.20 At some point in 1618, Davenport became a lecturer at St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate. The parish church of St. Botolph’s was just outside the old walls of the city, where the road through the bishops’ gate led toward East Anglia. The church itself stood in “a fair churchyard.” “Petty France,” a neighborhood of French residents, was in the parish. The old hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, or Bedlam, was in the parish—where “people that be distraught in wits are, by the suit of their friends, received and kept.”21 As with many expanding neighborhoods, there were overcrowded alleys as well as large dwellings of the rich and powerful. Stephen Gosson was the rector at the time, but the parish records indicate that he was not active in its affairs. Although there is no evidence of the exact date or nature of Davenport’s appointment, there is ample evidence of his activities. He preached regularly until 1624, and by the end of his tenure was being paid £40 a year for the lectureship.22 For at least part of the time the lecture was on Tuesdays. At one point he preached a sequence of thirty sermons on the parable of the prodigal son.23 His lectures were very popular, and the collection taken more than paid for his services. In addition to the regular collection, funds were raised on the occasions “for the use of the poor.” In the year from March 1619 to 1620, £34 was raised; in 1621 and 1622, £50; in 1623 and 1624 (perhaps the last full year of his lectureship), more than £61. Whether his popularity as a lecturer gave him unusual influence in the parish, or because he may have served (if only unofficially) as Gosson’s curate until Thomas Worrall became rector in 1624, Davenport was able to request



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ways in which the funds raised through his lectures were actually spent. His interventions with the churchwardens offer some of the earliest evidence of the concerns that would define his career. On more than one occasion the churchwardens gave funds to specific individuals whom Davenport identified as needy. The Thirty Years’ War had broken out on the Continent and Davenport displayed his concern for the international Protestant cause when he asked the churchwardens to pay money to “a soldier come from Bohemia.” He also requested that funds be given to a “Mrs. Welche, a preacher’s widow that came out of France.” He may have prompted the parish’s decision to fund a certain William Smith who wished to settle in the Virginia colony. Such interventions were unusual enough that the vestry, the controlling body in the parish, passed a rule in April 1620 prohibiting the churchwardens from allocating collection money without the specific approval of the rector and vestry, but Davenport’s influence was such that the churchwardens continued to do so. While still lecturing at St. Botolph’s, Davenport’s career took a major turn when in June 1619 he was chosen curate and lecturer of the London parish of St. Lawrence Jewry and took up residence in a house “on Milk Street, near Cheapside.”24 The vicar at the time was William Boswell, also an Oxford graduate.25 The vestry engaged Davenport as “curate to preach in the afternoon on the Sabbath day and one sermon on . . . Wednesday at night” though shortly thereafter the weekday sermon was changed, “our vicar and curate finding Thursday to be a fitter day.”26 This might have been done to allow a day off between his Tuesday lecture at St. Botolph’s (which he continued to preach until 1624) and his sermons at St. Lawrence. As curate of St. Lawrence he would also have been expected to administer the sacraments. The churchwardens’ accounts for the years of Davenport’s tenure at St. Lawrence offer some interesting insights into the life of the parish at that time. In 1619 two unusual payments were recorded. One was to individuals who had sustained losses by fire and other calamities. This was repeated in future years and may actually have been intended for victims of the Thirty Years’ War that had broken out on the Continent, a cause Davenport had been and would continue to be concerned with.27 The other expenditure was a payment to the Virginia Company, with which Davenport would soon be associated, for the sending of a hundred poor children to the colony as servants, an indication of the parish’s involvement in a program intended to increase the size of the colony as well as to alleviate the cost of providing for England’s poor.28 Other payments suggest that Davenport was willing

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to conform to the rites for administration of the sacraments set forth in the Book of Common Prayer and that he found improvements in the fabric of the church necessary to do so. In 1619 the churchwardens approved the purchases of two cloths for the communion table, two clerical surplices, two communion cups, a silver patten, and various kneeling cushions.29 The “old church Bible” was found and put into place. The following year a copy of the Book of Common Prayer was included in the inventory of the church property.30 In 1621 four more small “kneeling cushions” were obtained.31 The appointment to St. Lawrence brought Davenport to one of the hubs of the city’s affairs. According to Stowe, “southwest from the Guildhall [the ceremonial and administrative center of London] is the fair parish of St. Lawrence, called in the Jewry, because of old times many Jews inhabited thereabout. The church is fair and large.”32 The parish itself was small (only about 140 tithable houses), but it was one of the richer parishes in the city and the home of numerous civic leaders.33 We have little information regarding Davenport’s preaching at this time, but Cotton Mather’s description of his preparation later in his life likely applies to this period as well. Mather recorded that Davenport was a “hard student” who stayed up very late studying and preparing his sermons. He had a reputation for writing out his sermons more fully than most clergy; his notebook of Hilton Castle sermons attest to this habit. He delivered the sermons “with a gravity, an energy, and acceptableness whereto few ministers have ever arrived; indeed, his greatest enemies, when they heard him, would acknowledge him to be among ‘the best of preachers.’”34 At the same time, according to Mather, “those who knew him in his younger years” recalled that “he was then very fervent and vehement as to the manner of his delivery.”35 His reputation was such that many visitors to the city came to hear Davenport preach. All this is in keeping with a statement made by Davenport himself in 1624. He indicated that though he had a “natural desire of privacy and retiredness,” he had labored “for the space of this six years in London, [to become] public and eminent,” achieving a prominence “which hath caused some to look upon me with a squint eye.”36 Davenport’s growing prominence as a city preacher attracted the attention of many of the city’s business leaders. Among them were members of the Virginia Company of London, which had settled Jamestown, and the Somers Island Company, which had the same shareholders as the Virginia Company but was responsible for the colony of Bermuda. This led to Davenport’s earliest involvement with colonizing enterprises. The Virginia



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Company was deeply divided by factions when Davenport became the curate and lecturer at St. Lawrence. In 1619 an alliance of supporters of Sir Edwin Sandys and the Rich family briefly ousted the former treasurer and leader of the company, Sir Thomas Smith.37 The Sandys faction pursued a less economic and more humanistic vision for the Virginia colony, seeking to create a commonwealth with a strong civic emphasis and pursuit of the common good favored over pure profit.38 In line with this, a representative assembly, the House of Burgesses, was created in the colony, efforts were made to strengthen the presence of the church there, and a school created for the education of the natives. One critic accused Sandys of trying to establish a “Brownist republic” in Virginia, Brownism referring to the puritan Separatist views of the clergyman John Browne.39 In November 1621 an anonymous benefactor contributed funds for a series of sermons to be preached before the members of the Virginia Company. The donor indicated his “desire that Mr. Damport [Davenport] may preach the first sermon.”40 Other funded sermons were later preached by Patrick Copeland and John Donne. While those sermons were published, Davenport’s was not.41 Though the motivations for colonization of Virginia and New England were different, the commonwealth values of those directing the enterprises had more in common than is usually recognized.42 On May 22, 1622, the Virginia Company voted that Davenport “be made free” of the company, meaning that he was made a member of the corporation. It is likely through his membership in the Virginia Company that Davenport developed a relationship with Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick. This led to Davenport recommending his young protégé Hugh Peter to the earl, who named Peter to the living at Rayleigh, in Essex.43 In October 1624 Davenport was elected vicar of St. Stephen’s Coleman Street. St. Stephen’s was one of the four largest parishes in the city, with more than 1,400 communicants in 1631. And the parish was growing rapidly in the first half of the seventeenth century.44 Coleman Street itself was “a fair and large street, on both sides built with divers fair houses,” but with alleys off the street “with tenements in great number.”45 The population of the parish was very mixed. The fair houses on Coleman Street itself were inhabited by some of the movers and shakers of London’s business and government communities; living in the alleys were unskilled laborers and a growing number of paupers. More than one hundred tenements had been erected since the start of the century. The parish had no real religious significance until 1590, when the crown sold the advowson to the parishioners, giving them a large

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measure of control over their religious affairs. That control was exercised by a general vestry of about one hundred householders that met twice a year in April and December to choose parish officers and discuss important business, and by a select vestry of twenty-five to thirty parishioners who met more often to conduct the parish business.46 Davenport’s selection as vicar came about as a result of the parish’s dissatisfaction with the previous incumbent, Samuel German, who had been accused by the parishioners of being unsound “both in life and doctrine,” of neglecting his ministerial duties, and of attacking members of the parish “with continual calumnies in pulpit and out.” This was consistent with his record at Oxford, where in 1612 he had been “deprived of office as tutor to the sophists for rudeness to the Dean of Arts, and also deprived of commons for a week for quarrelsome words.” As vicar German received the annual endowment of the living, £11, and a supplement of £39, which was voted by the vestry. The parish had no right to remove a minister once he was instituted by the ecclesiastical authorities, but parishioners felt that they were in their rights to revoke German’s additional income, which would certainly force him out. Diocesan officials brokered a deal whereby German was paid but accepted the right of the parish to control, and possibly withhold, all payments beyond his required stipend.47 The agreement papered over but did not resolve the disagreements between German and his flock, and disputes continued to flare up until the clergyman died in September 1624. On October 5, a meeting of the general vestry was held to elect a new vicar. One of the nominees was John Davenport. The other was a Mr. Wilson, who was a chaplain to George Abbott, the archbishop of Canterbury. In his own account of the election, Davenport wrote that “Mr. Wilson was nominated by the vestry to be chosen with me, but when it came to voices all the vestry spoke for me, and only two for Mr. Wilson.” Those who spoke for him, Davenport continued, contrary to being a radical faction, included two of the three trustees of the parish’s property, “and all the chief of the parish, yea, the Archbishop’s own brother [Maurice Abbott].”48 The support of Maurice Abbott, who was a major figure in the city’s business affairs, was significant. In fact, Abbott was a member of the council of the Virginia Company, who had heard Davenport preach to that group and may have been the one who proposed the clergyman to the parish vestry. Following the actions of the vestry, all that remained was for Davenport to be formally instituted to the living by the bishop of London. But Bishop



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George Montaigne hesitated. He had evidently already been asked by King James to inquire into Davenport’s preaching as a result of a complaint registered against the clergyman by Edward Sydenham, a page of the king’s bedchamber. According to Davenport, this arose from an occasion a year earlier when he had “reproved him [Sydenham] for swearing” at the home of Mary, Lady Vere.49 But Montaigne might also have been looking for a way to clip the wings of the St. Stephen’s parishioners in their efforts to control their parish. Davenport’s recollection of his rebuke to Sydenham while dining at Lady Vere’s gives us an opening to examine the network of powerful individuals with whom had had formed relationships over the preceding years, which he would employ in his campaign to secure the post at St. Stephen’s. While the support for puritan reform at the court of James I was not as powerful as that to be found in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it has frequently been underestimated, and Davenport was well connected to some of the key figures. Looking at his friendships casts light on that reform circle.50 The first connection illustrated by the story of his appointment was with Lucy Russell, the Countess of Bedford. It was the countess who had first informed Davenport of Archbishop Abbott’s plan to secure the rectorship for his chaplain. She was the daughter of Lord Harrington, who had cared for the young princess Elizabeth at Combe Abbey, near Coventry, in the early years of the century. Lucy became friends with the princess, a friendship that continued after Elizabeth became Queen of Bohemia. Living near Coventry as a youth, Lucy would have known of and possibly met the Davenports, particularly John’s father, Henry, and uncle Christopher. Her father, as well as her husband, Lord Russell, were noted as patrons of godly reform, as was Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, whom she befriended at court after she became a member of the inner circle of James I’s Queen Anne. The countess herself had a reputation as a supporter of godly clergy, and more than twenty religious works were dedicated to her in thanks for her patronage. It is not surprising that she took an interest in the dynamic young preacher from Coventry.51 Another personage at court whom Davenport called on for support was Sir Edward Conway. Conway came from a family of substantial Warwickshire landowners, and he earned a reputation for interceding on behalf of others who came from there. Conway married Katherine Heuriblock, the daughter of a Dutch merchant in London who was a member of the Dutch congregation in the city.52 He had initially pursued a military career, which

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led to service in the Netherlands and his appointment as governor of the Brill. It was there that his daughter Brilliana was born, and there that he formed a friendship with his fellow officer, Sir Horace Vere. In 1607 Vere married Conway’s sister Mary. After service as an ambassador to Brussels and Prague, Conway was named to the king’s privy council in 1622 and made secretary of state in 1623. Starting with his days in the Netherlands, he showed a strong interest in religious reform and the cause of international Protestantism.53 He is said to have been influential in securing Davenport’s appointment at St. Lawrence’s. Like his brother-in-law Conway, Sir Horace Vere first achieved success as a military commander. He had joined his elder brother Francis fighting in the Netherlands in the early 1590s. Sir Horace rapidly distinguished himself, and in 1605 he was named commander of English forces fighting under the Dutch. His campaigns in the Thirty Years’ War enhanced his reputation for being an effective commander. Like Conway, Vere’s experiences in the Netherlands reinforced his support for godly reform. It also gave him opportunities to support puritan clergy. He employed William Ames in his personal service and offered army chaplaincies to other reformers.54 Reinforcing Sir Horace’s religious interests was his wife, Mary, Lady Vere. She took pride in her heritage, and especially in her ancestor, William Tracy, who had been an early supporter of the English Reformation and was mentioned in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Following her marriage to Sir Horace she became notable for her own efforts to support reform clergymen, numbering among her correspondents Ames, John Dod, John Preston, and other noted divines. In the 1640s one of those who had received her support recalled her as “an ancient mother in our Israel.”55 Samuel Clarke, the seventeenth-century biographer of many puritan worthies, recalled that “she brought her Religion and Devotion home with her, and did not leave them in her Pew behind her . . . as too many do.” There were devotional exercises twice daily in her household. Sermons were reviewed and discussed by her family and servants.56 When in England she lived in Hackney, a London suburb three miles northeast of the city, where she entertained favored clergy and members of the court. She visited various London churches to hear sermons, likely including St. Botolph’s and St. Lawrence, and struck up what was to be a long and strong friendship with Davenport. It was at one of his visits to her home that Davenport censured Edward Syndenham for inappropriate language. After Davenport’s installation at St. Stephen’s, that parish would become one of her favorite places to listen to sermons.57



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Mary Vere, the daughter of Sir Horace and Lady Mary, would marry Sir Roger Townsend, a rising political figure in his own right in the late 1620s. Robert Harley married Secretary of State Conway’s daughter, Brilliana, in 1623, a match brokered by Brilliana’s aunt, Lady Vere. Their shared puritan values would underpin numerous efforts to advance godly reform over the following decades.58 After Davenport was installed at St. Stephen’s, Harley would be invited by his friend Sir Thomas Wroth to attend one of the preacher’s sermons there.59 Yet another important figure with whom Davenport would be connected was Edward Montagu, Viscount Mandeville. Edward was the son of Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester, who was a director of the Virginia Company, chief justice of King’s Bench, and eventually Lord Privy Seal. In the 1620s the younger Montagu was closely allied with leading puritan peers such as the Earl of Warwick and Lord Saye and Sele, and he was the patron of various puritan clergymen. A sermon notebook he kept in the early 1630s indicates a regular attendance at St. Stephen’s, where he recorded sermons by Davenport and visiting preachers.60 With his appointment to St. Stephen’s in question, Davenport worked quickly to mobilize his powerful friends, to ease any concerns they might have heard about the rumors circulating about him, and to coach them on how to respond to the charges being made against him. One of the first letters he wrote, shortly after the October 5 vestry election, was to Lady Vere. In it he related the details of the vote and asked her to seek Sir Edward Conway’s intervention on his behalf. Conway subsequently asked Bishop Montaigne the reasons for the delay in approving Davenport, indicating his interest in the matter. The bishop responded that the stay had been at the king’s request, James having raised questions about Davenport’s doctrinal soundness and the rumor that he was a factious preacher.61 On October 13 Davenport wrote to Conway himself. He attributed opposition to his appointment to Sydenham, who had a personal grievance, but also to the jealousy of those who resented his popularity and sought to derail his career by calling him “a puritan, or one that is puritanically affected.” This was a dangerous charge and Davenport addressed it directly. “If by a puritan is meant one opposite to the present government” of the church, he wrote, “I profess . . . the contrary,” pointing to his subscriptions as evidence. He claimed that his practice had matched his words, pointing in particular to the ceremonies disputed by many puritans and asserting that at St. Lawrence he had “baptized many, but never any without the signing of the cross.

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I have monthly administered the Lord’s Supper, but at no time without the surplice, nor to any but those that kneeled.” Furthermore, he continued, “I read the Book of Common Prayers, in form and manner as appointed by the church.” “If,” he concluded, “by puritanically affected be meant one that secretly encourageth men in opposition to the present government [of the church], I profess an hearty detestation of such hypocrisy.”62 The claim that opposition was based on jealously of his success was indirectly confirmed in a letter which Archbishop Abbott sent to Conway. In it Abbott wrote that Davenport “was reported to be factious and popular, and to draw after him great congregations and assemblies of common and mean people.”63 Rejecting such arguments, Conway wrote to Montaigne on October 15, stating that he was himself “able to dissipate any doubts in the mind of the King or his Lordship about his conformity.” Furthermore, he suggested that “it is a malicious artifice to stain . . . with the style of puritanical those persons who for some singular gifts and graces in them, through the acceptation they have with the people are able to do the most good, both in teaching the truth and the true duties of conformity to the ordinances of the Supreme magistrate.” If Montaigne still had doubts, Conway urged him not “to rest upon my bare testimony,” but to “hear Mr. Davenport, examine his doctrine, his practices, his conversation.” And he closed by telling the bishop that “the favor you shall do to him I shall receive as so great an obligation done to me.”64 In a similar letter to Archbishop Abbott, Conway again testified as to Davenport’s conformity and described him as “eminent and well deserving light in the Church,” against whom false charges had been laid.65 Thomas Worrall, the rector at St. Botolph’s, also intervened on Davenport’s behalf.66 Not being aware of the fact that Conway had already interceded on his behalf, Davenport wrote again to the secretary of state, urging him to communicate Davenport’s worthiness directly to the king. He believed that if the royal reservations were overcome, Bishop Montaigne would grant his approval. In a postscript he addressed three specific concerns. First was clearing his reputation with the king. Second, he hoped for assurance that if he was denied and someone else given the position, he would not be allowed to suffer any “disparagement, thereby, in my reputation, or any damage in the places which I hold.” Finally, he countered another objection that had been raised, namely that Mr. Wilson had university degrees, whereas Davenport did not. He asserted that he was “a licensed and comformable minister,” which was all that should matter. But he went further, and in doing so shed light on why he had left Oxford. His “want of degrees,” he wrote, “proceeded



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not from any want of time, or of willingness, or of sufficiency (as was well known at Oxford), but from want of means (my friends being unwilling to keep me longer at the university).” He shared his plan, “after I am settled in a certain competency of means, to recover the degrees, which some think I have lost for want of taking the first opportunity.”67 The intervention of his friends had an effect. On October 17, Davenport wrote to Conway thanking him for his assistance and informing him that Bishop Montaigne had spoken well of Davenport at a meeting with the parish but was still waiting to be assured that the king’s concerns had been satisfied. Two days later he wrote again to Conway, indicating that things continued to look good and asking him for his continued support. He enclosed a record of the general vestry meeting on October 5 that had voted for him, including the names of all those present. On November 3 all the efforts paid off and Davenport was inducted into the living. He wrote to Conway to thank him.68 On the following Sunday, November 7, 1624, Davenport appeared at St. Stephen’s and “publicly read” the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England “and declared his full and unfeigned assent and consent thereunto, in the time of morning prayer, next after the second lesson, before the whole congregation.” On the same day he “administer[ed] the holy communion in the said parish, in his surplice, according to the order prescribed by the Church of England.” With his installation at St. Stephen’s he relinquished his posts at St. Botolph’s and St. Lawrence. Was Davenport any more a puritan in 1624 than he had been when he preached at Hilton Castle? At this point in his life, he had been explicitly accused of being a puritan, and he denied the charge. If a broad definition of the movement is used, focusing on Calvinist theology, anti-Catholicism, demands for an educated ministry, and personal piety, then he can be considered a puritan. If a narrower definition is used, including nonconformity to disputed ceremonies and opposition to the episcopal structure of the Church of England, then he was not a puritan. This simply demonstrates the difficulties of trying to label religious reformers of this period. Putting aside any need to label, we can understand Davenport better if we look at him in the context of the London religious community of the time.

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is induction as rector of St. Stephen’s gave Davenport some security for the first time in his life. The parish, underlining the point made in their dispute with the former rector, provided him a guaranteed income of £11 a year with an additional gift of £39 that was revocable at the discretion of the vestry.1 He was also provided a house owned by the parish at a modest rent.2 His new salary provided him with the opportunity to pay his Oxford fees and receive his degree. In addition to satisfying his financial obligations at the university, he was required to engage in an academic exercise. On May 18, 1625, he returned to Oxford to join in a disputation in the Divinity School with George Palmer of Lincoln College before John Prideaux, the rector of Exeter College.3 Prideaux was the university’s Regius Professor of Divinity and noted as a strong Calvinist and opponent of Arminianism. The subject set for the disputation was the issue of who was saved and how. In the notes he kept of the disputation, Davenport indicated that he argued that all men are not saved: “we are tormented by one disease; a remedy is provided for few.” The reason not all are cured is because “so the physician has willed it.” “The guilt was common,” he concluded, “but not the cure.” God “appears the judge of the wicked, and hence the Father of the good.” As to whether or not an individual could fall from grace, Davenport concluded that “those whom Christ has called his spouse and his members are those to whom he has given the earnest of the Spirit, [which] neither the power of the world nor of Satan can wrest from him, nor can the gates of hell prevail against them.”4 Palmer’s contrary argument was drawn from the recently published Appello Caesarem of Richard Montagu, who was perceived as the leading English critic of orthodox Calvinism. In deciding for Davenport, Prideaux denounced Montagu as merus grammaticus.5 Interestingly, 64



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Thomas Turner, William Laud’s eyes and ears at Oxford, noted the event, referring to Davenport as “a great preacher in London.”6 On June 28 the degree of bachelor of divinity was officially conferred on Davenport.7 The notebook in which Davenport recorded his responses in the Oxford disputation also contains his engagement with a question that troubled many clergymen of his time, namely the issue of how believers were to receive the Lord’s sacrament. He was exploring anew how it should be received. Already, in his Hilton sermons, he had insisted on the importance of coming to the sacrament. In his notebook, written at around the time he applied for his degree and began his ministry at St. Stephen’s he posed four questions to consider: “1. In what gesture the Apostles did receive the Lord’s Supper? 2. How far we are bound by their example. [3. What to make of the fact that the Scripture doesn’t describe how the apostles received.] 4. Whether [kneeling] be a sin or not?”8 If his later recollection is to be trusted, when he was still a youth he had persuaded his uncle and father to bow to a royal order to receive the sacrament kneeling in Coventry. At Hilton he would not have administered the sacrament, and there is no evidence that he suggested how it should be done. Following his ordination he would have had to deal with this, and in his letter to Sir Edward Conway he claimed that at St. Lawrence he had “monthly administered the Lord’s Supper, but at no time without the surplice, nor to any but those that kneeled.”9 Over the years that followed he would continue to wrestle with the question, recording points for and against the practice in his notebook, but for a long time he followed the church’s requirement that recipients kneel. Discussion of such matters was one of things that made the London religious community vibrant and stimulating for those who sought further understanding of God’s will. Overseeing the religious affairs of the Church of England at this time was the archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, a staunch Calvinist. As chancellor of Oxford earlier in the century he had been sharply critical of the young William Laud and others whom he viewed as crypto-Catholics. As bishop of London in the early 1610s Abbott had been a strong foe of Catholics. After a little more than a year in that post Abbott was elevated to be archbishop. His appointment was feared by Roman Catholics and welcomed by supporters of international Protestantism, who saw him as a strong ally. Abbott worked hard to promote a preaching ministry. He took steps against nonconformists whose actions and words disturbed the peace of the church, but he was lenient in enforcing strict conformity. He lent support to those trying to root out anti-Calvinism at Oxford. The same concern led him to

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support the call for the Synod of Dort (1619), and to endorse its findings, which strongly condemned the Arminian efforts to modify Calvinism.10 On his elevation to Canterbury, Abbott had been succeeded as bishop of London by John King. Like Abbott a zealous Calvinist, King exemplified the importance he placed on preaching by delivering a sermon somewhere in his diocese every Sunday. He showed little enthusiasm for enforcing strict ceremonial conformity and demonstrated a willingness to work with various “puritan” clergy to maintain doctrinal peace.11 When Davenport was inducted to St. Stephen’s in 1624 George Montaigne was the bishop of London. Montaigne had evidently decided that his advancement in the church would be hastened if he supported the growing anti-Calvinist faction, and he had just recently licensed Richard Montagu’s Appello Caesarem, which John Prideaux singled out for scorn during Davenport’s disputation. Yet Montaigne was viewed by members of his own faction as “one that loved his own ease too well to disturb himself in the concernments of the church.”12 Bishops such as Abbott and King might be classified as godly evangelical prelates. For the most part their agenda was one that most clergy identified as puritans were also committed to. The size of the city, the abundance not only of parishes but also of lectureships, the presence of the stranger churches, and the proximity of the Inns of Court where godly preachers such as Richard Sibbes and John Preston held forth all contributed to a fluid and ever-changing religious scene. Men and women from different parishes gathered in lay conventicles to further their personal spiritual growth, and sermon gadding was commonplace—the London craftsman Nehemiah Wallington recorded the incredible number of nineteen sermons he heard in one week! In this highly heated atmosphere it was not uncommon for different views over doctrines and practices to arise. For the most part clergy exchanged and debated such positions in manuscripts that were passed around the godly community, and at times at conferences where ministers came together to agree on that which they could and submit what they could not for further reflection. Occasionally, divisions erupted into public, as in 1611, when the young clergyman George Walker publicly accused the established London lecturer Anthony Wotton of departing from the accepted Calvinist versions of the process of salvation. In an effort to calm the waters, Bishop King urged Wotton to accept arbitration and offered his own chaplain to assist in setting up a private conclave. Leading godly ministers, including William Gouge and Thomas Gataker, met over three different days with



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Wotton and Walker, ultimately deciding that while Wotton’s views were not orthodox, they did not constitute heresy or blasphemy. The participation of the bishop and his chaplain in trying to resolve the dispute works against interpretations that see a clear line of division between puritans and the church authorities at the time.13 Davenport was not in London at the time of the dispute between Wotton and Walker, but he was there when a similar dispute ruptured the public consensus of the city’s godly community. In 1626 Stephen Dennison, curate and lecturer at St. Catherine Cree, a parish near the city wall to the east of St. Stephen’s, attacked a layman called John Etherington for being a familist and leader of a heretical conventicle. Etherington, who was viewed by many as a godly man of unexceptional beliefs, complained to the authorities. Davenport’s papers offer no indication of his own views on the dispute, but he likely shared with clerical friends a sense that Dennison’s lengthy and highly public campaign was harmful in dividing the godly community.14 Religious views in London might be viewed as falling along a broad and unstable spectrum with one end populated by those who were critical of all reform, a midpoint held by bishops such as King who shared most of the godly agenda, and the other end represented by laymen and clergy who were exploring radical religious views that went beyond Calvinism toward forms of belief that emphasized direct inspiration of the Spirit.15 It is along the radical portion of the spectrum that one finds individuals such as Etherington, whose ideas hint at the emergence of antinomianism. But in the moderate middle were better-known individuals who are commonly thought of as puritans, such as John Preston and Richard Sibbes. Those individuals— men whom Davenport would soon become associated with—struggled to avoid conflict between their Protestant principles and the national church. They were the heirs of what has been called moderate puritanism and were essentially members of the religious establishment.16 Richard Sibbes was twenty years older than Davenport and an established figure in London as preacher at Gray’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court where the nation’s lawyers were trained. After 1626 he also served as master of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge. He was noted for his affective practical divinity and his concern for the cause of international Protestantism. Though he was opposed to certain controversial ceremonies, such as signing with the cross in baptism and kneeling to receive the Lord’s Supper, he believed that they were allowable. Like Davenport, he emphasized the importance of Protestant unity and was able to avoid being deprived of his posts.17

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In 1622 John Preston had succeeded John Donne as the preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, another of the Inns of Court. In that same year he was elected master of Emmanuel College, the center of puritanism at Cambridge University. Sir Edward Conway was one of those who sought to advance his career. Preston was also shown favor by James I and the Duke of Buckingham. When, following the elevation of Charles I to the throne, Buckingham shifted to support the anti-Calvinist element in the church, Preston lost favor. Like Davenport, he was more focused on the unity of the spiritual brotherhood than in pushing divisive issues. Preston was an important reformed theologian and a strong supporter of the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years’ War, but, like Sibbes, he was not a nonconformist. When he died in 1628, Sibbes and Davenport edited and published in four volumes the sermons that Preston had preached at Lincoln’s Inn.18 The essence of the moderate approach was to pursue reform objectives while maintaining unity. This was the view of the clergy who had met at the Coventry home of Lady Bowes when Davenport was young, and it was the course that the adult Davenport had committed himself to. Shortly after he became rector of St. Stephen’s, Davenport received a letter from Alexander Leighton, a critic of the established church whose recently published Speculum belli sacri; or, The Looking Glass of the Holy War (1624) had urged the abolition of episcopacy. Leighton was a trained physician who had been a member of a London semi-Separatist congregation led by Henry Jacob. He had also spent time with a Separatist congregation in Amsterdam. Davenport, who had connections with the Jacob congregation, had demonstrated a willingness to engage in private religious discussions of various disputed issues. He had been approached by Ralph Smith, a fellow clergyman, about kneeling “and some other particulars,” and he had “offered to communicate with him in a friendly conference.” Smith, however, had evidently engaged Leighton to challenge Davenport in a more public manner, written exchanges being more likely to be widely circulated in the godly community.19 In his letter Leighton challenged Davenport to defend the practice of kneeling to receive the Lord’s Supper. Knowing that the clergyman had recently engaged in an Oxford disputation to earn his degree, he suggested a debate in the form of a written disputation. To start, he posed the questions of whether kneeling was an ordinance of God, man, or the Antichrist; whether it was a religious act of worship, and, if so, who was worshipped; and whether Christ and the “apostles after him did not sit at the sacrament as they did at their ordinary meals.”20



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Davenport began his response by stating that he had not intended “to enter into the lists of dispute at any time . . . about such questions as these,” but he was especially reluctant because of the times. As a youth he had heard Thomas Cooper urge Protestant unity and ask, “Shall the shadows separate us when the substance is endangered?” Now, Davenport took the same position, writing, “When we consider the distresses of the Reformed Churches in these days, . . . we must dispute whether it [is] not better to unite our forces against those who oppose us in fundamentals than to be divided among ourselves about ceremonials?” While men foolishly obsessed about matters such as whether one should sit or kneel to receive communion, libertines, papists, and Arminians “both at home and abroad have stolen in and taken possession of the house while we are at strife about the hangings and paintings of it.”21 That being said, Davenport acknowledged that Leighton had “brought the matter to this issue, that I must answer or else my ministry will suffer by my silence.” To “quench this spark, and so prevent greater fire,” he accepted the challenge and offered an answer to the questions. In doing so, he asserted his reasons for conforming to the church’s requirement. “Kneeling in general,” he argued, was “an ordinance of God, a gesture appointed of God and sanctified by his word for external adoration to testify the inward adoration of the mind.” It was something “which a Christian may use in any lawful worship of God, as in prayer, thanksgiving, hearing of the word, [and] receiving of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” It was not, despite Leighton’s suggestion, something that was anti-Christian in origin—he could find no evidence that the popes had initially instituted the practice. Leighton might object that Christ and the apostles sat when they received bread and wine at the Last Supper, but none of the gospels state their posture, “which it may be was concealed to prevent this objection.” In the end, there was no divine requirement for kneeling, standing, or sitting. As “an ordinance of man, . . . it must be obeyed . . . so long as it neither expressly or by necessary consequence crosses any commandment of God.”22 Despite his strong assertion that the prescribed ceremony did not run contrary to God’s will, it is clear that the young clergyman was wrestling with the assertion in private and would continue to do so. Throughout his career Davenport believed that further enlightenment on such matters could come from cooperating with God’s grace in the search for truth. The dilemma he faced, as did many other clergymen who shared his views, was whether the required ceremonies were demanded by God, requiring clergy

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to risk their living by refusing to perform them. Conformity was the price to be paid for being able to effectively advance much of the godly agenda. His living was what enabled him to nurture the faith of his parishioners and to shape their understanding of true Calvinist doctrine. It was essential for his work of guiding those parishioners on the path of righteousness. His pulpit was a platform for warning Englishmen of the dangers posed by Rome. Yet, if he became convinced that what was required of him was against the law of God, there was no choice, for “though a man’s ministry be dear to him, yet when the condition of keeping it, or exercising it,” is to conform to that which “in his conscience he knows is against the law of God and binds to sin, [then] God has shut the door against him.” God “will not have his servants make way to good by committing sin.” The ministry “is no more profitable than God shall work with it; the power of it is not of men but of God.” Eventually, Davenport would conclude that what was being demanded of him amounted to sin. In the years following his exchange with Leighton he continued to debate with himself not only the legitimacy of kneeling but also other contested ceremonies, such as the appropriateness of wearing the surplice and the use of the cross in baptism. His notebook is filled with excerpts copied from various tracts for and against ceremonial conformity, as well as his reactions to the points made. It also documents exchanges he had on these matters with other clergy such as Thomas Goodwin and Thomas Ball.23 One of the other issues that troubled him was the wearing of the surplice. This was the white linen overgarment that clergy in the Church of England were required to wear when administering the sacraments. The sole remnant of the ecclesiastical garb worn by Roman Catholic priests, it was one of the “vestiges of popery” that reformers had long tried to ban. Davenport appears to have agreed that “the surplice agrees not with the spiritual worship of God.” He considered it “popish apparel, a relic of that idol worship unto which it was consecrated.” He quoted the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester, who asked, “If we forsake popery as wicked, how shall we say their apparel becomes saints and professors of true holiness?” Davenport argued that the university gowns that Reformed clergy wore were more suitable for worship than the surplice, as black was a graver color than white, and the gowns, which reached to the ankles, were more seemly than the shorter surplice. Aside from the surplice, there were many other “superstitions, follies, toys, trifles, [and] anti-Christian ceremonies” which had been brought into the church during the Middle Ages. Many of these had been removed by the



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earlier reformers, but some yet remained. Davenport was critical of the use of bells to call people to worship or to mark special points in the liturgy— “bells have no particular use about religion,” but only for common usage, where “they serve in market and houses to give warning and call the people together.” Physical representations of the cross on which Christ was sacrificed were “an execrable superstition and an abominable idol.” This is why early English reformers had destroyed rood crosses and altar crosses. In the views of the reformers the Second Commandment “forbids images to be in the churches, though meant only for ornament and not for worship.” The problem was that too many who came to church might end up worshipping such images as objects possessing power in themselves, which should therefore “ought to be taken out with detestation, demolished, defaced, broken, or torn.” If a “crucifix do stand upon the communion table, not to be worshipped but a means of remembrance of Christ’s death and merits (which use is taught to preserve it from abuse), yet godly men judge it unlawful, because though the law hinder the outward work, yet the motion of the mind cannot be hindered. . . . A man should not administer communion there except it is removed.” It was not only physical crosses that the godly objected to. A key concern was the practice whereby clergy were expected to make the sign of the cross over an infant in administering the sacrament of baptism. For some, “the sign in the air” was no different than “the figure in gold, and for the same reason, the cross of wood.” Though a “transient sign” or “fantasy,” “the cross is fastened in the apprehension and permanent in the contemplation.” Its use led to “contemplative idolatry.” Yet Davenport conceded that there was a difference between the efforts “to profess Christianity by the sign of the cross and to teach Christianity by the sign of the cross. . . . The former is judged lawful (as [on] shrines, crowns, coins, and banners); . . . the other unlawful as a means extraordinary, condemned in the 2nd commandment.” While generally moving toward a stand against the use of kneeling, surplices, crosses, and the practice of signing with the cross in baptism, Davenport was conflicted over whether these were merely inappropriate remnants of the Roman past or actually sinful. If the former, could they, as things indifferent, be commanded by the authorities? In general, he thought that church authorities (such as bishops and synods) could require obedience only in matters for which there was scriptural warrant. A lengthy section in the notebook was devoted to the “argument brought to prove the Church Governors may enjoin the use of indifferent decent things by order of law,”

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which seemed to have originated with Thomas Ball and which Davenport was engaging with. If part of the challenge for godly clergy was behaving in a way acceptable to the bishops, another part was retaining the support of their parishioners. Often the pressure from the pews to behave in a certain way was as great as that from the bishops. Davenport’s experiences at St. Stephen’s, a church with a strong lay vestry, may have influenced his shift to a position that in lesser matters believers must be free to believe or behave as they will. In his private notes Davenport argued for a strong separation between the powers of magistrates and ministers, and that in dealing with religious matters pastors should defer to their congregations. Respect for the authority of the lay members of the church would emerge as a key element of his outlook. While he continued to wrestle with conformity throughout his tenure at St. Stephen’s, much of his focus during those years was devoted to his pastoral ministry. The challenges began very quickly. Hardly had Davenport settled into the living when London was confronted with a major outbreak of plague. A hot and dry summer of 1624 was followed by an unusually warm and wet winter and spring. The Thames flooded in February, and Westminster Hall was inundated with over three feet of water, conditions that provided a breeding ground for the epidemic. By April 1625 there were twenty-six deaths from plague recorded in the city and its suburbs. Concerns that the city might be on the verge of a major outbreak led to the postponement of the pageantry marking the accession of Charles I. The concerns were more than justified. It is believed that the plagues that afflicted England at this time were initially transmitted by the bite of fleas carried on rats. In the rare cases when the bacterium directly entered the bloodstream, death rapidly followed, with few external symptoms. More commonly, the infection spread from the skin throughout the body. On occasion, when it reached the lungs, the disease could be spread to others from respiratory droplets. Symptoms of the plague included high fever, headaches, and the appearance of buboes on the lymph nodes, particularly in the groin and armpits. Hemorrhaging could lead to delirium.24 Isolation was the way authorities had learned to prevent the spread of the disease. The London aldermen published orders that “in every house infected, the master, mistress, or governor and the whole family therein at the time of such infection shall remain continually, without departing out of the same, and with the doors and windows . . . shut” for twenty-eight days



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after the last death. The churchwardens were to identify “one or more sober and discreet women” to be “providers and deliverers of necessaries for the infected houses.” “Over the door of every house infected, in a place prominent and plain for them that pass by to see it, the clerk or sexton of the parish” was to post a sign with the words “Lord have mercy upon us” and a red cross affixed to the structure.25 Plague was, of course, considered providential. The church authorities published A Forme of Common Prayer, Together with an Order of Fasting: For the Averting of God’s Heavy Visitation upon the Many Places of This Kingdom and for Drawing Down of His Blessings on Us (1625). On July 2 Davenport joined with the city’s other clergy in leading his parish in the first of many days of fast appointed to beseech God’s mercy on England.26 Over the summer thousands fled the capital, so that, as one observer put it, “if one shop be open, sixteen in a row stand shut up together.”27 “How many goodly streets, full of beautiful and costly houses, have now few people or none at all,” that observer asked, going on to write that “infection hath shut up, from the beginning of June to the middle of July, almost four thousand doors. Four thousand red crosses [indicating plague sites] have frighted the inhabitants.”28 “Death walks in every street,” and so great was the toll that “many church yards (for want of room) . . . are compelled to dig graves like little cellars, piling up forty or fifty in a pit.”29 Another diarist noted how “God swept away whole families, and taking fifteen or sixteen out of some houses, leaving one or two in the house.”30 William Kiffin was a young man at the time and later recalled how “that great plague . . . in the city of London . . . swept away my relations and, being myself but nine years of age, left me with six plague sores upon my body. Nothing but death was looked for by all about me.”31 Writing about the plague of 1665 that he himself had survived, the novelist Daniel Defoe captured some of the fear and panic that would have permeated Davenport’s London as well. “Sorrow and sadness sat upon every face, and though some part were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and as we saw it apparently coming on, so everyone looked on himself, and his family, as in the utmost danger.” It was in the homes that had been afflicted and thus shut up “that we heard the most dismal shrieks and outcries of the poor people, terrified and even frightened to death by the sight of the condition of their dearest relations, and by the terror of being imprisoned as they were.” In those afflicted, the disease “was indeed very horrible in itself,” with “swelling in the neck or groin [which] . . . grew so painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture; and some not able to

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bear the torment, threw themselves out at windows, or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away.” Some mothers, terrified of what would come, murdered their children lest they catch and succumb to the plague. The carts carrying the dead to the mass graves were a constant reminder of the toll the plague was taking. But things were worse in St. Stephen’s, a parish known “for a great number of alleys and thoroughfares . . . into which no carts could come, and where they were obliged to fetch the bodies a very long way. . . . Here they went with a kind of handbarrow, and laid the dead bodies on it, and carried them out to the carts.”32 In 1625 many of the clergy succumbed to concerns for their own lives and joined the exodus from the city, leading one who stayed to complain of his peers that “many physicians of the soul fly the city, and their sick patients want those heavenly medicines which they were tied to give them.”33 Another critic of those who fled argued that “a good minister is the common good’s. He is not his own but the people’s.”34 It appeared that the puritan clergy showed the greater dedication in remaining in the city. As Defoe would later put it, “It required a steady courage and a strong faith . . . to venture to come to church and perform the office of a minister to a congregation, of whom he had reason to believe many of them were actually infected with the plague, and to do this every day, or twice a day, as in some places was done.”35 The bishops provided special prayers for deliverance in 1625 that Davenport and the other clergy were expected to lead their parishioners in using. In addition, a weekly fast was to be held on Wednesdays until the threat was removed. William Chibald, rector of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey on Old Fish Street, was one of those who remained in the city. The plague struck his household. He lost to the disease “a good servant and good child, and a good curate, my faithful helper in the ministry.” As a result of the quarantine regulations, he was therefore “shut up in my churchyard, and by this means I may not . . . go abroad, either to the house of God to teach my people, or to my friends’ houses to see how they do.” So he took up his pen and wrote A Cordial of Comfort (1625), which was rushed through the press to counsel those who could not hear him preach.36 There were others who stayed as well, including William Crashawe, who wrote about how he walked “hourly through the valley of the shadow of death, burying forty, fifty, sometimes sixty a day.”37 Some of the clergy who stayed at their posts died. Davenport, who survived, was one of those “worthy ministers” who had “been and are zealous in praying and preaching for repentance and perseverance that their throats are grown horse, their bodies



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weak, and their health impaired.”38 Before this particular outbreak of the plague subsided, more than 35,000 had perished in London and its outlying parishes, 350 in the parish of St. Stephen’s alone.39 One account of the plague, Salomons Pest-House, or Tower-Royall, Newly Re-edified, was written at the time, though not printed till 1630. Authored by “J. D.” it has sometimes been attributed to Davenport. The author’s focus is not on the sufferings themselves but on what lessons should be learned from the affliction. In it the author lashes out at the “superstitious papists, who in the time of plague run to . . . sticks and stones, metals and papers, angels and saints, and principally to Saint Sebastian, unto whom with their families they run to be preserved.” For true Christians, the “safe place, whither we may go without danger, and where we may abide safe, and dwell without danger” is God himself—“Jehovah is a safe harbor.” The author of the prefatory letter “To the Reader” testified that the author was one of the “worthy ministers” who had remained in the city and ministered to his flocks.40 Although it is impossible to prove that Davenport was the author, it can be noted that there were few if any other clergy with those initials who remained in London during the plague.41 In April 1626 the vestry of the parish voted a gift of thanks to Davenport for his services “during the time of the visitation of sickness.”42 In the aftermath of the plague, Davenport’s pastoral efforts would have settled into a routine. As rector he attended the quarterly meetings of the select vestry which supervised the parish affairs. Among his allies on the vestry were Sir Maurice Abbott, the archbishop’s brother; Sir Thomas Wroth, a fellow member of the Virginia Company and brother-in-law of Sir Nathaniel Rich; and Theophilus Eaton, whom Davenport had known in Coventry. Following his family’s departure from Coventry, Eaton had been apprenticed to a master in the cloth trade in London. Having learned his trade he was admitted to the Eastland Company, a corporation of merchants that held the monopoly on England’s trade with the Baltic. Theophilus prospered and eventually became a deputy governor of the company, representing its interests in Copenhagen. During the 1610s and early 1620s he served as an agent in negotiating trade matters between King James I and Denmark’s Christian IV.43 In 1624 he was employed by the company as its commissioner in an effort to persuade the officials of the city of Danzig to repeal recent legislation regarding the sealing of cloth imported from England.44 Following the death of his first wife, in 1627 Eaton married Anne Lloyd Yale, daughter of the bishop of Chester and the widow of David Yale, and he purchased a home

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in the parish of St. Stephen’s that had belonged to Sir Richard Saltonstall. Eaton soon assumed an important role in parish affairs. Davenport served the parish in a variety of other functions. He was one of the feoffees (trustees) that managed the parish property. Together with other church leaders he engaged in discussions with the Mercers Company and other city guilds about the state of properties that they owned in Birds Alley and that were inhabited by the poor. He worked with the parish overseers of the poor to alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate members, and he conducted negotiations for the purchase of an almshouse. In 1629 the vestry voted to make a gutter to divert water that was reaching and spoiling the coal that the parish stored for the use of the needy. On numerous occasions special funds were allocated for the relief of the poor. In 1630 the parish took steps to purchase “the bowling alley in White’s alley” from the Clothworkers Company for the erection of an almshouse. The churchwardens’ accounts also reveal a concern for the fabric of the church. In Davenport’s first year they paid for “changing the communion table, and for a chest, and for mending a pew.” A few months after his induction the vestry agreed to designate the use of one door on the south side of the church “for the use of Mr. Davenport and the parishioners,” as opposed to others who would come to hear him.45 Davenport was opposed to church bells, and in April 1626 the vestry “agreed [that] the great bell to be taken down out of the steeple” and melted down for uses to be determined by the churchwardens.46 Over the following years a new pew was built and furnished for the use of the rector and his wife.47 A clockmaker was engaged to make a new clock for the church. Davenport’s pastoral duties included the administration of the sacraments, preaching twice on Sundays and once during the week, visiting the parishioners, and catechizing. This involved presiding over seventy or eighty baptisms per year, twenty-five or more marriages, and as many as seventy burials.48 The forms for the administration of the sacraments were set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. In Hilton, Davenport had stressed the importance of believers coming to the communion table. As rector of St. Stephen’s, he was concerned with making sure that those who came were worthy of the sacrament. Like most London parishes, communion tokens were provided for those who were eligible. This served at least two purposes. Men and women were required by law to receive the sacrament in their parish church, and this was a means of keeping visitors from participating. The church also required yearly com-



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munion, and tokens were a way of keeping track of who fulfilled that obligation. It is also possible that Davenport used the distribution of tokens to examine the spiritual fitness of those who presented themselves. As for the administration of the sacrament, there is no reason to doubt that at least until the early 1630s Davenport required parishioners to receive communion while kneeling. Church law required Davenport to administer baptism to all infants who were presented to him, using the rite provided in the Book of Common Prayer. In later years, when in Amsterdam, he insisted that he be allowed to test the understanding and belief of the parents before baptizing a child. While English laws did not allow him to refuse the sacrament to any, it is possible that he insisted on discussing with the parents and sponsors their own faith and understanding. If he felt uncomfortable baptizing a particular child, he might have left the task to a curate or other substitute minister. Church court records reveal at least one case in which another clergyman officiated for him in a baptism at St. Stephen’s.49 As a London pastor, Davenport encountered fellow clergy in various contexts. One of these was Sion College. Sion had been founded under the terms of the will of the puritan clergyman Thomas White, who died in 1624. A dissolved medieval hospital was acquired and transformed into a complex which included an almshouse, a library, and chambers for students. All of London’s clergy’s were made fellows of the college. To further White’s goal of helping the clergy to “maintain . . . love in conversing together,” the endowment provided for four Latin sermons a year to be preached to the gathered fellows, who would then remain together for a dinner. The college was an example of the use of conferencing and dialogue to strive for greater religious understanding and unity. The library was also a significant resource for the clergy, and a place where informal contacts could take place as well. Davenport’s friend Thomas Worrall of St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate was one of the early governors of the college. In the 1640s Sion College would become a vital center for the city’s Presbyterians, and it is likely that in the late 1620s and the 1630s it was an important place for puritan clerical conferencing, a place where Davenport and others could discuss the theological and practical questions that they encountered in their ministry.50 Preaching, of course, was at the heart of that ministry. Davenport continued to prepare thoroughly. He attracted a growing audience, so that in 1629 the vestry approved the construction of a new gallery along the south side of the church to seat the growing numbers coming to the sermons.

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Among the challenges he faced was offering support for those who already believed themselves to be saved while providing guidance for those who were still hoping for God’s grace, some of whom would never receive it.51 No notebook survives with Davenport’s own copies of his sermons (such as we have for Hilton), but there are some other sources that shed light on his preaching. Notebooks kept by laypeople record sermons at St. Stephen’s by Davenport as well as by visiting clergy. This indicated that Davenport participated in the practice of exchanging pulpits. Robert Keayne, a prosperous London merchant who would later emigrate to Massachusetts, was an avid sermon gadder and kept a record of the sermons he heard. A notebook for 1627–1628 survives in which he included two sermons he heard Davenport preach, as well as sermons at St. Stephen’s by Richard Sibbes, Cornelius Burgess, William Benn, and a “Mr. Hide.”52 St. Stephen’s was one of only two London churches where Richard Sibbes chose to preach as a visitor.53 The first of Davenport’s sermons that Keayne recorded was on July 15, 1627, the text being 1 Peter 5:5—“Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” The sermon itself offers guidance to those in the pews. Humility was the “very foundation of the building of a Christian, without which we could do nothing, nor could be of use one to another. Pride is a bar.” Much of the focus (or at least what Keayne recorded, feeling perhaps that it spoke to him) is on the dangers of pride. “God resists proud persons,” Davenport warned; “God takes away the pride from men by raising up some person as proud as themselves to vex, oppress, and torment them as they have vexed and oppressed others.” In the case of magistrates and other public officials, “by taking their offices from them he will bring them down.” He warned ordinary believers that “contention in families between husband and wife is a sign of pride,” as were “contentions, and jars, and fallings out between friends and neighbors.” The other sermon of Davenport’s that Keayne recorded was a little less than a year later. It is one of the few known sermons in which Davenport addressed public affairs, and it is examined in the next chapter. The other sermons that we know something about were recorded in a notebook by someone who regularly attended St. Stephen’s. The fact that the notebook was part of the Kimbolton Castle library suggests that it was the property of Edward Montagu, Viscount Mandeville. Though his father, Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester, was a prominent government minister, Mandeville was closely connected to a number of puritan peers who were supporters of



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Davenport, such as the Earl of Warwick and Lord Saye and Sele. The clergyman Philip Nye has been identified as a protégé of Mandeville.54 Montagu’s notebook records sermons by Davenport, Sidrach Simpson, Philip Nye, Stephen Marshall, William Greenhill, Richard Sibbes, and a Mr. Davis—of these Simpson, Nye and Greenhill would become prominent English supporters of the New England Way during the 1640s and 1650s. In these sermons Davenport was focused on helping his parishioners to lead godly lives. Preaching on 1 Timothy 1:9, he stressed the need for mortification and humiliation. “God leaves his people to themselves and lets them fall into some open sin,” he said, “whereby they are brought to a greater humiliation.” In a series of sermons on 1 John 1 he again stressed the importance of acknowledging one’s sins. If “men will not hear his word,” and admit their sin, then “he will make them bear the rod.” “Another course God takes with men . . . is by casting great terrors upon their consciences so that they shall have no peace.” “Right confession” was more than the general confession contained in the liturgy, he warned. Men are too prone to deceit when it comes to their particular lust, and “they hide it as a sweet morsel under their tongue.” All sins must be confessed, he told his parishioners. Other sermons contain some of Davenport’s more detailed treatments of the nature of salvation. They are striking because they appear to violate King James’s 1622 “Directions to Preachers,” which forbade preaching “in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation, or of the universality of, efficacy, resistability or irresistibility of God’s grace.”55 Davenport talked of “the word of God having place in the heart” of believers. It was “a strong preservative against errors. If the word was in you,” he told his listeners, “you would not maintain such errors as those that are so directly against the word.” Faith rests on the word, and he castigated “the blasphemy of the papist against the scripture, who make it an imperfect rule.” He made it clear that man was saved by God’s eternal decrees. Elaborating on this, Davenport addressed common errors. When some “speak of an ineffectual decree of God, that God has decreed some men to life and yet leaves them to their own will to walk as they wish, how clear is the word against this.” When others “speak of temporary decrees, saying . . . that God has declared no one to salvation till after faith and repentance, how clear is the word against this.” When some “speak of mutable decrees of God, how clear the word is against this” as well; “the Lord knows who is his.” When some “say that a man is left in an equilibrio, to take or refuse, how clear is the word against this.” Some say that “a man of his own accord

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[can] receive grace—how contrary is this to the word.” He denied that a man could not “come certainly to know” his election. Signaling his adherence to the teachings of the Synod of Dort, he preached that if one was to accept the teaching of those who “say salvation is not so certain to us, but that a man who is justified may fall from his justification, what shall we say then but cross out the whole book of God!” Davenport went on to explain that sinfulness itself was not washed away by election. He condemned Catholics and others who claimed that “original sin is quick to wash away in baptism” and the distinction made by Catholics between mortal and venial sins. All are called to obey God’s law and natural reason may give some a “contemplative knowledge from which arises an ability to discourse of many positive truths that are in the word.” Such men may acquire enough “love and desire” to do good that they approach Christian behavior, but while there “is some luster, [there is] not light enough to overcome the darkness that is in them.” Only those who have the word of God implanted in them by saving grace can truly follow the path of godliness. In preaching on Job 19:25—“I know my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth”—Davenport talked of some of the fruits of salvation. “Justifying faith,” he said, “does both support the heart in affliction and also evidence to the heart the goodness of a man’s condition.” Those who are chosen “have received the earnest of the spirit . . . ; when the earnest is given the bargain is made.” Good works are from “the sanctifying graces of the spirit,” “the witness of the spirit.” The fruits of the spirit such as assurance are given “by diverse degrees, in some more, and in some less; and at diverse times. In some it might be at the beginning of conversion; sometimes after God has exercised his people under deep humiliation and afflictions; and sometimes when God hath great work for them to do; some in the midst of some great affliction, and sometimes God reserves it till a man’s death.” While Davenport stressed that it was God, through the Spirit, who saved man, he nevertheless urged men to “exercise” the faith that was planted in them. “It is the exercise of faith,” he said, “that increases assurance as the stirring up of the coals increases the flame.” The true Christian was to “grow in obedience and holiness. The more solid man’s obedience is, the more will be the increase of his assurance.” Elaborating on these themes in his next recorded sermon, Davenport stressed that true obedience to the word comes from “a right aim and intention, and a right intention is when a man looks at the glory of God and the pleasing of him.” The calling from God gives the elect “an illumination of



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their understanding, whereby they see sin otherwise than other men do,” and “an opening of their hearts, that is another impression made upon their spirits than there is upon the spirits of other men.” Aware of the rising antinomian tide in London, he also set straight “the libertines who in preaching the gospel take liberty to overthrow the precepts of the law.” The gospel is received aright,” he argued, “when it prevails to keep men from sin.” Pointing to the obligations of the elect to lead exemplary lives, he explained that “Those to whom he [God] is propounded effectually are changed unto his image, that is, the virtues of Christ are shown forth in them.” “The eyes of the world” were upon them, and “God is dishonored when you sin; and as God is dishonored, so the spirit of God is grieved by your sins more than by all the [other] sins in the world.” The fame of Davenport’s preaching drew many to hear him. The Warwickshire clergyman Thomas Duggard came to St. Stephen’s to hear Davenport.56 Reflecting on his life many years later, Hugh Peter wrote that as a young clergyman he had come to London “to ripen my studies, not intending to preach at all, where I attended Dr. Gough, Sibs, and Davenports ministry, with others; and I hope with some profit.”57 Robert Keayne was but one of many laymen who came to Coleman Street to hear Davenport. In March 1629 Sir Thomas Wroth invited Sir Robert Harley to a “Lenten dinner” and suggested that they could “go together to Mr. Damport’s in the morning, where I will provide a seat for you.”58 William Kiffin, who would achieve fame as a Baptist preacher, came to London and in 1629 was apprenticed to John Lillburne. He recalled that he had little interest in religion till he wandered into St. Antholin’s and heard a sermon that stirred him. Shortly after, “It pleased God, after some time, that I heard Mr. Davenport, in Coleman Street. He preached upon that text, 1 John 1:7, ‘And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleaneth us from all sin.’ He showed the efficacy of the blood of Christ both to pardon and to cleanse from sin; and answered many objections, which the unbelieving heart of man brings, against the full satisfaction which Jesus Christ hath made for sinners. I found many of them were such as I had made in my own heart; such as the sense of unworthiness, and willingness to be better before I would come to Christ for life, with many other of the like kind. This sermon was of great use to my soul. I thought I found my heart greatly to close with the riches and freeness of grace which God held forth to poor sinners. I found my fears to vanish, and my heart filled with love to Jesus Christ. I saw sin viler than ever, and felt my heart more abhorring it.”59

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Publication was a means that enabled many clergy to reach out to an audience beyond their own parish, and Davenport first appeared in print with a twenty-five page note “To the Reader,” which prefaced Henry Scudder’s The Christian’s Daily Walk in Holy Security and Peace.60 Scudder was the brother-in-law of the noted puritan preacher William Whately and a member of a local combination of clergy in Oxfordshire. On at least one occasion Scudder preached from Davenport’s pulpit at St. Stephen’s, delivering a sermon on self-denial.61 The Christian’s Daily Walk was a work of practical divinity intended to guide believers in how to lead a godly life. Davenport’s prefatory letter begins by stressing that godly living is living to God, who is “most pure, perfect, universal, primary, unchangeable, communicative, desirable, and delightfully good; the efficient pattern and utmost end of all good, without whom there is neither natural, moral, nor spiritual good in any creature.” True happiness, he suggested, comes from being attuned to God’s will. “Let a man be in peace with God, and enjoy the influence of heavenly graces and comforts in his soul,” Davenport wrote, and “he can rejoice in tribulation, sing out in prison, solace himself in death, and comfort his soul against principalities and powers, tribulation and anguish, height and depth, things present and things to come.” He referenced the Marian martyr John Bradford, who “compared the way of religion as a narrow bridge over a large and deep river, from which the least turning away is dangerous.” But Davenport acknowledged that “though all God’s children travel to one country,” they do not all travel “with the same agility and speed; they all shoot at one mark, yet not with the same dexterity and strength.” General directions such as provided by Scudder are “never too often taught, . . . never sufficiently learned.” In arguing for the use of such advice Davenport demonstrated a far greater mastery of Christian writings than revealed in his Hilton sermons, referring to the epistles written by the apostles; to works of church fathers such as Chrysostom, Athanasius, Antiochus, Basil, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and others; Reformation era writers such as Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, and Drusius; and contemporary authors of similar works such as Richard Rogers, Stephen Egerton, John Downham, Robert Bolton, and Bishop Joseph Hall. Through these years, as he served St. Stephen’s, Davenport also became involved in campaigns to reform the national church and to support the international Protestant cause. To ease the burden he bore, the church vestry provided him with financial assistance to hire a curate to assist him in the parish duties. Among those whose names can be found in the record were Francis Bright, John Williamson, and Timothy Hood.

Ch a pt e r 6

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n 1625 Davenport emerged as an important player in the crusade to advance Protestantism nationally and internationally. This came as a new monarch, Charles I, had ascended the throne and the gulf between the godly and the establishment had begun to widen. James I had disappointed the hopes for reform when he rejected most of the overtures made by puritan spokesmen at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. However, the king’s threat to harry puritans out of the land proved more bark than bite. Pressure for unquestioning subscription to the Three Articles of religion and efforts to enforce complete conformity to the Prayer Book ceremonies were sporadic at best, and they varied from diocese to diocese. James appeared a committed Calvinist, a position reinforced by England’s participation in the Synod of Dort. But godly concerns about the country’s direction began to grow during the later years of James’s reign, particularly over the foreign policy he pursued. The Thirty Years’ War erupted on the Continent in 1618, when Frederick, the Elector Palatine and James’s son-in-law, accepted the throne of Bohemia from Protestant rebels who had deposed the strongly Catholic Austrian Hapsburg ruler, Archduke Ferdinand. The Bohemian Revolt soon expanded to become what was, in effect, a struggle for the religious future of the Holy Roman Empire, and perhaps all Christendom. The Spanish Hapsburgs rallied to support their German kinsmen, which threatened the security of the Protestant Netherlands. Most Englishmen expected King James to actively support the Protestant cause, but he resolutely refused to engage England in the struggle militarily, hoping to protect his son-in-law’s interest through diplomacy. Imperial forces crushed the Protestants at the battle of the White Mountain in 1620. Frederick was driven from Bohemia 83

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and the Palatinate. Protestant liberties were suppressed in areas that fell to the Catholic advance. The English king, meanwhile, continued negotiations to marry his son Charles to a Spanish princess. James became increasingly angered at clergy who preached or wrote against his failure to support the Protestant cause and against the Spanish match, and at members of the 1621 Parliament who raised the same concerns. Bishops such as Richard Neile and Lancelot Andrewes, who were trying to move the church toward a modification of rigid Calvinism and more elaborate ceremonies that would reflect the “beauty of holiness,” took advantage of the situation to turn James against his clerical critics. In 1622 the king issued his “Directions to Preachers,” forbidding them to touch upon matters of faith or obedience in their sermons. The king followed this up with a proclamation on popish books and “seditious puritanical books and pamphlets.”1 The orders appeared not to be applied impartially, however, and the godly were infuriated when the king gave support to Richard Montagu for a 1624 book that denied that predestination had ever been a doctrine of the Church of England. When Charles I followed his father to the throne in 1625, things became worse for the godly. While the young man had not married a Spanish bride, he had wed a French princess, Henrietta Maria, who was allowed to have Catholic services performed at the court. Among the Catholic clergy who were part of her entourage was Father Franciscus à Sancta Clara, formerly known as Christopher Davenport. More important, Charles was himself committed to the faction of bishops who were ceremonialists and who were accused of Arminianism by puritans. By the mid-1620s William Laud was condemning the decisions of the Synod of Dort.2 Charles’s appointment of Laud to be bishop of London was a strong indication of the direction the king wished the church to move in. Charles also seemed determined to follow his father’s reluctance to engage England in the religious struggle on the Continent. The godly, on their part, increasingly saw the war as a climactic struggle, perhaps with apocalyptic significance. Faced with growing threats to religion at home and abroad and the king’s refusal to deal with them—perhaps even his sympathy for the popish forces—godly clergy and laymen sought unofficial means to defend God’s cause. As the situation continued to worsen over the following decade, some would explore seeking refuge abroad. During this period Davenport was brought gradually but inexorably into a public opposition to the crown, the bishops, and their policies. His first clash with authority came as a result of his involvement in one of the most



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significant puritan efforts of this period to reform the church. Throughout England there were many churches (once belonging to religious orders that had been dissolved at the Reformation) in which the right to appoint a clergyman (impropriation) was owned by a private citizen or group. The Feoff­ ees for Impropriations was a group organized by Davenport and others to raise money for the purchase of such rights. The group planned to appoint godly, preaching divines to the livings. Tired of waiting for the government to establish preachers in all the parishes of England, these puritans were taking their own steps to establish a godly kingdom.3 The Feoffees for Impropriations initially included the London clergymen Richard Stock, rector of All Hallows, Bread Street; Richard Sibbes, preacher at Gray’s Inn; Charles Offspring, rector of St. Antholin’s; and Davenport. When Stock died during the group’s first year of operations, he was replaced by William Gouge. The clergy were joined by four lawyers and four prominent London laymen. A casting vote was provided with the addition of Rowland Heylyn, London alderman and sheriff. Others, such as the clergymen Hugh Peter, John Vicar, and Thomas Foxley, were closely associated with the group, soliciting contributions and proffering advice. At their first meeting the feoffees drew up a set of twenty orders to regulate their affairs. They stipulated that any money or property given to them be “employed for and towards the purchasing of impropriations for the maintenance of the preaching of the word of God.” Aware of the potential charges that might be laid against them, they took care to stipulate “that they shall not present any minister to be admitted and placed in any of their church livings, but such as are conformable to the discipline and doctrine in government of the Church of England.”4 Between 1625 and 1632 the feoffees raised more than £2,000 for the purchase of impropiations, as well as additional funds for special projects. Hugh Peter later claimed that by that “glorious work of buying in impropriations, . . . 40 or 50 preachers were maintained in the dark parts of this land.”5 William Prynne believed that if allowed to continue their labors, they “would have purchased in [the impropriations of ] most of the great towns and noted parishes.”6 Around 1628 they agreed to supervise a special endowment for supporting additional lecturers at St. Antholin’s parish. Almost two hundred Londoners came together to raise more than £1,500 for the purpose. The feoffees would nominate and the parish vestry choose six morning lecturers, who, if they performed as expected, would after a few years be placed in parishes around the country controlled by the feoffees.

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Davenport committed considerable time to the enterprise, as the feoff­ ees initially met two or three times per term (referring to the three legal terms of the English calendar), usually in the home of one of the clergy or in the chambers of one of the legal members. By the end of their history they were meeting as often as twice a week in term time.7 They were also active outside of their meetings. Davenport, for example, solicited Michael Robarts to seek the help of the Irish primate Archbishop James Ussher in establishing a lectureship near Oxford.8 While the feoffees were focused on improving the quality of preaching in England, Davenport and his fellow clergy were also concerned with the defeats being suffered by Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War. It was this that led Davenport, Sibbes, Gouge, and Thomas Taylor of St. Mary Aldermanbury to address the problem of refugees from the conflict, writing a letter to raise relief funds in March 1627.9 The four authors expressed their concern for “the lamentable distress of two hundred and forty godly preachers with their wives and families, of about four score desolate widows, and sundry thousands of godly private persons . . . cast out of their houses and homes, out of their callings and countries, by the fury of the merciless papists in the upper Palatinate.” These men and women were forced to practice their faith “in woods and solitary places, not without continual fear of their lives.” They would be “very thankful for coarse bread and drink if they could get it.” Davenport and his fellow signatories urged Englishmen “as fellow feeling members of the same body of Jesus Christ” to contribute funds for the relief of this suffering until “some public means (which hereafter may be hoped) may be raised for their relief,” this being a slap at the inaction of King Charles. The authors assured those who would contribute that they knew “a sure and safe way whereby whatsoever is given shall undoubtedly come to their hands to whom it is intended.”10 Davenport had numerous contacts from whom he learned of the struggle on the Continent. His friend Sir Horace Vere commanded English volunteers in the struggle.11 Obadiah Sedgwick was a fellow Magdalen Hall graduate whom he had recommended to Vere as a chaplain for his troops.12 Davenport was also a friend of Samuel Balmford, who had been chaplain to the Veres and then became pastor of the English congregation at The Hague, where Queen Elizabeth, the widow of the defeated Frederick of the Palatinate, had taken up residence.13 Davenport was in touch with Cesar Calandrini, the Calvinist pastor of the Italian Protestant church in London, whom he may have been introduced to through John Prideaux. Calandrini



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had been a delegate at Dort and was in touch with numerous continental religious leaders.14 Davenport’s contacts would increase dramatically when Samuel Hartlib took up residence in the parish of St. Stephen’s in the summer of 1628. Hartlib was a native of Elbing, in western Poland, who was to become the center of an international network for the exchange of ideas on religion, education, science, and politics.15 At Merton College Henry Saville had made sure that students were introduced to new findings in the physical sciences, and Hartlib’s interest in those matters may have been one of the things that attracted Davenport to his new parishioner. At the time Hartlib took in some of the refugees from the Continent that Davenport and his fellow clergymen had expressed concern for, and he was likely one of the individuals who helped direct the funds to those in need on the Continent. Davenport himself took in a refugee, supporting Bernhard Decker, the son of a deceased professor of theology at the University of Heidelberg, whose mother had lost everything in the pillaging of that city.16 When William Laud became bishop of London in 1628, one of his first actions was to call the authors of the circular letter before the High Commission. This was a church court with broad latitude on what it could investigate and that could impose an oath compelling testimony even if it could incriminate the individual. Always jealous for his king’s power and authority, Laud evidently saw the circular letter as an effort by a private, and puritan, group to conduct foreign policy, as well as an implicit criticism of the government’s own actions. It was an example of clergy meddling in affairs that were none of their concern. As one contemporary reported it, the four distinguished clergy were brought before the court “as notorious delinquents, only for setting their hands to a certificate . . . testifying [to] the distressed condition of some poor ministers of the Palatinate and furthering a private contribution among charitable Christians for their relief.”17 Davenport, who had been afflicted by “a dangerous sickness” that incapacitated him for close to two weeks before Lent, was concerned about the summons. He reported to Lady Vere that “threatening” had been made against the four by “the new Bishop of London, Dr. Laud,” and that he “expect[ed] a fierce storm from the enraged spirit” of Laud and another, unspecified, bishop. He indicated that Laud “had a particular aim at me upon a former quarrel” and that he “expect[ed] ere long to be deprived of my pastoral charge in Coleman Street.”18 It is possible that the other complaint Davenport referred to had to do with a sermon he had preached on June 8 of that year.19 Charles I had called

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a parliament which assembled in March 1628. Many thought that this signified that the king was willing to embark on a new, more Protestant foreign policy and to redress some of his subjects’ political grievances. This would have been of interest in St. Stephen’s, which had been a center of opposition in the city to the Forced Loan of 1627, a controversial measure for raising royal revenue.20 Hope grew in May when the king accepted the parliamentary Petition of Right, which reconfirmed what most English people considered ancient liberties. It was in this context that Davenport had preached that there was “a sudden and great cause of rejoicing in a needful time.” “When we seemed to be without hope,” he said, there was reason for rejoicing “in the union of king and parliament, and their agreement.” There should be “joy and thankfulness by ringing bells and making bonfires,” but that was “no more than heathen men may do,” and so he urged his listeners to “real and spiritual expressions of your joy and thankfulness.” Davenport hoped that the new agreement between king and Parliament might lead to aid for the Protestant cause abroad. Citing Canticles 9, he said, “We have a little sister that hath no breasts,” and asked “what shall we do for her?” He called on those who heard him to be “compassionate to the miseries of the churches of Bohemia, France, the Palatinate, and other places.” Over the previous years it had seemed like “a heavy judgment when an evil spirit went out to sow discord and debate between the king and people,” and it was “no small mercy that the heart of the king and his subjects was united.” The change “was so sudden that we looked not for it, but expected the contrary.” It was sin “that brought these curses upon us, that made us a scorn to all nations, that broke our ships at sea and brought misery on us at home; our sins have hindered our parliaments.” Thankfulness at God’s intervention was not enough—“Let the land look out to their sins and every man see what is to be reformed, knowing that sin in them has caused” their past burdens. “Let ministers [and every] particular person,” he urged, “say that my oaths, my pride, my drunkenness, my covetousness has helped pull down this judgment. Now let the Parliament look to discharge that trust committed to them for a reformation of the land, reforming grievances and sins.” Whether or not it was this sermon that had irked Laud, we do know that the king and Bishop Laud were not fond of pulpit political commentary of any sort. And it would not have helped Davenport when the happy union he had praised collapsed after Parliament petitioned the king against the Duke of Buckingham. Davenport wrote to Lady Vere that it was only a day after



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Parliament was “unhappily concluded without any satisfying contentment to the King or commonwealth” that Laud took action against the four authors of the letter.21 It would not have helped Davenport that St. Stephen’s was the site of protests against the duke, as it had been against the Forced Loan.22 Davenport’s fears of what would transpire before the High Commission were not realized at this time. In keeping with his then policy of dealing moderately with such leading puritan clergy, Laud merely reprimanded the four clergy. But the episode clearly demonstrated both Laud’s close oversight of what was happening in his diocese and his willingness to use the machinery of church justice to put an end to puritan efforts.23 However much Davenport may have been chastened by his experience with the High Commission, he did not muzzle himself. In June 1629 he preached to the annual meeting of the London Artillery Company in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft. The Artillery Company was a group that taught and exercised men that would command the London Trained Bands, the citizen militia who provided the backbone of the nation’s military in time of war.24 In his dedicatory preface to the published edition of the sermon, Davenport showed his sensitivity to recent criticism, asking, “Who am I that I should hope to be exempted from the common condition of preachers and writers, that is, to be smitten with the tongues of those who account nothing worthy acceptance, but the fruit of their own brain?” Undaunted by how people might misinterpret his message, he set forth the rationale for military service. Early in the sermon he offered his understanding of the origins of civil society, tracing the banding together of fathers who were concerned with the safety of their families banding into villages, which joined to form larger units till the nation was formed to promote the common wealth of all. Every such commonwealth required laws, “for men naturally are as lions, leopards, wolves, asps, and cockatrices by reason of those inward lusts which maintain enmity against God, fight against the soul, and raise wars and contentions among men.” Satan preys upon these lusts, enticing men to battle against one another. “Religion and obedience to God [must] bind men to all lawful and possible means of safety.” It was the duty of kings to encourage their subjects to learn how to defend themselves. Raising the objection that Christ had told Peter to put up his sword, he argued that “though the end of Christ his coming was to reconcile things in heaven and things in earth . . . , yet so long as Satan works in the children of disobedience, and so long as any remnant of sin is in the heart of any, there will be a necessity and lawfulness of war, and of this care to prepare for it.”

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Davenport praised the assembled company for having improved the preparation of those who would lead England’s forces, and undoubtedly he won their thanks by urging the king and the London civic authorities to do more to further the company’s efforts. He pointed out that their success had led to other cities such as Coventry, Chester, and Norwich initiating similar enterprises. He argued that such efforts were especially important at that time because “were there no danger at home, yet the difficulties of our brethren abroad should quicken us to the use of all means whereby we may be enabled to succor them.” Clearly arguing for English intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, he stated, “If a neighbor’s ox or horse is in a ditch, we will even run to help it out, saith our savior; much more if his house be on fire; most of all if the danger be the loss of their country, or religion, families, lives and all.” Yet he also raised the question of “our own dangers,” stating that “so long as our sins, our crying sins remain, so long as the abominations that provoke God, are not taken from the midst of us, we can have no security, no assured peace.” In the closing portion of the sermon Davenport cautioned that military prowess alone was not sufficient. They must, like all Englishmen, “search out and purge out the sins that provoke God to wrath” such as “profaneness, covetousness, pride, hypocrisy, corrupt self-love,” and everything else contrary to God’s will. And they must be stout in prayer as well as arms, for “prayer is to every piece of spiritual armor what exercise is to arms and weapons, . . . whereby Christian soldiers are fitted to service. . . . The more exercise, the more skill.” God had shown his love of England in 1588 “when the prayers of God’s people prevailed to raise the winds which scattered that invincible Armada.” Concluding, Davenport urged them to exercise both their arms and their prayers, so “that everyone might say, these are the Lord’s worthies, Christian soldiers indeed.”25 Davenport’s concern for international Protestantism was also reflected in his support for John Dury’s efforts to unite Christendom. Dury was the son of a Scottish minister who had been banished in 1606 and had settled in the Netherlands as minister to Scottish and English Presbyterians in Leiden. The younger Dury studied and traveled on the Continent and, following his own ordination, became committed to the ideal of uniting Protestants and ultimately all Christendom. In 1627 he was minister to the English Company of Merchant Adventurers in Elbing, Poland, and there he met and befriended Samuel Hartlib and Jan Amos Comenius. Hartlib was a kindred spirit in his commitment to religious unity, and the two also embraced the



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idea of creating a utopian community. Dury and Hartlib were both attracted to the efforts of Comenius to promote universal educational reforms that included new schools, new teaching methods, and even a new language.26 Davenport became involved in these efforts shortly after Hartlib moved to London. Hartlib may have helped to organize the distribution of the relief raised by the circular letter. Hartlib and Davenport also committed themselves to provide spiritual as well as material aid to continental Protestants, planning a publication campaign to make religious literature more available. A group of individuals including Davenport, Richard Saltonstall, Brampton Gurdon, John Humfry and Sir Richard Knightley “in brotherly love and the tenderest bowels of Christian compassion” pledged varying amounts of financial support “in regard of the bleeding estates of our brethren in other reformed churches . . . to translate or compose such seasonable treatises as their present necessities require.”27 The idea was to make popular works of puritan practical divinity more accessible on the Continent. There is little evidence that this specific effort succeeded, although various such works of puritan practical divinity were published on the Continent, including Henry Scudder’s The Christian’s Daily Walk, translated into German and published in Frankfurt in 1636. Davenport’s commitment to advancing the causes of international Protestantism and religious unity was recognized by Dury, who commended him as “earnest and judicious in this work.”28 By the end of the decade Hartlib was serving as Dury’s English agent in organizing support for these efforts as well as for the educational reforms of Comenius. Among those whom he reported to be “very able and sufficient for all manner of controversies” and “very stirring and wondrously active to promote any cause that tends for the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ” were John Cotton of Boston, Philip Nye, and John Davenport.29 Manuscripts circulated freely among the members of this network, as when Davenport borrowed a copy of Dury’s notes on Colossians.30 In May 1631 Dury received Archbishop Abbott’s permission to gain signatures in support of a document—the Instrumentum Theologorum Anglorum—that supported his schemes for union, solicited prayers for peace between all Protestants, and pledged support for the scheme to translate works of practical divinity. Davenport signed the document, as did his fellow feoffees Richard Sibbes and William Gouge, and many other godly clergy with whom he was associated, including Philip Nye, Thomas Goodwin, Sidrach Simpson, Thomas Taylor, and Henry Whitefield.31

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As the Laudian offensive against the godly progressed, a growing number of puritans in various parts of the kingdom had begun to consider leaving England as a way to escape their increasingly difficult situation. Emigration, of course, had long been a strategy for Englishmen persecuted for their faith. William Tyndale had fled to the Continent in the reign of Henry VIII to continue work on his English translation of the Bible. Hundreds of lay men and women as well as clergy had waited out the reign of Queen Mary in exile on the Continent. Thomas Cartwright had spent time in Geneva in the 1570s following a controversy he stirred at Cambridge with sermons that advocated reforms in the government of the church. In the 1610s William Ames found a career in the Netherlands when he could no longer accept the compromises necessary to remain in good standing in the Church of England. For all of these men, and for those facing similar choices in the 1620s and 1630s, the decision to leave England was not an easy one. Many worried that God’s will might be that they remain and suffer for their faith—after all, the popular name for John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of the Christian Religion was the “Book of Martyrs,” not the “Book of Those Who Fled!” For clergymen, emigration meant abandoning one’s flock, though the flock might be similarly deprived if its shepherd was imprisoned or executed. While the price paid by exiles was far less than that paid by martyrs, there is no question that leaving England entailed considerable hardship. The clergyman who went into exile left his friends and some of his family, which meant cutting himself off from the types of face-to-face encounters in which one learned news and gossip, and from which one received comfort and support. There were economic as well as social consequences. The exile also abandoned his job and often had to leave much of his material possessions to seek a precarious living in an alien culture.32 Each individual had to wrestle with the question of whether God blessed or condemned the decision, and this was one of the most hotly debated issues within the puritan community during the 1620s and 1630s. Some of the godly condemned those who left their posts as deserters who were no better than the clergy who had fled London to save themselves from the plague during its various ravages. What were the consequences of such action for the godly sheep thus abandoned by their pastoral shepherds and for the cause of reform in the nation as a whole? Samuel Ward stayed in his post at Ipswich and tried to persuade others to do likewise, arguing that “if such as you, and all the Godly of the land because of persecution should presently



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leave, . . . what do you think will become of our poor native Country? It will be even as Sodom and Gomorrah.”33 One wonders, however, if some of these criticisms weren’t spurred by the uneasy consciences of those who did compromise their values to hold on to their livings. Ward was one of those who was able to hold on. Many who had been willing to make compromises to stay and nourish their flocks found it increasingly difficult to continue to do so. New national imperatives and changing local circumstances meant that staying would require them to accept what was unacceptable; as John Cotton put it, God had “shut a door against us from ministering to him and his people in our . . . congregations.”34 For those looking to emigrate in the early seventeenth century, there were three principal options: Ireland, the Netherlands, and America. During Elizabeth’s reign the Protestant Church of Ireland achieved a reputation for being better reformed than the Church of England. In 1615 James Ussher played a key role in the preparation of the Irish Articles, which spelled out the beliefs of the Irish Protestant church. Incorporating the Lambeth Articles (which Queen Elizabeth had refused to give official status to for England), the Irish Articles were strongly anti-Catholic and thoroughly Calvinist. Ussher’s appointment as bishop of Meath was applauded by his puritan friends, and in 1625 Lady Mary Vere and Sir Edward Conway were successful in lobbying for his appointment as archbishop of Armagh, the primate of the Irish church.35 Yet even as more English puritans were considering emigration there, the attractiveness of that haven began to diminish. In the mid-1620s King James decided to assert his authority over the Irish church. Attempts to appease Catholics increased following the accession of Charles I. Clearly, Ireland would not be a secure refuge from the new policies proposed by anti-Calvinist bishops and embraced by King Charles. There is no indication that Davenport ever considered it. The Netherlands had an even stronger history as a refuge for puritans, which is examined in the next chapter in the context of Davenport’s stay there. But as he and others would find out, that refuge, too, was increasingly uncertain. By the late 1620s it was America that was attracting puritan interest. Not only a possible refuge, America was a religious frontier that drew on the transnational impulses of puritanism. The roots of what would be known as puritan New England are to be found in the Dorchester Adventurers, formed in 1623 by West Country investors inspired by John White. White was the puritan rector of Holy Trinity Church in Dorchester who had labored successfully to introduce a regime of godly discipline and charity in

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that community. The Dorchester Adventurers planned an economic venture, centered on the establishment of communities on the New England coast that would supply the fishing fleet with provisions, though lip service at least was given to the aspiration of converting natives, and some of the profits were intended to serve the needs of the Dorchester community. When the Dorchester Company’s fishing enterprises struggled, White began to consider the possibility of using the land to create a puritan haven. John Humfry, the company’s treasurer, embraced the idea, and the two men began to reach out for new support. In 1628 the Earl of Warwick, acting as president of the Council for New England, granted a patent to White, Humfry, and their investors as the New England Company, which group acquired the New World holdings of the Dorchester Adventurers. It is clear that the plan was to establish a puritan refuge, and the new company dispatched John Endecott to take control of the surviving settlements. Davenport was well informed about colonial matters. Along with his fellow parishioners Sir Maurice Abbott and Sir Thomas Wroth, Davenport was a member of the Virginia Company. Wroth was also a member of the Council for New England, as were parishioners Sir Richard Saltonstall, Samuel Aldersey, George Foxcroft, and Theophilus Eaton. William Benn, who had preached at St. Stephen’s was invited to Dorchester by John White and became his ally in the town’s ministry. 36 When the New England Company reorganized as the Massachusetts Bay Company, Davenport, along with fellow parishioners Saltonstall, Aldersey, Foxcroft, Eaton, Robert Crane, and Edmund White were among the founders, and Aldersey served as the first treasurer for that company. Thomas Barnardiston was another supporter of the venture with a residence in the parish. Owen Rowe was yet another member of St. Stephen’s who was interested in puritan overseas ventures.37 Davenport’s involvement in the Massachusetts enterprise has been underappreciated. He contributed £50, and his friend Theophilus Eaton invested £100 in the New England Company.38 His name was not included on the Massachusetts Bay Company charter granted by King Charles because, as he later explained, “I desired it might be left out, lest the then Bishop of London [Laud], who was of the Privy Council, should have an ill eye on me.”39 Yet as he recollected many years later, “in expenses for any help to promote the work, in the first beginnings of it, I bore my part merely for the service of Christ, and for the help of his people, I not knowing that ever I should remove into these parts.”40



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One of Davenport’s first endeavors on behalf of the company was to write to John Dury, inviting his friend to serve as the minister to the new colony, a “work . . . of greater importance for God’s glory in the public good than a particular congregation can afford.” Dury thanked him for the offer but declined.41 Following Dury’s decision, the company considered Davenport’s friend Hugh Peter, who had also contributed to the New England Company and attended some of its early meetings. Peter, however, appears to have committed himself to the Netherlands. John Endecott had been sent over to take control of the surviving Dorchester Company settlements in June 1628. In February of the following year the governor of the newly chartered Massachusetts Bay Company, Matthew Craddock, wrote to Endecott informing him that Peter would be unavailable but indicating that there was a plan to send over two clergymen, who would be approved by John White of Dorchester and Davenport.42 On March 23 Davenport was present at a company meeting in which the dispatch of Francis Higginson was discussed.43 In April, Craddock informed Endecott that three clergy were being sent—Higginson, Samuel Skelton, and Francis Bright, “sometimes trained up under Mr. Davenport.”44 Bright had served as a curate at St. Stephen’s, and he likely shared Davenport’s commitment to conformity at this time. Once in Massachusetts, his fellow clergymen moved quickly to institute a congregation in Salem where many of the Prayer Book ceremonies as well as the prescribed order of service were done away with. This may have prompted Bright to move on to the settlement in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and then to return to England in the summer of 1630. Ralph Smith, whom Davenport had engaged on issues of conformity earlier, had asked for passage to Massachusetts and was granted it, “before we understood of his difference in judgment in some things from our ministers,” according to Craddock. Smith eventually moved south to Plymouth, where he served for a time as a pastor to the Pilgrim Separatists. In England, Davenport served as a member of a committee to organize the policies adopted by the company during its early meetings. He played a key role in supporting the proposal made by John Winthrop and other investors that they emigrate to the colony themselves and bring the charter with them, effectively transferring the seat of government for the enterprise from London to Massachusetts. He helped shape the agreement between the investors going to America and those staying behind that was designed to protect the interests of the latter group, and he was named one of the

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umpires to decide disputes between them. When two Salem residents protested the actions of Skelton and Higginson they were sent back to England by Endecott. They complained about their treatment and an arbitration process was set up with Davenport, along with John Winthrop, Isaac Johnson, and John White named to represent the company’s interests. Davenport supported the admission to the company of his clerical friends Philip Nye and John Archer.45 Although he was active in the efforts of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Davenport was not yet ready to consider emigration when John Winthrop led the first wave of the great migration to New England in April 1630. But the sequence of events that would eventually force his hand had already begun in July 1628 with the installation of William Laud as bishop of London.46 The strength of the puritan cause led Laud to initially proceed more cautiously than his later reputation might suggest. Thus, in 1631, William Gouge would write to Laud reminding him, “Dr. Taylor, Mr. Davenport, Mr. Foxley, Mr. Prime and many other ministers,” including Gouge himself, had benefited from Laud’s “backwardness in taking advantage from private accusations against ministers.”47 This did not mean that such clergy could get away with anything without paying the consequences. One of the first steps Laud had taken as bishop was to call the four authors of the circular letter for support of Palatinate refugees before the High Commission. At about the same time the bishop began to crack down on lecturers, whom he referred to scornfully as the “people’s creatures,” who “blow the bellows their way” and were often guilty of “sedition.” He suggested that the king order that all Sunday-afternoon lectures be turned into catechizing sessions; that lecturers be required to read the church service before their sermons while wearing the prescribed surplice; that corporation lecturers not be allowed to preach unless they held a living in the town, which would require them to conduct services as set out in the Prayer Book; and that it be suggested to all the bishops that they arrange to have faithful ministers present at lectures to report on unorthodox preaching and seditious utterances. In December 1629 King Charles promulgated these ideas as instructions to the two archbishops.48 The growing pressure to conform to disputed practices, and the introduction of new innovations, placed greater pressure on the puritan community in London as well as throughout the kingdom. Many puritan clergy believed in the fundamental value of the Church of England and were proud to be



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members of what Sibbes called “the sacred communion of the truly Evangelical Church of England.”49 Davenport had expressed this to Alexander Leighton in his letter in which he asked if, given the state of reformed Protestantism throughout Europe, it were “not better to unite our forces against those who oppose us in fundamentals than to be divided among ourselves about ceremonials?” In general, he was willing to perform his functions as the authorities stipulated. As late as 1632 Davenport preached against separation and sent a copy of the sermon to John Lathrop, who was pastor of the Separatist congregation in London that had been founded by Henry Jacob.50 By 1631, however, the situation was changing. Laud was ready to come after some of the clergy he had previously ignored. In January of that year the bishop called on Davenport to answer a number of complaints that had been made against him by the curate at St. Stephen’s, Timothy Hood. Hood had lodged sixteen charges against Davenport with the bishop. In his answer, Davenport dismissed some of the charges with a simple denial. In other cases, he saw the need to elaborate on his defense. Hood claimed that Davenport had criticized him for wearing the surplice, which the rector denied, stating that it was “the constant practice of this church to have the surplice worn,” and that he himself “doth wear the surplice according as the canon doth prescribe.” The complaint touched on two issues regarding the administration of the Lord’s Supper. Hood accused Davenport of having administered the sacrament to nonmembers of the parish. Davenport pointed out that Hood was curate during the previous summer, when many city churches were being repaired, so that “the parishioners were constrained to seek other parishes” for services. Recognizing this, Davenport had nevertheless “often in the pulpit very earnestly forbidden strangers to resort to the communion in his church, and hath, publicly and privately, charged the churchwardens to take care that strangers be not admitted to the sacrament,” and to ensure that this was the case, he waited in the vestry while the churchwardens delivered communion tokens to the parishioners. At the same time, he acknowledged that because the parish “was not a convenient place for shopkeepers to dwell,” many “often change their dwellings,” so that he might have mistakenly thought that someone was still a member of the parish when they actually had moved.51 The other issue on the Lord’s Supper regarded the issue of how people should receive. Canon 27 stated, “No minister . . . shall wittingly administer the [communion] to any but such as kneel, under pain of suspension.”52 Davenport had been debating the appropriateness of this regulation with

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himself and others for at least a decade. In his response to Hood’s complaint he offered reasons why he did not always follow the canon. His parish, he pointed out “contains in it about 1,400 communicants, and by reason of the smallness of the chancel so many as normally resort to the sacrament cannot receive at the communion table.” As a result, he was “constrained to administer it to them from pew to pew throughout the body of the church, as well as in the chancel.” Because many of the pews were “so filled that it is impossible that many should receive it kneeling,” he was forced “to administer it to them in such gestures as they can receive it in.” However, “when he hath observed some [individuals] to sit that might conveniently kneel, he hath advised them to kneel, and they have obeyed.” Furthermore, he offered to provide witnesses to the fact that when someone refused to kneel when asked, he denied them the sacrament. His own wife “hath received the sacrament at his hands kneeling many times.”53 Davenport’s explanation for Hood’s anger at him tells us something about how the rector saw the proper running of the parish. He stated that when he had engaged Hood, he had explained that he expected the curate to live within the parish. Because “at that time one or two houses were infected in the parish,” Hood refused, taking up residence a half a mile away. This was a source of friction between the two because, as Davenport explained, “great inconveniences followed” in that “some who brought their children to be baptized, and their dead to be buried, . . . [would have] returned home with loss of their labor and expectation if the said John Davenport had not been ready at hand to do those offices.”54 Davenport’s lengthy answer appears to have calmed the waters for the time being, but Laud had clearly targeted him. During the Easter term of 1632 Attorney General William Noy, at Laud’s prompting, filed charges against Gouge, Davenport, and the other feoffees before the equity side of the Court of Exchequer. The first salvo in this attack had been fired two years earlier by one of Laud’s associates, Peter Heylyn, who had preached a sermon against the feoffees at University Church in Oxford on Act Sunday in 1630 ( July 11), one of the chief dates in the academic year.55 Heylyn had been at Magdalen College when Davenport was on the same grounds at Magdalen Hall, and he likely knew the rector of St. Stephen’s. Helyn had clashed sharply with John Prideaux, who referred to him as a “papist” in disputations.56 In his Oxford sermon, Heylyn leveled a series of attacks on puritans in general and the feoffees in particular. He accused puritans of holding their own fasts while neglecting the scheduled fasts prescribed by the church.



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He was critical of the market-day lectureships that had been established in many towns. He presented the feoffees as part of a national conspiracy, the members of which gathered in “conferences which they hold at all public meetings and assemblies here [Oxford] and at our sister university [Cambridge], and at the great city [London],” where they assembled to “receive intelligences, to communicate their counsels, and confirm their party.” They worked to insinuate themselves “into the bosoms of our gentry and commons” and made themselves “so strong a party that the main counsels of the state are crossed” and “the greatest ministers of state, I will not say the king himself, [brought] into discredit with the people.” The leaders of the feoffees—including his own kinsman Rowland Heylyn—were among the “most active and best affected men in the whole cause.”57 Laud agreed that the purpose of the group was to subvert the established church by taking control of numerous parish livings. The Exchequer case dragged on for a number of months. In February 1633, with “the business of the feoffees being to be heard the third time at the Exchequer,” Davenport wrote on a leaf of his Great Bible his prayer “that God would assist our counselors in opening the case, and be pleased to grant that they [the authorities] might not get no advantage against us to punish us as evil doers.” Two days later the barons of the Exchequer ordered the feoffees dissolved, but the individuals involved were spared imprisonment and deprivation. Thankful, Davenport promised “1. to be more industrious in my family. 2. to check my unthankfulness. 3. to quicken myself to thankfulness. 4. to awaken myself to more watchfulness for the time to come ‘in remembrance of his mercy.’”58 But thankful though he may have been, it had to have been clear to Davenport, as to Sibbes, Gouge, and the other puritan clergy of the city, that a new regime was coming and that they would no longer be free to continue as they had been.

Ch a pt e r 7

Nonconformity

I

n the fall of 1633 John Davenport left London and embarked on a ship that would take him to the Netherlands. His relationship with William Laud certainly played a large part in this decision. Laud had objected to his preaching and chastised him for his efforts to support the Palatinate refugees. As early as 1629 Davenport had asked that his investment in the Massachusetts Bay Company not be indicated in the charter because of his concern about the bishop’s reaction. He had been forced to answer to the charges lodged against him by Timothy Hood. Along with his fellow feoff­ ees he had been dragged before the Court of Exchequer. At the same time, new ceremonial initiatives of the church authorities raised anew questions about the price of conformity. Davenport had been wrestling with these issues since he was first ordained. Two incidents evidently led him to reach new conclusions. The first of these occurred shortly after the arrest of a number of London Separatists in April 1632. The group were members of what had been the semi-Separatist church founded by Henry Jacob in the 1610s. Following Jacob’s departure for Virginia, the congregation had elected John Lathrop as their pastor and had adopted a more consistent separation from the Church of England and its London parishes. On Laud’s orders forty-one members of the congregation, including Lathrop, were arrested as they worshipped in the home of one of their members. The event created a stir, and while the Separatists languished in prison, Davenport preached a sermon against separatism, presumably reiterating the arguments he had made years earlier in the exchanges he had had with Ralph Smith and Alexander Leighton. Notes of his sermon were brought to the members of the congregation in prison. Wishing to better understand the points he made, “they sent a letter to him desiring he would send them his 100



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own notes to avoid mistakes, hoping that either he might inform them or they him.” According to a contemporary account, “he lovingly performed it, [and] they, having perused his Notes, wrote back to him a large answer.” The chronicler of the Separatist congregation claimed that Davenport thereafter never participated in communion services at St. Stephen’s, “but went away when that Sacrament day came, and afterward preached, publicly & privately for the truth, & soon afterward went to Holland, where he suffered somewhat for the truth’s take, & then went to New England, where he now preacheth the same Truth that these do here, though there without such persecution.”1 The author of that account was clearly eager to claim all the credit for Davenport’s nonconformity. While that explanation of his “conversion” is clearly too simple, his encounter with the Separatists would have been one influence on him. At around this time Davenport also participated at a meeting of a number of non-Separatist clergy at the home of Henry Whitefield in Ockley, Surrey. Whitefield was the rector at Ockley. He was a conformist and, like Davenport, had been a supporter of John Dury’s ecumenical efforts. The purpose of the meeting was an attempt to persuade two of the nation’s leading puritan clergy, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, to make the compromises necessary for them to continue their English ministries. Hooker had been targeted by Bishop Laud and in December 1629 had been suspended from his ministry in Chelmsford, Essex, when he refused to subscribe to the Three Articles. When he continued to refuse subscription, he was deprived in October 1630. In June of the following year Hooker settled in the Netherlands, believing that he would join John Paget in the ministry of the English Church in Amsterdam. When Paget successfully blocked his appointment, Hooker returned to England. While serving as rector of St. Botolph’s in Boston, Lincolnshire, John Cotton had been protected by powerful patrons and had a good relationship with John Williams, the bishop of Lincoln. But Williams had seen his influence at court decline in the early years of Charles I’s reign while that of Laud increased. Early in 1632 Cotton was called before the High Commission and went into hiding in London to evade the summons, residing some of the time with Davenport.2 Hooker, Cotton, and Whitefield were joined at Ockley by other godly clergy, including Davenport, Philip Nye, and Thomas Goodwin. According to a later account by Cotton, Davenport and Goodwin initiated discussion of two matters: the extent of the church’s authority to demand conformity

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to ceremonies not stipulated in the Scriptures and whether the authority of bishops in the early church extended beyond a particular congregation to an entire diocese. Cotton recollected that they reached an agreement that if the authority of bishops was limited, and if only ceremonies stipulated by God could be required, then there was no justification for adhering to the ceremonies demanded by England’s bishops at that time.3 In writing about the conference in a biography of Cotton composed shortly after that clergyman’s death, John Norton included an account of the conference written by Davenport. According to Norton, Davenport also indicated that the subject of the conference was the authority of the church to impose ceremonies not commanded by God and the proper role of bishops. Much of the time was spent debating the “meaning and extent of the second commandment, both in the negative and the affirmative part of it.”4 They examined various arguments for conformity and Cotton answered all of these “with great evidence of Scripture light, composedness of mind, [and] mildness of spirit, constant[ly] adhering to his principles, and keeping them unshaken, and himself from varying from them by anything spoken” in opposition. Cotton also committed his arguments to writing so that those present could take them away with them (Davenport said he still had them with him when he prepared his account). Cotton’s ability to defend his positions without reference to any books but the Scripture impressed Davenport, who said that he “admired God’s presence with him, and assistance of him, quickening his apprehension and invention, strengthening his memory, composing his mind, and governing his spirit far beyond what I had taken notice of [in] any man before him.”5 Philip Nye wrote his own manuscript account of the conference, which was carefully circulated among other members of the godly community, but it has not survived. Nevertheless, it is clear that the result of the deliberations was that those who had come to convince Cotton and Hooker to compromise and conform left convinced that what they had asked was an offense to God. Cotton and Hooker left for New England shortly thereafter. Nye eventually abandoned his London lectureship and departed for the Netherlands, and Thomas Goodwin left his Cambridge living and assumed a low profile till later in the decade, when he joined Nye in the Netherlands. In a general account of the events that led him to leave St. Stephen’s that he wrote a few years after the events, Davenport explained that after “having about 17 years exercised a public ministry in London,” most of them at St. Stephen’s, he had become “much perplexed with doubts about



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the lawfulness of that conformity which I had previously used without scruple in respect of some defects and corruptions, and unwarrantable human impositions wherein I found myself thereunto subjected.” His concern was not over “one ceremony only, but of many things amiss, and those not trifles or things indifferent, but matters of great importance,” which he could no longer submit to “with satisfaction to my conscience in the sight of God.” He reached these conclusions “not at once, but by degrees; not suddenly, but slowly; not upon slight, but weighty considerations; [and] not without much labor, day and night.” In wrestling with these matters, he “ceased not to use those means for the satisfaction of my doubts which I thought most convenient for me,” meeting with his clerical friends at Ockley and engaging in other discussions with friends in London.6 Davenport tried to keep his new opinions secret, but a letter in which he expressed his doubts fell into the wrong hands, and soon rumors of his change of opinion were being circulated. As a result, he wrote a letter to Lady Vere urging that she not be “troubled, much less discouraged . . . at any rumors” she would have heard about him, stating that “the persecution of the tongue is more fierce and terrible than that of the hand,” though he acknowledged that “at this time I have sense of both.” “The truth is,” he wrote, that “I have not forsaken my ministry nor resigned up my place, much less separated from the church, but am only absent a while to wait upon God, upon the settling and quieting of things, for light to discern my way.”7 Throughout his life Davenport believed that God’s grace could lead him to further enlightenment. While he pursued for himself what at a given time he considered the truth, he never adopted the rigid certitude in his own judgment that characterized many of his peers. His absence from the parish was likely for a trip he took to Bath, where he sought quiet to consider his course, as in April of 1633 the vestry of St. Stephen’s provided Davenport a gift of money to cover his “charge in going and coming from the Bath.”8 In his letter to Lady Vere he defended himself from rumors that he had left the city because he had improperly kept funds “committed to my trust for the public good,” presumably the feoffees.9 Davenport explained to Lady Vere that the true cause of his absence and “present [mental] suffering is the alteration of my judgment in matters of conformity to the ceremonies established, whereby I cannot practice them as formerly I have done.” He acknowledged that he previously “did conform with as much inward peace as now I do forbear,” and he wrote that he did not “censure those that do conform.” The fact was that his “light was different,”

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and “in this action I walk by that light which shineth unto me.” He expressed some bitterness over the fact that those who knew him had not “suspended their opinions and censures till they had heard from myself the reason for my actions.” He had reached his position after seeking “much advice of many ministers of eminent note and worth,” and he hoped that he had found “that way wherein God might be most glorified.”10 In June 1633 Stephen Goffe wrote to the English ambassador to the Netherlands, William Boswell, that “it is written from England that Mr. Cotton of Boston hath convinced Mr. Davenport and Mr. Nye, two of the great preachers of the city, that kneeling at the sacrament, etc., is plain idolatry, and that for that reason Mr. Davenport hath absented himself [from church] every sacrament day, which is once a month, since Christmas.”11 This would suggest that from December 1632, Davenport’s curate conducted the services on days when the Lord’s Supper was to be administered, and the rector performed the services on other occasions. Against this background, a series of sermons that Davenport preached starting on June 6 were an explanation to the parish of why he could no longer conform and were thus, in a sense, his farewell.12 The text for all four sermons was Acts 24:16—“And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.” Early in the sequence he emphasized why a good conscience was important. What was at stake was eternity, and neither the opinions of friends nor a desire for wealth should be allowed to put the conscience at risk. In the second sermon he began with the observation that “the principal care of every Christian should be concerning his conscience” and then defined what he meant by that faculty. “Conscience,” he explained, was “nothing else but a man’s judgment of himself and his own particular actions out of respect of God’s judgments.” It was different from “a mere apprehension and opinion.” It was to judge “not as they are done, but how they are done.” Conscience was “a light in the soul whose office is to teach and justify.” It compared man’s actions to the requirements of God, not the customs and practices of men. The third sermon focused on the things that could hinder the conscience. First and foremost was ignorance. This covered the “blindness which is in heathen men, which hinders the working of their natural consciences,” but also the partial blindness “of all civil, moral men” such as those who count themselves righteous but are in “disobedience to the commandments of the first table.” “Hypocrisy makes the conscience to look upon things as it were with a squint eye”—such men look at the rule of Scripture but set up the



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rules of men as of equal authority. An erroneous conscience sets up “false rules, as the customs and examples of men.” And “a superstitious conscience” leads to cases in which “some superstitious work in the outward worship of God gives men much peace” but a false peace. This was where Davenport believed he had been. The final sermon focused concern for the conscience on “the duties of worship and the duties of obedience,” the issues that he had wrestled with over the preceding months. Critically, he had come to believe that all worship must have a direct warrant in the Scripture—if “a man will have his conscience void of offence in all the worship he tenders to God, he must have a warrant from God’s word for it, and so for the manner of God’s worship it must be according to God’s rule, and this the third commandment enjoins.” After a section dealing with the reasons for the special worship required on the Sunday Sabbath, he returned to the need to conform the will of man to the will of God in the forms of worship. Failure to worship properly could, he pointed out, be why the church was afflicted and suffered God’s reproach. “They that endeavor to keep a conscience void of offence towards God will be careful,” he cautioned, “to avoid idolatry” and superstition, and he labeled as superstition “all that form of worship men frame to themselves,” citing as a specific example “bowing to the altars.”13 The sermon sequence had been preached when Bishop Laud was out of London, having accompanied the king to Scotland in May. Davenport was sure that the person who had intercepted the letter in which he expressed his doubts about the ceremonies “would soon make [those views] known to my diocesan” on Laud’s return from Scotland on July 26. It was clear that he would likely not be able to continue to evade conformity by absenting himself from certain ceremonies. Even if he could have offered a partial conformity, it was unlikely that Laud would have accepted it. And if he, or any clergyman of similar views had hoped to have their position accommodated, that hope was dashed when Archbishop Abbott died in early August, clearing the way for the appointment of Laud to the see of Canterbury. Conformity would no longer be negotiable.14 Clinging to a slim hope, however—Laud had, after all, treated him with some leniency in the past—he decided that he would “retire for a week or two into the country, that I might discern what was intended against me by the manner of their inquiry after me.” The Monday after the bishop’s return to the capital, Davenport “rode a few miles from London to an ancient reverend divine, a Dr. in divinity and my particular friend,” with whom he

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had previously discussed his scruples about the ceremonies.15 This was most likely Thomas Gataker, who resided in Rotherhithe. He soon learned that five pursuivants (officers of the ecclesiastical Court of High Commission) had been sent looking for him with charges that he had been “preaching against some points of Arminianism against his Majesty’s prohibition.” Specifically, he was charged with denying that “a child of God could totally and finally fall from grace.”16 Corroborating this account, on August 6, Francis Kirby wrote to his friend John Winthrop Jr. in New England, noting that Davenport had left London and that there were pursuivants “employed for the apprehension of him and Mr. [Henry] Burton, Mr. Nye, Mr. [Lewis] Hughes, and Mr. [Sidrach] Simpson, all which are not the worst of our teachers, as is well known to some of your plantation who lived in London lately.”17 Davenport later recalled that he “was not a little troubled at the clamor,” and he sensed a “storm gathered in a thick cloud and ready to fall upon me.” While still away from London, he had intermediaries approach Laud on his behalf, from whom he learned “that extremity was intended against me,” and specifically that Laud intended to deal quickly with him in the Court of High Commission, which would have certainly led to his being deprived of his living and, possibly, his imprisonment. He was convinced that he would be treated harshly because of the “severity of the canons [church law] against those who [like himself ], having formerly subscribed and conformed, do alter their judgment and practice.” Learning that the churchwardens of St. Stephen’s had been interrogated by the registrar of that court, he arranged to meet with the general vestry of the parish.18 Davenport’s meeting with the vestry revealed his strong belief that a minister who had been called to a living could not abandon it without the consent of the congregation. Having informed them of his situation as he understood it, he asked them to “advise [him] freely what was best to be done for their good and mine.” He was himself convinced that he “might do more service to the church by preserving the liberty of my person than by lying (and for ought I know dying) in prison, and it may be in close prison,” but he acknowledged that “the church . . . might have required me to stay with them by virtue of that rule [Colossians 4:17], ‘Say to Archippus, take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfill it.’” He recognized that it was “the church’s right” to demand that he continue his ministry. After considerable discussion, the vestry thought it “better for the church that I should quietly resign than, by holding the place,” to bring the wrath of the authorities on the parish, and so “they freely consented to



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my resignation.” Davenport comforted himself with the knowledge that at St. Stephen’s “the liberty and power of choosing their pastor” was vested in the parish, so that there was no danger “that a wolf should be obtruded upon them after my departure.”19 Davenport’s resignation was officially recorded in the Bishop’s register on December 18.20 In his account of his diocese for 1633, Laud reported, “Since my return out of Scotland, Mr. John Davenport, vicar of St. Stephen’s in Coleman Street, (whom I had used with all moderation, and about two years since thought I had settled his judgment, having then at advantage enough to have put extremity upon him, but forbear it), hath now resigned his vicarage, declared his judgment against conformity with the Church of En-gland, and is since gone (as I hear) to Amsterdam.”21 Years later, when Laud was on trial before Parliament, one of the charges against him was that he had forced Davenport from London and that, hearing that Davenport had moved on to New England, threatened “my arm should reach him there.” Denying that he had spoken those words, Laud nevertheless identified Davenport as “a dangerous factious man.”22 If the definition of puritan requires nonconformity, Davenport was at last a puritan. It is also clear that his years in London had brought him to a belief in congregational authority. In concluding his account of his departure from St. Stephen’s he wrote, “Thus I was freely dismissed by the same power that called me to that ministry.”23 When in the Netherlands he would continue to assert this right of a congregation to govern itself and make its own decisions regarding its clergy. His experiences there would further refine his understanding of congregationalism. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the changing religious situation which alarmed puritans and led many to leave England than the story of John Davenport’s nephew Christopher. Following his graduation from Oxford in 1614, Christopher had taught briefly at Atherstone grammar school in Warwickshire. In August 1616 he crossed the channel and entered the English Catholic College at Douai, signifying his conversion to Roman Catholicism. The following year he entered the Franciscan order as Franciscus à Sancta Clara. He was ordained a priest in 1620 and studied theology in Spain before returning to Douai to teach philosophy and theology.24 As Father Sancta Clara, Christopher returned to England in the mid1630s to join the entourage of Charles II’s French Catholic queen Henrietta Maria. He took up residence at Somerset House and became a key figure

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in trying to move England back toward Rome. While his uncle John was supporting John Dury’s irenic efforts to unite England and the leading Protestant churches on the Continent, Sancta Clara was trying to forge a union between the Church of England and Rome. In 1634 he published Deus, Natura, Gratia, which he dedicated to Charles I. The tract was an attempt to demonstrate that the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles were not incompatible with Catholic teachings. The king was reported to have looked favorably upon the effort.25 Sancta Clara was involved in some of the conversions to Catholicism of prominent members of the court, and he was a close friend of Bishop Godfrey Goodman.26 Years later, one of the charges against William Laud in his impeachment trial was his presumed intimacy with Sancta Clara.27 If the two Davenports had any contact in London during the time when they were both there in the 1630s, neither left any record of it. Raised together, educated together, they had made radically different choices. Ironically, it was the Catholic Davenport who was now welcome in England, and the Protestant Davenport who had to seek refuge abroad.

Ch a pt e r 8

The Dutch Interlude—Controversy in Amsterdam

A

fter his resignation from St. Stephen’s, Davenport had “expected peace.” Certainly, other clergy had been able to evade the authorities for a time after resigning their church livings. But in his case, “another pursuivant was sent out for me, who gave out great threatening.” Having been approached with an offer to preach to the English Church in Amsterdam, he decided to accept. As he explained it, he thought that in the Netherlands he “might be safe in my person and profitable in the fruit of God’s blessings upon my labors to that church for a time, and that upon my absence the displeasure conceived against me would be mitigated, and my return, after a convenient time, would be made more safe.”1 In November 1633 Davenport crossed the North Sea to Haarlem. According to a report filed from the Netherlands, his passage was arranged by a merchant of Coleman Street on a cloth ship owned by a Mr. Humphrey. He traveled “disguised in a gray suit, in an overgrown beard,” landing in Haarlem and then traveling to Rotterdam.2 There he spent some time with his friend Hugh Peter, who ministered to the English merchant congregation there. After staying for a short time, sufficient to have received from Peter information on the state of the English churches in the Netherlands, he moved on to Amsterdam. In coming to the Netherlands, Davenport entered a new world. This was a land with republican rather than monarchical government. It was part of the battlefield for the struggle between Protestants and Catholics that we call the Thirty Years’ War. He was exposed to new ideas and customs that led him to rethink much of what he had taken for granted. That conflict made many believe that the millennium was approaching, and his exposure to those fighting in the war and those who speculated on its significance led 109

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him to glimpse the possibility of progress toward a New Jerusalem in his lifetime. In the Netherlands he would also develop a further commitment to lay authority in the church and congregational autonomy. On arriving in Amsterdam late in 1633, Davenport took up lodging with Henry Whitaker, a prosperous and influential merchant who was an elder of the English Church.3 Though Davenport was urged by his supporters to rent a house, he found lodging more congenial, as his wife, Elizabeth, had stayed behind in England for the time being.4 He soon became immersed in a city and a culture unlike anything he would have encountered before. Amsterdam was the international trading center for a vibrantly expanding Dutch economy. Built where the Amstel River flowed into the Zuider Zee, its harbor was typically crowded with ships from the Baltic, southern Europe, the Far East, and even the Americas. The sea air was mixed with the smells of fish and exotic spices. Stretching inland from the harbor was the Amstel River, which divided the Old Side of the city on the east from the New Side on the west. When Davenport arrived, the city was undergoing a dramatic period of growth, which included construction of a system of interlocking canals, including the Singel, which was originally a moat encircling the medieval city. Towering over the Old Side was the oldest surviving parish church that had been built in the city, the fourteenth-century Oude Kerk (Old Church), with a tower capped by an openwork spire topped with an onion-shaped finial. The Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), another Gothic style and cathedral-size structure, was built on the other side of the city in the fifteenth century to accommodate the growing population. A few years before Davenport arrived, construction of the Westerkerk, also in the New Side, was completed. Its mixture of brick and stone marked it as a work of the Dutch Renaissance. Next to the New Church, in Dam Square, was the town hall, where the burgomasters met. The English traveler Sir William Brereton visited Amsterdam at this time and was impressed with the diversity of languages and the vitality of life in the city. Arriving in the port, he “came into a fair street, wherein of late swarmed the most impudent whores I have heard of, who would if they saw a stranger, come into the middle of the street unto him, pull him by the coat, and invite him unto their house.” The merchant exchange was comparable, but inferior, to that of London.5 He noted the corn market and fish market. He was impressed with the “broad navigable channels” that were traversed with stately stone bridges.6 He enjoyed with John Paget “a neat dinner and strawberries.”7



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Along the canals were homes made of brick and stone crowded against one another, as well as warehouses with projecting upper stories with pulleys that enabled the merchants to unload small boats docked along the sides of the canals. Despite the growth of the city, from certain vantage points one could see the surrounding countryside with its windmills. This was the city where Rembrandt had settled in 1632, and the painter’s canvases give some idea of the wealth and vitality of the culture. Members of the municipal militia would have looked little different from the way Rembrandt painted them in Night Watch in 1642. It is likely that Davenport encountered more than one subject of the artist, and he could very well have met Rembrandt himself. On the eastern fringe of the city was the Mokum, or safe quarter, which was inhabited by a sizable Jewish community. This was, in fact, where Rembrandt had taken up residence. The Jewish population was largely Sephardim, refugees from the Iberian Peninsula, from which Spain had expelled its Jewish population in 1492. It is estimated that between 1610 and 1640 the Jewish population in Amsterdam grew from about two hundred to more than a thousand. Though not officially confined to a ghetto, the Jews had congregated together in the Vlooienburg area. In Amsterdam, Jews were not allowed to worship publicly but were allowed to do so in private. By 1614 there were two large congregations as well as some smaller ones worshipping in private quarters.8 In 1634 William Brereton reported that there were about three hundred families and three synagogues. He attended worship on “the Jews Sabbath,” noting that the services were conducted from nine-thirty in the morning till noon, and then resumed at three o’clock and concluded in the evening.9 It is highly likely that Davenport engaged himself with members of the Jewish community, and in particular with the prominent rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel. The Hartlib circle was noted for its philo-Semitism, and many puritan clergy were engaged in learning Hebrew and seeking new insights into the Old Testament.10 John Dury would later work with Ben Israel to secure the readmission of the Jews into England. And Ben Israel showed an interest in the New World and the possibility that Native Americans were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Of particular interest to many who looked to the advent of the New Jerusalem was the design of Old Jerusalem and the temple of Solomon. Jacob Judah Leon was a rabbi and friend of Menasseh Ben Israel who resided in Amsterdam at various times in his life. He taught Hebrew to interested non-Jews, and he devoted much of his life to the study of the temple. In the midcentury he would build a model of the

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temple, and he also prepared plans depicting what he envisioned as the encampment of the Israelites in the wilderness and the Old Jerusalem. While these were not produced until after Davenport had left Amsterdam, the Englishman’s later actions suggest that he had discussed these matters with Leon, Ben Israel, or other members of the Jewish community in the city. The Netherlands also had a strong history as a refuge for English Protestants whose beliefs made it difficult for them to remain in England. The welcome they found was based on appreciation for the help the Dutch had received from England in winning their independence in the sixteenth century. In return for this support, the Dutch turned over the cities of Flushing and the Brill to the English. Over the following decades, English forces played an important role in the region, and many puritans served as chaplains. Sir Horace Vere, the most noted commander of English forces in the Netherlands and a friend of Davenport’s, was especially noted for his patronage of puritans. It wasn’t only English soldiers and their chaplains who settled temporarily or permanently in the Netherlands. Communities of English and Scots merchants were to be found in all the major Dutch towns, including a large presence of the company of Merchant Adventurers in Antwerp and Middleburg. The Dutch authorities allowed them to organize their own churches. There were more than two dozen such English congregations by 1630, many towns having more than one. For the most part they were allowed to order their own affairs and select their own clergy. Walter Travers served the Merchant Adventurers’ church at Antwerp from 1578 to 1580, and Thomas Cartwright from 1580 to 1585. That church moved to Middleburg in 1582 and then to Delft in 1621. After Cartwright it continued to be served by clergy whose reformed activities had led them to emigrate from England, including Francis Johnson, Henry Jacob, and John Forbes. Many of the other congregations also chose puritan clergy, or at least clergy sympathetic to the puritan agenda of strict Calvinism and reduced ceremonies. Another group of Englishmen in the Netherlands were students, particularly at Leiden but also at Franeker after William Ames was appointed professor of theology in 1622. While many, if not most, English Protestants in the Netherlands held themselves as members of the Church of England, the country was also a refuge for Separatists. One such group was the Pilgrims, who left the region of Scrooby, England, and settled in Leiden, from which some would move on yet again to found the Plymouth Colony in New England in 1620.



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At least until the mid-1630s, the Netherlands provided a safe and comfortable refuge for puritan exiles, and one from which they could, if circumstances permitted, return quickly to England. On the whole, as many Englishmen would migrate to the Netherlands in the years before 1640 as would go to the Americas. Yet in the years when puritans in England were subject to growing pressures to conform, various factors made the Netherlands less attractive as a refuge. The end of the Dutch truce with Spain coincided with the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and the Netherlands was plunged into the general conflict. The threat of invasion made the Netherlands an undesirable location to relocate one’s family. At the same time, the English government sought to bring the English churches in the Netherlands into greater conformity with the church back home, and they applied growing pressure on the Dutch authorities to crack down on the autonomy of those congregations. The Dutch Reformed Church was the official religion of the Netherlands. The structure of that church was essentially Presbyterian. Individual churches were supervised by their own consistory, or council of ministers and elders. Consistories were in turn supervised by a classis, a district council of clergy. The classes were governed by synods.11 The state church worked in close cooperation with the civic authorities, which paid the salaries of ministers. The civil government had allowed the formation of separate English congregations unaffiliated with the national church, but concerns about how this policy could lead to unrest was causing concern among Dutch authorities in the early seventeenth century. The civic leaders of Amsterdam were particularly troubled. In 1593 Jacobus Arminius, then a Reformed pastor in Amsterdam, had reported to the authorities that an English minister, Henry Ainsworth, had been preaching in a private home in the city. Those who had gathered together were evidently followers of the English Separatist Robert Browne. Over the following years there was considerable controversy that surrounded this group, but because they were considered theologically sound, the city authorities took no steps against them. Francis Johnson soon joined Ainsworth in the ministry and the congregation steadily grew as other Separatists left England and joined them. Known as the Ancient Brethren, the congregation built its own meetinghouse in 1607. But growth led to controversy and to an eventual split in 1610. A new minister, John Smyth, sought to push reform further than most were comfortable with, among other things rebaptizing himself and

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calling on others to reject their baptism and also be rebaptized. The Ancient Brethren who remained in Amsterdam split, and others—including John Robinson and the Scrooby Separatists—moved on to Leiden.12 Those Englishmen working in Amsterdam who did not want to be affiliated with the Separatists worshipped in the Dutch Reformed churches. This involved them in forms of worship and levels of supervision of their personal lives that were unwelcome, but the most significant drawback to this approach was the language barrier that made communication between Dutch pastors and English congregants difficult at best.13 Creating an English Church in Amsterdam had been proposed at a meeting of the local consistory as early as 1605, and in 1607 it was formally constituted. This was intended to be an English congregation that would nevertheless administratively be a part of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Amsterdam civic authorities provided a place for worship—a chapel and buildings called the Beguinage, which had formerly belonged to a female Catholic religious order—and agreed to pay the salaries of the congregation’s ministers.14 After other names had been considered by the Dutch consistory, John Paget was chosen as pastor of the church. Paget was an English clergyman who had migrated to the Netherlands after being ejected for nonconformity

The English Church in Amsterdam. Photo by the author.



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in 1605, finding a position as a chaplain to the English forces serving under Sir Horace Vere.15 He had subscribed to the Belgic Confession of Faith, the official standard of the Dutch Reformed Church, which made him eligible to hold a ministerial position. While under the supervision of the Amsterdam classis and the synod of North Holland, the church and its members considered themselves also members of the Church of England. Under Dutch procedures, the classis had responsibility to approve church officers nominated by the consistory and claimed authority over those officers.16 During the first decades of the English Church’s existence Paget was heavily engaged in opposition to the Separatist Ancient Brethren in Amsterdam. He engaged in a pamphlet war with Henry Ainsworth, defending his congregation against Ainsworth’s attacks on the ceremonies of the English Church, and the fact that it joined the Dutch in observing various holy days, conducting worship in a former Catholic chapel, and other matters. But Paget also was concerned with the activities of former Separatists who had left the Ancient Brethren and joined his congregation. Some of these were prosperous men who gradually rose to positions of leadership. The result was a faction in the English Church that espoused a strong belief in congregational authority. In opposing the views of the Separatists and also the congregationalists in his own church, Paget moved toward a greater commitment to presbyterian authority—that of the minister within the church and the higher authority of the classis.17 A further complication in the situation of the English Protestants in the Netherlands came with the formation of an English Congregational Synod in the country. This was the brainchild of John Forbes, a Church of Scotland minister who had settled by 1611 as the pastor of the congregation of British merchants in Middleburg, which later moved to Delft.18 The idea of an advisory synod comprising such English merchant congregations had been broached as early as 1608, but it went nowhere until 1622, when Forbes invited the leaders of the various churches, including Paget, to meet at Delft. Paget rejected the invitation, though some members of his church clearly would have preferred the new affiliation, in part because the emerging English synod allowed greater congregational autonomy. In the early 1630s the English government, prompted by then Bishop William Laud, began a campaign to enforce conformity to English religious practices on the various ministers serving English congregations in the Netherlands. Playing important roles in this effort were William Boswell and Stephen Goffe, both of whom recognized that the way to win the

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support of the influential bishop (soon to be archbishop) was to promote his crackdown on the puritans. Sir William Boswell was appointed English ambassador to the Netherlands in 1632. He was a loyal servant of the crown and the church who was eager to prove his usefulness by promoting the antipuritan campaign.19 In his first report to the Privy Council he categorized the English clergy in the Netherlands as “a spider of divers threads, uneven, very much entangled, and requiring time to clean them handsomely for his majesty’s honor and service.”20 Stephen Goffe was the son of a puritan minister and brother of William Goffe, the future puritan major general and regicide. Despite this family context, Stephen was a strong supporter of the established church and its ceremonies. His religious conservatism eventually led him to convert to Roman Catholicism. Goffe had graduated from Merton College, Oxford, in 1624 and had received his MA in 1627. He would indicate in some of his reports that he was familiar with Davenport’s Oxford career and that he had also heard Davenport preach at St. Stephen’s. In 1632 Goffe was named a chaplain to Lord Vere’s regiment in the Netherlands, and he combined that post with seeking his DD degree at the University of Leiden. In the summer of 1632 Vere, on instructions from the Privy Council, ordered the serving chaplains to use the forms of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. It is impossible to know whether Vere actually expected the order to be carried out, but Goffe complied while most of the other chaplains refused. Samuel Bachelor and some of the other chaplains complained to the Dutch authorities that Goffe was introducing innovations that threatened the religious order. Eventually acquitted, his experience made Goffe more eager than he may have originally been to strike at the nonconformist clergy in the Netherlands.21 The English Church in Amsterdam became one of the key battlegrounds in the campaign against puritan influence. Thomas Potts, who had been installed as Paget’s associate in 1617, became seriously ill in 1628. Members of the congregation began to solicit a possible replacement, hoping that the individual chosen could serve in an interim capacity until the likely vacancy occurred. Leading this effort were members of the faction that favored more congregational control of the church and who were generally disenchanted with Paget’s ministry. Each of the disputes would pit this faction against Paget, who would invoke the authority of the Amsterdam classis to fend off the congregationalists.



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The first candidate proposed to replace Potts was Hugh Peter, Davenport’s friend who had come to the Netherlands and was then serving as proctor at Franeker University. The effort to bring him in as a clergymanin-waiting failed because of a disagreement as to who should pay his salary (the consistory wouldn’t commit church funds, and the civil authorities saw no reason to pay a third clergyman) and uncertainty about whether Peter was committed to remaining in the Netherlands. When Potts finally died in April 1631, a member of the church, Stephen Offwood, a former Separatist and publisher of works by William Ames and others, invited Thomas Hooker to preach to the congregation with the expectation that he would be chosen to succeed Potts as copastor.22 With agents of the Court of High Commission actively seeking him, Hooker left England and began preaching in Amsterdam in June 1631. The congregation’s consistory proceeded to elect Hooker to the post of copastor and prepared to seek the approval of the classis and the burgomasters of Amsterdam. Seeking to block the choice, Paget insisted that Hooker answer a series of twenty questions that would test his orthodoxy and appropriateness for the position. The exchange was conducted in writing, with Paget not only submitting questions but also (as requested by Hooker) providing his own responses.23 There were a number of points on which the two differed. First was the issue of relations with Separatists; Paget wanted no contact with them, whereas Hooker believed that limited contact, such as listening to a godly Separatist preacher, might be acceptable. The second area of dispute involved baptism. Paget followed the Dutch practice of baptizing any who were presented for the sacrament, whereas Hooker believed that only children of those who were members of the church should be baptized. The two also disagreed on the powers of the individual congregation. Paget strongly maintained the subordination of the particular church to classes and synods, whereas Hooker believed that the fundamental power to call clergy to office, decide controversies, and excommunicate offending members rested in the local congregation. Their exchange became an important statement in the emerging rift between puritans who advocated Presbyterian polity and those who upheld the superiority of Congregationalism.24 Without consulting his own consistory, Paget brought Hooker’s responses to the Dutch classis, which rendered its opinion that Hooker would not be acceptable as a colleague for Paget. By November 1631 it was evident that Hooker would not be installed in Amsterdam. Throughout the proceedings John Forbes, on behalf of the English classis, had been lobbying

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Paget to accept Hooker, and when Hooker left Amsterdam, Forbes welcomed him as his own assistant in Delft. Hooker remained there until 1633, though, as he wrote to John Cotton, he found “the state of these provinces, to my weak eye, . . . wonderfully ticklish and miserable.” He complained that while the Dutch insisted on what they saw as proper forms of worship and church government, of “the power of godliness, for aught I can see or hear, they know not.” If heart religion were pressed, he suspected that the Dutch would oppose it.25 Hooker began to consider emigration to New England, which was one of the reasons that brought him back to England and the meeting with Cotton, Davenport, and other friends at Ockley. Back in Amsterdam, the search continued for a successor to Potts. In November 1631 the consistory invited Thomas Welde, another clergymen forced from England by Laudian pressure, to preach to the church, but the invitation was withdrawn when Paget invoked the likely displeasure of the Dutch classis.26 By the following spring the situation was made more critical when Paget, old and ill, was periodically unable to officiate at services. His sermons became short and uninspiring. In July 1632 the consistory invited Samuel Balmford to become their new pastor. Balmford had served as chaplain to Sir Horace and Lady Vere in The Hague, and through their help had been named the minister of the English congregation there in 1630. That post gave him the opportunity to preach to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia in her exile at The Hague. Balmford was known to Davenport, who had asked Lady Vere to pass his best wishes to his friend as early as 1627. Paget, the Amsterdam classis, and the burgomasters of the city all apparently agreed to the invitation to Balmford, but over the following months the negotiations broke down. The reasons are not fully clear, but it appears that the principal reason is that the consistory of the English Church at The Hague refused to dismiss Balmford to accept the post. At one point Forbes sought to intervene, but without any positive effect.27 The Congregationalist faction in the Amsterdam church next turned to John Davenport, with James Crisp inviting him to preach on a trial basis.28 He accepted, not (so he later stated) with the intention of becoming pastor, but to help “that church with the fruits of my labor in their extreme necessity” for a few months only, hoping that “after some small time of absence the displeasure conceived against me [in England] would be abated and the return to mine own country be made more safe.”29 This makes sense because he was unlikely to have envisioned a more permanent stay in Amsterdam. There is little doubt that Hooker would have shared with Davenport and



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the others he met with at Ockley his disenchantment with the Netherlands in general and Paget in particular, and it is likely that he would have shown them copies of his exchange with Paget. Davenport himself acknowledged that he had seen the exchange, though it was before he had ever considered going to the Netherlands, so that he “had no cause to fix my mind upon thoughts of those matters.”30 Once in Amsterdam, Davenport sought to acclimatize himself to his new surroundings while learning to understand the nature, practices, and politics of the English Church there. The structure itself was a long and narrow building. For the Protestant services the chancel had been closed off and the seats reoriented to face a pulpit erected on one of the side walls. The English traveler William Brereton attended services there at this time and reported that at the Lord’s Supper all receivers came up and sat “at a long table whilst they received; all the men successively, and then the women.” Marriage was solemnized “without the use of the ring or any ceremony, only an admonition precedes, directing how these married persons should demean themselves to each other.”31 Initially, Davenport preached twice each Sunday because Paget was too infirm to perform his ministry. When Paget was recovered sufficiently to resume some of his pastoral duties, Davenport preached one of the two Sabbath sermons. He regularly met with Paget to discuss church practices, writing up notes of their conferences “upon my return to my lodging, while matters were fresh in memory.”32 Davenport was a popular preacher, and whether or not he had anticipated or encouraged it, there was soon a movement in the church to call him to be pastor along with Paget. At that time, if not before, Davenport and Paget began to discuss their differences over baptism. As Davenport recalled the initial exchanges, he told Paget that he could not accept the Dutch practice whereby even if a non-Christian Turk brought a child to be baptized, the minister would be obliged to do so. He indicated that he would, however, be willing to baptize the child of anyone who was a member of the English Church. When Paget indicated that that would not be sufficient, Davenport indicated that he would also baptize a child whose parents were not members if he was satisfied about the faith of the parents. While Paget made it appear that the two clergymen were seeking to reach some accommodation, the senior clergyman was already involved in efforts to block Davenport’s appointment. Ambassador Boswell found Paget

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to have spoken with “great reverence” toward the Church of England and to be “a man of good life and learning,” who would cooperate with the English authorities against their common enemies.33 In early January 1634, Boswell informed his superiors that he had “so shuffled the cards at Amsterdam as he [Davenport] will not be suddenly admitted minister of that congregation.”34 One part of the strategy was pursued by Stephen Goffe, who enlisted the theologian Gerhard Vossius to help block the call. Vossius had been a professor at the University of Leiden and had recently moved to Amsterdam. He had a record of cooperating with English Church authorities and had received the post of prebend (without a residency requirement) at Canterbury Cathedral from Archbishop Laud. Vossius was glad to help his English patron. Goffe explained to Vossius that Davenport “had revolted from our church by the persuasion of one Hooker, whom their own Dutch ministers thought incapable of being a minister in their church, . . . that he was a runner out of our land, that (as the puritans themselves do glory), many pursuivants and public writs being out against him, that he never took notice of his majesty’s agent [Boswell], as he passed, . . . [and] that he was a very dangerous [man] in dealing in secular affairs to the troubling of the places in which he dwelt.” Vossius promised to bring these points to the notice of the Dutch authorities, and Goffe urged that Archbishop Laud write to the Dutchman to express appreciation for his labors.35 Soon Goffe reported with pleasure that “one of Mr. Davenport’s friends was discouraging this day” because he thought Davenport “would not be chosen because Paget was against him.”36 But Davenport had strong supporters as well, including some of the members of the consistory and most of the congregation. The support of prominent merchants such as Whitaker, Crisp, and John Webster was expected to be particularly important in advancing his cause with the civil authorities in the city.37 In early January Boswell reported that Davenport’s “friends (who are such especially as dislike the constitution of our church) make love (I hear) unto the Dutch ministers and classis of the place, very like in the hope to get him admitted, . . . and to gain ground against Mr. Paget.”38 Two of the charges that had been employed against Davenport were that he had deserted St. Stephen’s improperly and that he had been in trouble with the authorities for political and not simply church offenses. Davenport felt that the latter was based on his prosecution in the case of the feoffees, but it may also have been a reference to his having violated the king’s order against predestinarian preaching. By early January he had sought letters from



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members of St. Stephen’s and likely had requested the formal notice of his resignation in the London Bishop’s Register, which was recorded in December 1633.39 Boswell reported in early January that Davenport was expecting the “letters testimonial from his parishioners” and “a certificate that he was not questioned in England about other things than the ceremonies and order of our church.”40 Davenport felt confident enough to send for his wife, Elizabeth, to join him in Amsterdam.41 It was in January that the battle lines were clearly formed. The initial issue concerned baptism. It was the practice of the Dutch Reformed Church to allow anyone to present a child for baptism following the Sabbath sermon. The person bringing the child forward did not have to be a member of the church. A recent examination of the records shows that between 1607 and 1640, two hundred children were baptized whose parents were not members of the church at the time.42 Assuming that the presenter nodded or verbally acquiesced to the baptismal promises, the clergyman was required to baptize the child. Davenport contended that this allowed libertines, Jews, Muslims, excommunicated Christians—in short, anyone at all—to bring a child forth for baptism. He pointed to a further difficulty in that some who presented children could not speak English, which made it virtually impossible to know if they even understood the baptismal promises they were expected to consent to. He contended that this was theologically unsound, implying “that the grace of Christ is universal, wherein all have interest.”43 He further argued that the practice diminished the significance of the sacrament. Davenport did not, as some have claimed, demand that only the children of those who had demonstrated saving grace be baptized.44 At this time he argued only that the parents of the child should be members of the church, known by the pastor to be good Christians, or able to demonstrate their proper faith to the clergy. Membership in the English Church in Amsterdam, as in many other English congregations in the Netherlands, required that an individual make a personal confession of faith and bring two members of the congregation to testify to their good behavior.45 This was all that Davenport desired of the parents of children he would be asked to baptize. In later years he would assert that it was possible to distinguish between the confession of faith of one who was truly elect and that of an individual who was merely parroting catechetical doctrines. Thus, he could have used such a requirement to screen for the elect, but he does not seem to have done so in Amsterdam. Early in January 1634, Davenport prepared a proposal that he hoped the consistory would agree with. He suggested that the sacrament be

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a­ dministered by one of the clergy present at the service, rather than the custom of both participating, hoping that this would eliminate any public dispute over whether an individual should be baptized. He also wished the consistory to require any with a child to be baptized to present themselves to the minister who would perform the ceremony a day or so before the event, so that the clergyman could satisfy himself of their fitness. And finally, he wished the consistory to order that those who would present the child be able to speak, or at least understand, English.46 On January 15 the consistory met to see whether Davenport’s concerns could be accommodated. Paget claimed that he was willing to “send unto Mr. Damport all such parents as should come up to him [Paget] to desire their children should be baptized, so he might receive satisfaction by examining of them.”47 As he later recollected, he was willing to give up his “right and interest in that business,” and he was “content to refer the whole work of examination into his discretion.”48 The consistory endorsed this proposal, but Davenport rejected it because it did not require parents or godparents to approach either minister before the service. With the issue unresolved, five Dutch ministers who were friends of Paget intervened with their own proposal. Approving of “the reverend, most famous, and learned” Davenport’s good zeal in wanting to preserve the integrity of the sacrament, and encouraging the use of preparatory examinations of parents or godparents, they nevertheless insisted that “if, for the shortness of time, or for other just causes, it cannot be done, or if those that come shall not seem for that time to satisfy the judgment of the brethren, . . . that yet the infant whose parents or sureties [godparents] are manifest to be Christians, and which publicly before the church do profess the Christian religion at the reading of the liturgy of the sacrament of baptism, shall not therefore be excluded or deprived thereof.” They went on to recommend that a course of subsequent instruction be recommended to parents ignorant of Christian doctrine.49 One of the elders of the church brought the proposal to Davenport on a Saturday, and he indicated that he could not accept it as a course of action, basing his concern largely on the fact that the individuals who presented the child might be knowledgeable Christians but the parents not. He was urged not to share his position with Paget for the time being, but after the second sermon the following day, just before the consistory meeting, Paget pushed him for his opinion.50 Trying to avoid a confrontation, he indicated that the Dutch ministers had done what they could, but because they had offered it



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as a private judgment he need not accept or reject it. The proposal of the five ministers became the basis for the debate by the consistory and Davenport went so far as to agree with it if the consistory passed orders such as he had suggested earlier to ensure that all were examined beforehand. On the basis of this, the consistory formally called him and took steps to bring his candidacy to the magistrates.51 Paget was against calling Davenport but hoped to put him in a position that he would find unacceptable. The majority of the consistory was eager to overlook what differences existed to get their candidate, and it is likely that promises were made that could not be kept. Meanwhile, Goffe and Boswell placed their hopes of blocking Davenport’s call on the city magistrates and the city classis. While the discussions inside the congregation were progressing, the two men sought to build a strong case for Davenport’s rejection. Early in January, Goffe had informed Boswell of a newly published tract, No Crown for a Christian Martyr, which he claimed was written by Davenport. The author of the tract justified his leaving the Church of England and attacked its forms, going so far in his hostility to episcopacy, claimed Goffe, “to say that not our diocesan bishops of this latter age shall come into heaven.”52 His argument for Davenport’s authorship relied on what he found to be stylistic devices peculiar to the clergyman that Goffe had heard in Davenport’s sermons at St. Stephen’s and which he claimed were common knowledge among those who knew of Davenport’s Oxford years. Yet the tone of the tract is harsher than Davenport generally used, and the arguments on church polity are inconsistent with what Davenport would publish under his own name a few years later. Nevertheless, the rumor that it was his work was likely to help undermine his reputation among those who were next to decide his fate. A few weeks later Goffe was writing to inform Boswell that he had made sure that the magistrates heard that Davenport’s departure from England had been his “carriage towards the king,” rather than any issues about ceremonies and discipline. This was a key point since the Dutch authorities were sympathetic toward those who questioned episcopal government, but they were very anxious at the time about seeming to welcome anyone who had opposed or offended the English king. Goffe also advised that efforts be made in London to prevent the dispatch of any letters supporting Davenport’s explanation of the circumstances under which he left St. Stephen’s, and he suggested that someone might be induced to write an account more in keeping with what Goffe and Boswell claimed to be the circumstances.53

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When the church elders went to the magistrates, they discovered that they had been led to believe that Davenport had left England because of clashes with the civil authorities. The elders were able to refute that claim and were also able to present letters from two Dutch ministers endorsing Davenport. This and the influence behind the scenes of the English merchants who supported his candidacy led to the magistrates approving his call on February 1.54 Davenport was concerned, however, that in working to get the appointment approved his supporters had implied a greater willingness to conform to the local custom regarding baptism than he was comfortable with.55 The magistrates’ approval having been given, a special meeting of the Amsterdam classis was convened on February 6. Paget’s later account states that he “proposed the matter unto them, who, understanding from us how he had declared his consent with them, did readily and willingly give their consent to his calling.”56 In refuting Paget’s account, Davenport wrote that when he learned the wording of the magistrates’ decision, he realized the trap that was being prepared for him and requested of one of the elders to have the classis meeting cancelled. When this proved impossible, he urged the elders who accompanied Paget to the classis to state his case honestly, but that when the classis seemed willing to move quickly to approve the call, his supporters remained silent.57 There is little doubt that the members of the classis had been led to believe that Davenport had accepted the recommendations of the five ministers, but there is a question as to how much responsibility he bore for allowing that misconception, and how much it was the responsibility of his supporters who wished to rush the decision through. Two days later the congregation’s elders drew up a written call to the position, which was conveyed to Davenport, who surprised those who carried it to him by asking for time to deliberate on the offer.58 There is no doubt that had he accepted the offer he would have joined Paget in the pastorate of the English Church, and he likely would have encountered few if any unsuitable candidates for baptism. But having wrestled over the past years with the issue of how far one could compromise one’s conscience for the peace of the church, he was not willing to follow this course. On February 10 he informed the consistory that he could not accept the call “unless it were added that no infants should be presented in public to baptism whose parents are not members of the church . . . before [the]minister had received satisfaction concerning the parents in private.”59 Years later, he would say that “he thought God carried him over into Holland on purpose to bear witness against that promiscuous baptism which at least bordered upon a



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profanation of the holy institution,” but at the time it appears he was willing to find a solution that would satisfy his conscience while avoiding a breach in the church.60 After additional efforts to find a solution failed, on February 15, Davenport appeared before the consistory and declared that if he “must conform to that private judgment set down by certain Dutch ministers,” then he could not accept the call, but “if the consistory desires it he is content to continue in assisting Mr. Paget . . . [and] that in the interim he may acquaint himself with . . . the orders of the classis and synod and the particular states of this congregation, whereby, being better informed, the questions or scruples might be better removed.” Prompted by Stephen Offwood, the consistory “thought [it] good to desire him to remain with us as an assistant for a continuing time as aforesaid, wherein all assented. Only Mr. Paget’s judgment was that he held it not safe without first taking advice of the classis.”61 A week later the consistory formally invited Davenport to continue to assist Paget, specifically asking him to share in the weekly preaching, and in particular to preach the following Saturday’s sermon preparing the congregants for the administration of the Lord’s Supper. Again, Paget registered his dissent.62 The day before the consistory meeting on February 15, Goffe, who was in Amsterdam briefly, visited Davenport in his lodgings. Davenport was unaware of Goffe’s role in the campaign to block his appointment and shared with his fellow Oxonian his frustrations. He complained that Archbishop Laud had recently “in the High Commission Court took occasion to speak of him, and to blame him with some sharpness for his preachings and discourse since he came into these parts,” and that Laud particularly charged him with “inveigh[ing] most violently against the policy of the Church of England.” Davenport denied this and blamed the erroneous reports on Vossius, whom he did recognize as someone working against his interests. He assured Goffe that he had never attacked the Church of England, though he acknowledged that in a sermon with Vossius’s son present in the congregation, he had defended the practice of sitting to receive the Lord’s Supper and termed the gesture of kneeling as unlawful.63 Goffe also noted that Davenport was planning to travel to The Hague to see Sir William Boswell. Davenport’s enemies had made a point of criticizing him for not having presented himself to the English ambassador when he had first arrived in the Netherlands, though he had subsequently written to Boswell.64 This visit was a way of responding to that criticism but also a chance to protest against the slanders that Vossius was spreading about

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him to the English authorities.65 According to Goffe, however, Davenport’s journey to The Hague was also a means to avoid having to meet with some of the Dutch clergy as the classis prepared to meet again. Goffe claimed that this was consistent with a pattern of Davenport evading meetings with the Dutch, claiming that “no Dutch minister could come to speak with Damport, [though] since his coming they have sought it several times, severally and altogether.” The reason was suspected to be that Davenport’s “Latin tongue is the cause of it,” that being the common language in which they would have been able to converse.66 When he traveled to The Hague, Davenport carried with him a testimonial from the Amsterdam merchant John Webster, who indicated that he had “heard most of the sermons that ever he did preach” in Amsterdam and did “never hear him once” to attack the Church of England, and “never heard him to meddle in any matter of state.” Furthermore, “always at beginning or end of every sermon doth he pray for our king and council.”67 The meeting itself focused on Davenport’s stance toward England and the English Church. In a letter to Boswell reviewing the points covered, Davenport acknowledged that in one sermon he had expressed his view that sitting was the proper way to receive the Lord’s Supper, which he “approved and preferred before kneeling,” but he claimed that he “named not England, nor the government there,” but so framed the “discourse that it might be applied as well to the popish or Lutheran custom here as to any other.” The complaint that had been made against this was overblown, registered by an “informer who was discontented the week before at a sermon wherein some Arminian errors were touched upon by me.” Boswell questioned him under oath about whether he had published or distributed any books criticizing the English Church or state—presumably prompted by Goffe’s charge that Davenport was the author of No Crown for a Christian Martyr—which Davenport denied. He did, however, indicate that if men continued to deny that he was loyal to the king and misstate his actions, he would “be constrained to declare my innocence in an apology printed to the view of the world,” setting forth the truth about why he left England and the controversy surrounding him in Amsterdam.68 Goffe and Paget were in close contact in the following weeks as the classis and the consistory continued to debate Davenport’s call.69 When the classis met on February 27, Davenport was absent from the city, having gone on to Delft to consult with John Forbes following his meeting with Boswell in The Hague. Forbes had just been forced to resign his position as chaplain



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to the Merchant Adventurers, though he was still in the city. Paget, who had been quarreling with Forbes for more than a decade, referred to him as Davenport’s “oracle.”70 Paget told the classis that Davenport had refused the call because he was unwilling to accept the proposals of the five Dutch ministers (who were all members of the classis). Two of the elders of the English Church asked that the classis allow him to be “established amongst them, not as pastor, but assistant in preaching, alleging the excellency of his gifts and his discreet and peaceable carriage.” Many of the members of the classis were offended at what they understood to be a reversal of Davenport’s agreeing to accept the Dutch policy on baptism, and they rejected the idea that he be an assistant for preaching, arguing that there was no such office in the Dutch church and that, given Paget’s age and infirmity, the pastor needed help with administration of the sacraments and other parish duties. Nevertheless, they named three clergy to approach Davenport and yet again attempt to persuade him to accept the call under the terms previously proposed.71 When the three representatives of the classis approached him, Davenport requested that John Forbes and Hugh Peter be allowed to join in the meeting. Language may have been an issue in his request since he would have been justifiably cautious about negotiating fine ceremonial distinctions and the assistance of his two friends would have been welcome. When the request was denied, he asked that he be allowed to present his reasoning in writing, which was granted, his lengthy response being transmitted to the classis in early April. The classis rejected his arguments and gave him until their next meeting on the first Monday of May to agree to the proposal of the five ministers or else he would be declared incapable of joining the English Church as copastor. Further exchanges were fruitless. Peter, Forbes, and Samuel Bachelor met with Davenport to strengthen his resolve, Peter reportedly telling him, “Take heed, Mr. Damport [Davenport], what you do, for you were as good yield to the English Bishops as to the Dutch Classis.”72 On May 1 Davenport sent the classis a note indicating that he would not be able to accept the call and withdrawing his name from consideration. The classis recorded that “having had so much patience, and used so much labor in vain,” its members were closing the book on the episode. The city magistrates subsequently rescinded their earlier approval.73 At some point, Davenport did preach what was, in effect, a farewell sermon to the congregation in the Beguinage on a Sunday morning. He referred to it as “a sermon for peace” from Romans 14:9: “Let us follow after

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the things which make for peace, and things wherewith we may edify one another.” Paget followed in the afternoon with a sermon in which he lashed out at Davenport.74 Davenport later wrote that he would have returned to England at this time had it not been that Archbishop Laud had been further inflamed by the claims made by Vossius—“an audacious sycophant,” Davenport called him—leading the archbishop to utter “terrifying menaces” against him. Efforts to set the record straight had failed, so that returning to England seemed dangerous. He and his wife continued to attend services at the English Church, which must have aggravated Paget.75 Henry Whitaker, with whom the Davenport’s lodged, asked the clergyman to conduct catechizing exercises in his home. As news of the exercise spread, more members of the congregation began to attend.76 According to Paget, sometimes more than a hundred men and women were present.77 Paget complained that Davenport’s exercise drew people from attending the sermon that was delivered “in the Weser-Kerk at the same hour,” though it is hardly likely that members of his congregation would have attended sermons preached in Dutch.78 Paget complained that Davenport was creating a schism in the church, complaining to the classis and the magistrates. At some point in the fall Davenport left the city, joining Hugh Peter in Rotterdam. On April 12, a number of members of the Amsterdam congregation, including William Best, had demanded to meet with the consistory to accuse Paget of having engineered what clearly appeared to be the defeat of the effort to call Davenport to their ministry.79 On October 18, with Davenport gone, Best and other Davenport supporters published A Just Complaint Against an Unjust Doer, Wherein Is Declared the Miserable Slavery and Bondage That the English Church of Amsterdam Is Now in by Reason of the Tyrannical Government and Corrupt Doctrine of Mr. John Paget (1634). The tract contained a number of Davenport’s statements on the issue of baptism, which he had left with members of the congregation, as well as an attack on Paget’s conduct composed by Best. Davenport had left Amsterdam to prevent the controversy from causing a larger uproar or division in the church, and this was the last thing he wanted. He bought up about 450 of the 500 copies that had been printed, and he tried to prevent any further publication.80 But if he had hoped to put the conflict behind him, he was to find that it was impossible to do so. At the height of his influence in London, Davenport had advocated peace among the different factions of the English Church, and he had lent his



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labors to uniting Protestants everywhere, urging compromise on what was nonessential. Events and discussions with colleagues had led him to recognize that compromise was not always possible, or even desirable. He reassessed what he was willing to conform to, and in the circumstances of the Laudian church this meant that he could no longer serve St. Stephen’s. Leaving his parish, he had “expected peace.” In Amsterdam he had labored to find a means to reach accommodation with Paget. He acknowledged that he had seen the questions that had been posed to Thomas Hooker a few years earlier, but he clearly felt that a middle way could be found. Three issues had divided Paget and Hooker: contact with Separatists, the authority of classes, and the administration of baptism. Davenport felt that he could meet Paget halfway on relations with the Separatists. He did not during his stay in Amsterdam openly challenge the authority of the classis. He accepted the process whereby the Amsterdam classis had to approve of his call. His experience would bring him to a more thoroughly congregationalist position, but he would not be ready to articulate that position until he was gone from the city. Baptism proved the rock on which his hopes would be dashed, but he persisted in lengthy discussions over ways in which the differences with Paget might be bridged, always looking for procedures that would minimize any public disagreement between the two ministers over the baptism of a particular child. When he had abandoned hope of a formal position in the English Church, he preached to the congregation on the need of peace, and he demonstrated his own commitment to unity by continuing to attend services in the Beguinage. While Paget viewed his private preaching as schismatic, Davenport rejected that charge and pointed out that he had taken care that the sessions did not conflict with the services in the Beguinage. Although he considered publishing his own account of why he had left England and of his experiences in Amsterdam, he assured Ambassador Boswell that he would do so only if false charges about him continued to circulate. When the faction that had sought his call published the Just Complaint, he tried to buy up all the copies to prevent the breach from becoming a public scandal. Some of this was undoubtedly tactical—if he truly hoped to return to England, it would not serve his interests to be the center of a major controversy. But it also testified to his irenic character. That peaceful temperament would be further challenged during his remaining time in the Netherlands.

Ch a pt e r 9

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I

n November 1634, Samuel Hartlib recorded that Davenport hoped to preach in Rotterdam in place of William Ames, who had died the previous November.1 Ames, who had made many of his contributions to theology as a professor at the University of Franeker, had joined Hugh Peter in the pastorate of the English Church in Rotterdam in August or September of 1633. But shortly after Ames arrived, his house flooded and he developed pneumonia. He died on November 11. When John Forbes was forced from his ministerial post in Delft, he moved to Rotterdam. But he died in August 1634, before he could be joined to the ministry of the church. Davenport, whose candidacy at Amsterdam had failed, was a logical choice to join Peter. Furthermore, the two men had known each other for many years, Peter having journeyed to London as a young clergyman to hear Davenport preach, and Davenport having interceded with the Earl of Warwick to secure a ministerial post for Peter in Essex around 1623.2 Rotterdam was one of the principal ports of the Netherlands, its name derived from a dam erected on the River Rotte in the thirteenth century. Incorporated as a village in the early fourteenth century, Rotterdam had quickly grown.3 At the time when Davenport was there, it was the secondlargest city in the Netherlands, eclipsed only by Amsterdam. In 1634 the Englishman William Brereton visited the city and was impressed with what he saw. In the harbor he saw “an infinite number of tall and gallant ships,” including thirty of the Dutch men-of-war, docked in channels fifty or sixty yards broad that divided the streets of the port. Bridges and drawbridges spanned the channels. On one of the bridges, “seventy or eighty yards broad” and with “a fair market-place upon it,” he found “the portraiture of Erasmus, of very large stature, with a book in his hand.”4 He found “windmills here in 130



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the tops of houses.” The town was “watered about the walls, and fair ditches in all their back sides.”5 Brereton was concerned that he found “little respect here to sanctify the Sabbath.” He learned from Hugh Peter, the pastor of the English congregation, that “a religious burgomaster, two years ago, [had] attempted to reform the profanation of the Sabbath” and imposed and collected a fine from all who worked on that day. The brewers, however, had “in a mutinous manner told the burgomaster that they would not be subject to his new laws,” and the effort collapsed.6 English and Scottish merchants had settled in Rotterdam as trade between that city and British ports grew. In 1611 the municipal authorities had granted the English settlers permission to hold occasional religious services. Eight years later they approved the creation of a church to serve the English community and a preacher to be paid by the provincial States of Holland. The first minister, serving from 1620 to 1629, was Thomas Barkely. It was expected that he would become a member of the classis of Rotterdam, but that did not happen and the church remained independent until it affiliated with the English classis. Because this is the church that John Davenport ministered to from late in 1634 until he departed for New England in 1637, examining its character is important to understanding his life and thought. The congregation originally shared Sebastian’s chapel with a French congregation, but in 1632 the city magistrates donated to the congregation a building known as the Academy on the Glasshaven quay.7 The Glasshaven was a new part of the port that had been built during an expansion of the harbor in 1614. The Academy had been the home of a group of rhetoricians who had performed plays there. The English congregation cleared out all of the theatrical props and converted the structure for church services.8 It was, according to a member of the congregation, “a large house of wood well finished with studs and a fair pulpit and table.”9 More significant than the transformation of the Academy was the transformation of the congregation. Early in 1633 Hugh Peter, disdaining (in the words of Stephen Goffe) to “be called by the vulgar English of Rotterdam,” insisted on his call to the congregation’s ministry by “the Godly, and so he framed a new covenant in paper to which all must put their hands, and none but those which were of that covenant should have any vote to call him.”10 There were fifteen articles to the covenant. The first agreed that all who sought membership in the church should undergo a “meet trial for our fitness to be members.” The second pledged the members to seek the “true and

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pure worship of God and to oppose all way of innovation and corruption.” The third stipulated that the Scriptures would be the congregation’s guide in any controversies. In the following articles, the members pledged to “labor for growth of knowledge and to that end to confer, pray, hear, and meditate”; to “submit to brotherly admonition and conference without envy or anger”; and to “be thoroughly reconciled one to another even in judgment before we begin this work.” They pledged to be exact in their commitment to live godly lives and to reject earthly vanities, committing themselves instead to “labor to get a great measure of humility and meekness and to banish pride and highness of spirit.” They committed themselves to “furthering of the gospel at home and abroad as well in our persons as with our purses.” Concern for communal harmony continued in articles that pledged the members to “take nearly to heart our brethren’s condition and to conform ourselves to these troublesome times both in dress and apparel that they be without excess,” to “deal with all kinds of wisdom and gentleness towards those that are without,” to “study unity and brotherly love,” and “to put one another in mind of this covenant and as occasion is offered to take an account of what is done in the promises.” The final article affirmed the need “diligently to instruct children and servants” for “the furthering of the kingdom of Christ.”11 The Rotterdam congregation having been re-formed by those who took the covenant, John Forbes, representing the English classis, called on the members to approve Peter as their pastor. Looking out at the congregation Forbes (again, according to Goffe’s account) said, “‘I see the men choose him, but what do the women do?’ . . . Hereupon the women lift up their hands too.”12 This is one of the few descriptions of congregational formation in England, the Netherlands, or New England that explicitly documents the vote of women in choosing their pastor. Brereton, on his visit to Rotterdam in 1634, attended services in the church and referred to Peter as “a right zealous and worthy man.”13 The reorganization of the Rotterdam church was not an isolated incident, but rather reflected a growing tendency among some puritans to emphasize congregational formation and authority. The typical churches in England that Davenport was familiar with were the parish churches established by higher authorities in the distant past. Governance—from prescribing rituals to approving clergy for pastoral posts—was from the top down. The only churches known to Davenport that were actually formed and governed by believers were Separatist, or, in the case of the Jacob church, semi-Separatist. While willing to engage in discussions with such individu-



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als, Davenport had rejected Separatism as dividing the all important unity of Reformed Christendom. At the same time he was sympathetic to lay participation in the affairs of the church, having ministered in parishes where the vestry played a key role in selecting clergy and governing local church affairs. And as he became more concerned with the danger of compromising on issues of worship, he had become more sympathetic to the importance covenanted believers placed on limiting the sacraments to the faithful. Having taken up residence in the Netherlands, William Ames had developed views on church government that emphasized congregational authority. While not a Separatist, he had argued that “the essential form of a visible church is the covenant of God, or true faith made visible by profession. . . . The integral constituting form is that . . . relation or reference which a congregation of such professors have to one another by virtue of their settled combination.”14 His views were said to have influenced the English congregation gathered at Middleburg in 1623, which was organized by “‘a solemn and explicit covenant with God, and one another.’”15 Ames included a strong assertion of the importance of covenant-based congregations in the 1627 edition of his Medulla Theologica. Hugh Peter, whose Dutch career owed much to Ames’s assistance, would have been very familiar with this, and it likely contributed to his reorganization of the Rotterdam church.16 In England itself, the idea that a true church was formed by the agreement of its members rather than the authorization of the hierarchy, and that the individual congregation should determine its own affairs, was starting to be debated within the puritan community. Certain parishes, like St. Stephen’s in London’s Coleman Street, had the right to choose their own rector. John Wilson had refused to accept the call to All Saints in Sudbury unless the members of the congregation signified that it was their desire that he do so. We know that John Cotton entered into a separate covenant with godly members of his Boston, Lincolnshire, parish (and possibly nonparishioners such as the Hutchinson family from Alford), thus forming in essence a gathered church within the parish. More striking was the London church gathered by covenant under the leadership of Henry Jacob and then John Lathrop. Separate in that it was not a parish church or in any other way recognized by the church authorities, the congregation firmly declared its place in the communion of the Church of England. Communicating the news of the Rotterdam covenant to the Privy Council, Sir William Boswell indicated that he believed Peter had drawn on the example of a covenant drawn up by a Mr. White in England.17 This most

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likely referred to John White of Dorchester, one of the key figures in the organization of the Massachusetts Bay Company.18 White’s covenant was prefaced with reference to the “severeness of the Lord’s indignation upon our neighboring churches about us” on the Continent, and “threatened to us by the preparations made against us” by the English bishops, and other sins of the land, “which get strength daily, and break forth more violently now then in former times.” It bemoaned the people’s “lukewarmedness in zeal for God’s honor & love to his truth,” lack of “affection towards our brethren,” and “deadness of heart in the midst of these dangerous times.” It acknowledged the sins of “pride & self-love which carries us after our own ends,” and “contentions and divisions amongst ourselves by all which our carriage hath been much disordered, the peace of our consciences distempered, ourselves weakened against the time of trial, and religion scandalized.” To correct this state of affairs, those who took White’s covenant pledged themselves to ten measures. Among these was a promise “to cleave in heart to the truth and pure worship of God established according to his own ordinances, opposing ourselves to all ways of innovation or corruption in doctrine to the utmost of our power.” They pledged themselves “to labor for a growth in knowledge and understanding of the mystery of godliness according to the reading, hearing, meditation, and conference of the word of God in all fit opportunity, redeeming the time for that purpose.” They pledged “to forsake the clogging of our hearts with worldly affairs—abstaining from all oppression and fraud in bargaining, and abandoning all ways and means of gain which shall be judged scandalous.” They also committed themselves to “labor for furthering the gospel at home and abroad by offering our persons and estates unto the Church’s service,” and, aware of the suffering of their coreligionists on the Continent, “to take near the heart our afflicted brethren’s distresses, remembering their estate more frequently and effectually in our prayers, . . . and enlarging our hands to their relief.19 When the Massachusetts Bay Company sent its first colonists to New England in 1629, White and Davenport were involved in the choice of ministers. There must have been some discussions as to how the religious life of the colony was to be organized. Samuel Skelton and Francis Higginson organized the settlers in Salem into a covenanted congregation which then chose them as pastor and teacher of that church. Although the colonists there had been visited by a member of the Plymouth Separatist congregation, who some scholars have argued helped push the Bay colonists toward congregationalism, the Salem procedures were not unique, nor did they have



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to be an example of Separatist influence. The Massachusetts Bay Company appointed ministers to serve the needs of its members (as did the Merchant Adventurers), and those ministers determined how, in the absence of established English parishes, they could best do so. Before departing for the new England, a group of families from southwestern England gathered in the new hospital in Plymouth, England, where Dorchester’s John White led them in a day of fasting and prayer. The emigrants then called John Warham of Exeter and Samuel Maverick, another clergyman from the region, to become their ministers, and upon their acceptance, ordained them in their posts, thus forming a congregation even before they departed for America. When they arrived, they settled the town of Dorchester.20 In the end, as the historian Stephen Foster has argued, “quite simply, the earliest New England ecclesiastical foundations were the only way according to both theology and practice (at about 1630) that professing Christians [in New England] could have been organized in a church way.”21 The example of these men and women, and that of the numerous other New England churches formed by mutual covenant in the first years of colonization, would have been well known to Peter when he drew up the Rotterdam covenant. John Davenport was familiar with the arguments of Jacob and Ames, and with the practices of believers in England, New England, and elsewhere in the Netherlands. His experience in Amsterdam had led him to conclude that the selection of ministers and the determination of ceremonial practices belonged in the hands of the individual congregation and not a classis or synod. While he had not openly asserted that position in his dealings at the time with Paget and the Amsterdam classis, he had clearly reached that conclusion when he published his accounts of the dispute. His efforts to buy up all the copies of A Just Complaint Against an Unjust Doer had proven unsuccessful, and so he published his own brief Protestation Made and Published UPON Occasion of a Pamphlet Entitled a Just Complaint (1635), seeking to exonerate himself from any responsibility for publishing the Just Complaint, explaining his efforts to prevent its wide circulation and indicating his preference that the controversy had remained private. Paget was not mollified by these efforts and was determined to publish his own answer, though he acknowledged in a letter to Boswell that “some counsel me for peace’s sake not to print an answer unto them.”22 Paget published his An Answer to the Unjust Complaints of William Best . . . Also, an Answer to Mr. John Davenport in the summer of 1635. Davenport referred to this in a

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letter to Lady Vere on July 21. Commiserating with her on the death a few months earlier of Sir Horace, whom he praised for his public and private piety, Davenport apologized for not having written sooner, indicating that he had been seriously ill, and also distracted “by the unquiet spirit of the old man [Paget], who to all his former injuries added this, that he hath now published a tedious book in English full of reproaches and slanders against me, wherein also he doth injury to Mr. [Robert] Parker, Doctor Ames, and Mr. Forbes, who are at rest, and Mr. Hooker, who is far absent, and to the best members of his own church, whom he brandeth several ways, which will give the prelates too much advantage, and open the mouths of enemies against the truth.” “This,” he indicated, “I am now constrained to answer for the truth’s sake, notwithstanding all my former weakness.”23 Davenport did seek to refute Paget point by point in his own An Apologetical Reply to a Book Called an Answer to the Unjust Complaint (1636), and his answer marked the first time that he publicly questioned the authority of classes and synods over individual churches and asserted his belief in congregational principles. Davenport did not reject the idea of synods or assemblies entirely. “The combination of particular churches in classes and synods is either such a combination of them as is between equals, or such subordination of them as between unequals,” he wrote. “The first is by way of counsel, or brotherly direction. The second is by way of command, or masterly subjection. This we condemn as being the first step whereby the Pope ascended into the chair of pestilence, and a mere inlet for tyranny to invade and usurp the church’s right. The other is approved by the practice of the most ancient churches and by good reason.”24 In his defense of his positions here and elsewhere, he drew on the writings of Dudley Fenner, Thomas Cartwright, William Perkins, William Ames, Robert Parker, and other proponents of Congregationalism. According to Samuel Eaton, who had briefly ministered to the dissidents in the English Church in Amsterdam after Davenport’s departure, at this time Davenport asserted that “a Classic Presbytery sets up many Bishops instead of one.”25 Though Davenport had joined Hugh Peter in Rotterdam by November 1634, he soon left that city to spend time at The Hague. His friend Samuel Balmford was minister to the English congregation in the Dutch capital. In 1634, the English traveler William Brereton had attended worship in The Hague and “heard a very honest, neat sermon” preached by Balmford.26 In 1635 Balmford desired to journey to England to visit his elderly mother, and



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it appears that Davenport agreed to substitute for him during his absence.27 The Davenports were in The Hague in April 1635, when Elizabeth gave birth to a son, whom they named John. He was baptized in the English Church on April 15.28 The Hague was the residence of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, who had settled there following the defeat of her husband Frederick, the Elector Palatinate and king of Bohemia, in the early years of the Thirty Years’ War. Frederick had died in 1632 and Elizabeth was focused on seeking to protect the interests of her son Charles Louis. Though she had her own chaplain, she frequently attended services in the English Church.29 In 1628 she had placed her daughter under the supervision of Sir Horace and Lady Vere, which might indicate a sympathy for the reformed religious position. Further evidence of that comes in a letter she wrote to Sir Thomas Row in 1635 in which she indicated that she was “glad you commend [Archbishop Laud] so much, for there are but few that do it. I have been willing enough to enter into correspondence with him, since he was archbishop, but you know I do not love to begin; he hath indeed sent me sometimes a cold compliment, and I have answered it in the same kind.”30 Nevertheless, she would soon bow to the reality that achieving support for the cause of her son would require cooperation with Laud and her brother, England’s Charles I. During his residence at The Hague, Davenport preached to Queen Elizabeth, whom he may have met when he was a youth and she was a young princess visiting Coventry. It was the practice in the church that the sermon not begin until the queen had arrived.31 Davenport was concerned about how Paget’s attacks might affect his relationship with her. As a result, when he wrote to Lady Vere in July, he stated, “It may be of good use to prevent prejudice in the Queen [Elizabeth of Bohemia], if your Honor, when you are pleased to write to her, and to my Lady Livingston [who served her], take notice of their favor to me, and pray them not to be prejudiced by any suggestions against me from that book or otherwise till they may peruse my answer. This I desire not for any use I have of the Queen’s favor, but that she might not be hindered from receiving good by my ministry, which yet she well esteemeth.”32 Davenport’s stay at The Hague was extended longer than he may have anticipated when Balmford was detained by English authorities and forced to appear before the Court of High Commission. Pressure was applied to have Balmford agree to conform to the practices of the Church of England in his ministry at The Hague, and he was eventually granted a license to

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return.33 By December 1635 he was back in the Netherlands, and Davenport was in Rotterdam again. Davenport wrote to Lady Vere thanking her for hospitality given to his wife and infant son, who had returned to England for at least a time, and for a letter Lady Vere had sent to him via Balmford. He referred to Balmford as having returned “as it were, from prison.”34 While still in The Hague, Davenport had contracted a serious illness. In his answer to Paget, he indicated that when the Amsterdam clergyman’s book appeared he “was very weak, having been, not long before, very near unto death,” though “from that death, and from dangerous relapses afterwards into weakness and distemper, the Lord in mercy recovered me.”35 In his July letter to Lady Vere he indicated that during a relapse, he “was the second time let blood for a fever and catarrh, and so remained weak for a season.”36 Queen Elizabeth was seriously ill at the same time, her biographers indicating that she suffered “violent attacks of intermittent fever or tertiary ague, which, lasting many weeks, greatly reduced her strength and left her thin and pale,” and it is possible that Davenport suffered from the same illness, which may have been malaria.37 Malaria would explain some but not all of the symptoms in the periodic bouts of illness that he later dated as beginning at this time. Recovered from his illness and back in Rotterdam, Davenport and Peter were faced with new challenges. As part of its efforts to remove John Forbes from his position as minister to the Merchant Adventurers, the English Privy Council had maneuvered to move the Dutch court of that company from Delft to Rotterdam. In February 1635 negotiations between the Rotterdam authorities and the Merchant Adventurers were completed, and the Dutch assigned St. Peter’s church for the use of the company, with the stipulation that services were to be conducted “according to the discipline and order of the Church of England.”38 Peter and Davenport asserted that theirs was the true English Church in the city, and that claim was for a time at least recognized by the Dutch officials. The stipulation that the new English Church in Rotterdam comply with the orders of the Church of England was one consequence of the campaign waged by the English Privy Council to force all army chaplains and English and Scottish ministers to other British congregations to conform to the English Church.39 While these efforts would not be as successful as Laud hoped, they pointed to a significant change in the viability of the Netherlands for English puritan exiles. At the same time, the situation of English puritans at home was also worsening, with bishops such as Matthew Wren cracking



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down more forcefully on nonconformity in traditional reform strongholds. Redress of such grievances through parliamentary action was precluded by the king’s determination to rule without that body. Increasingly, more puritans began to emigrate to New England, where Massachusetts was firmly established. Among those who seriously considered migration were a group of English grandees who were well known to Davenport and Peter. In March 1632 the Earl of Warwick, serving as president of the Council for New England, had sold a patent he held to the lands that would later be known as Connecticut to William Fiennes, First Viscount Saye and Sele, the Second Lord Brooke, and nine others, including Sir Nathaniel Rich; Sir Richard Saltonstall; John Hampden; John Humfry; and John Pym.40 Nothing was done by these grandees until 1634, when Humfry, who had also been active in the affairs of Massachusetts in its first years, arrived in Boston with muskets, cannon, and powder. Humfry was identified as representing “some persons of great quality and estate (and of special note for piety)” who intended to settle in New England. He likely brought proposals from Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke, outlining their plans and hopes for a New England settlement. John Winthrop was well known to these men and well aware of their plans for southern New England. Though not in power as governor of Massachusetts at the time, Winthtrop remained engaged in planning the future of the region. He helped arrange a visit to the British Isles by his son, John Winthrop Jr., and the clergyman John Wilson, one purpose of which was to meet with some of the men involved in the new colonizing plans. The younger Winthrop stopped first in Ireland, perhaps visiting kin in the Bandon area, and then meeting with Sir John Clotsworthy and others who were considering emigration from the Ulster plantation. He next crossed the Irish Sea to England, where he met with a variety of individuals who were involved in the Saybrook enterprise, including the clergyman Henry Jessey and Sir Matthew Boynton.41 Viscount Saye and Sele had sent his reflections on government to Massachusetts friends. In them he suggested that the proprietors would establish in Connecticut what one scholar has called a form of aristocratic constitutionalism, a system in which hereditary peers held considerable power and controlled the churches as well.42 John Cotton wrote a response to this proposal, politely stating the case for the Massachusetts way in which leaders were elected by godly freemen and churches governed themselves. Winthrop sent the Earl of Warwick a description of the institutions and economy of

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the Bay Colony. In response to a request from Henry Jessey, Winthrop Jr. sent the English clergyman copies of his father’s “Christian Charity” sermon, the “Humble Petition” in which the colonists had attested to their continuing ties with the Church of England, and some of Francis Higginson’s descriptions of the New England environment.43 The membership of the new colonizing group had changed since the purchase of the patent in 1632. Pym, Hampden, and members of the Rich family were no longer involved, but others, including George Fenwick, Sir Matthew Boynton, Sir Arthur Heselrige, and Henry Lawrence had taken an interest in the venture. In July 1635 the leaders of the Saybrook Company (as it was then known) met in London and appointed Winthrop Jr. “governor of the River Connecticut in New England and of the harbors and places adjoining.” Davenport and Peter had close connections with the Saybrook proprietors and followed their plans. In 1661 Davenport would write of “my ever honored lord, Viscount Saye and Sele, unto whom I have been continually, nearly 40 years past, exceedingly obliged for sundry testimonies of his special favors towards me when I lived in London, and when I was in Holland, and after my return thence to London, and since my abode in this wilderness, which hath been above 24 years.”44 In the summer of 1635, Davenport and Peter assisted the proprietors in identifying and engaging Lion Gardiner, an engineer and master of works of fortification serving under the Prince of Orange, to be the commander of the fort that Winthrop Jr. was to establish at the mouth of the Connecticut River.45 A number of proprietors, including Arthur Heselrige and George Fenwick, asked Winthrop Jr. to have homes prepared for them in the new colony.46 One of Lawrence’s tenants, Oliver Cromwell, may well have been planning to emigrate to the new colony at this time.47 Peter, who had toyed with the idea of emigration in the early years of the decade, accepted an offer from the Saybrook proprietors to journey to the region along with Sir Henry Vane to assist Winthrop Jr. in asserting their rights to the region against groups of colonists who had moved into the Connecticut River Valley from Massachusetts. Peter left Rotterdam in the summer of 1635, leaving Davenport as the sole minister of the congregation.48 At some point before March 1636, William Bridge, who had been forced from his living in Norwich, joined the congregation. This precipitated an influx of immigrants from the Norwich and Yarmouth areas. One of these was Daniel Bradford, who recorded his own arrival in March and described hearing “Mr. John Davenport, [who] preached out of II Corinthians chapter



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6: come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. He said that we ought to be separated from [evils] in the worship of God that were urged by some contrary to the word of God. Better to go & dwell in Goshen than tarry in the midst of such Egyptian darkness as is now falling on our unhappy country. The sun of heaven doth shine as comfortably here in Rotterdam as in other places; the Sun of Righteousness even brighter in this our city of refuge.”49 Bradford’s account of his involvement with the Rotterdam church includes a number of references to Davenport. After the immigrant and his wife had been in Rotterdam for a short time, Bridge offered them the opportunity to join the congregation, giving them a copy of the covenant they would be expected to embrace. Together with two other couples, the Bradfords appeared before the congregation on April 20, 1637, “for trial of our fitness to be members. We did each give an account of the work of God’s grace in our souls. Then Mr. Davenport asked if we were willing to join with them in the covenant. We said we were. They did then vote to receive us members of the church. Afterwards we turned to prayer.” On May 7, when the Lord’s Supper was next celebrated, “Mr. Davenport did in the church’s name extend unto us the right hand of fellowship & welcomed us into the communion of the church. Then, according to the custom of these churches, we all sat at a long table set across the meetinghouse & did partake of the Lord’s body & blood according to his word, our hearts being filled with a solemn sense of his presence with us.”50 While continuing to minister to the Rotterdam congregation, Davenport was himself contemplating emigration to New England. Reports had extolled the success the colonists had achieved in reforming church ordinances. In a 1634 letter that some have speculated was directed to Davenport, and which at the least seems to have circulated among the godly, John Cotton wrote of how in New England he was able “to enjoy the liberty, not of some ordinances of God, but of all, and all in purity.” And, Cotton asked, making a point that would have resonated with clergy in the Netherlands, “If we may and ought to follow God’s calling three hundred miles, why not three thousand?”51 Other reports from the colony were equally encouraging. The minister Thomas Welde (who had once been considered as a copastor in Amsterdam) wrote to his former parishioners in the Stour Valley to tell them that while the colonists laid no claim to perfection, he found that in New England “the greater part are the better part. Here Mordecai speaketh kindly to the hearts of his people. Here are none of the men of Gibea, the sons of

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Belial, knocking at our doors, disturbing our sweet peace, or threatening violence. Here, blessed by the Lord God forever, our ears are not beaten nor the air filled with oaths, swearers, nor railers, nor our eyes and ears vexed with the unclean conversation of the wicked.”52 As he considered New England, Davenport made a few surreptitious journeys to England to meet with friends and lay his plans. In April 1636 he was reported to have left Rotterdam for a time.53 In March 1637, Sir Nathaniel Brent, vicar general of the diocese of London, stated in a report of his recent diocesan visitation, “Mr. Damport hath lately been in these parts [Braintree], and at Hackney not long since. I am told he goes in gray like a Country gentleman.”54 Davenport was in contact with Theophilus Eaton and other members of the St. Stephen’s congregation, seeking to organize a company of fellow emigrants. A stop at Hackney was probably to visit his wife and son at Lady Vere’s, and it can be assumed that it was at this time that he and Elizabeth arranged with Lady Vere to take care of their son until they would be settled in the New World. Davenport shared leadership of the group that was planning to emigrate to New England with Theophilus Eaton, who would be his ally throughout the first decades of New Haven. There is little in his known history to indicate that Eaton felt strongly about religious matters, though his brother Samuel was a nonconformist. Samuel had followed their father into the ministry and had run into trouble with the authorities in Cheshire, briefly traveling to the Netherlands, where, for a time, he had ministered to some of Davenport’s former supporters in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, in 1637 Theophilus was willing to risk his considerable fortune by emigrating to New England. Eaton would have been the one who undertook the detailed planning for their departure. The group that coalesced around Davenport and Eaton included a number of Eaton’s kin, among them his mother, his two brothers—Samuel and Nathaniel—his children and stepchildren, and Edward Hopkins and Richard Malbon. Some members of St. Stephen’s were represented. Owen Rowe planned to emigrate but never did, yet in the meantime he sent his son Nathaniel. Other parish members included William Andrews, Henry Browning, James Clark, Jasper Crane, Jeremy Dixon, Nicholas Elsey, Francis Hall, Robert Hill, William Ives, George Smith, and George and Lawrence Ward. Other Londoners also joined the group, as did individuals from other parts of England.55



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Though both Davenport and Eaton had invested in the Massachusetts Bay Company and had been active in its affairs from the start, it is likely that they intended to settle on the lands claimed by Davenport’s friend Viscount Saye and Sele. When they departed Eaton carried with him authorization from the Saybrook proprietors to negotiate with the squatting settlers along the Connecticut River regarding the title to those lands.56 Preparations made, Davenport returned briefly to Rotterdam to bid farewell to that congregation and to seek their release to do so. In a June 1637 entry in his journal, Bradford recorded that “Mr. Davenport left us to go into New England having a call to preach the gospel in that country.”57 He left the congregation well provided for, with William Bridge and John Ward, both having been called to the ministry by the congregation. It is also likely that the future Congregationalist spokesman Jeremiah Burroughes was a member of the congregation before Davenport’s departure.58 Leaving London, Davenport had clearly embraced positions that labeled him a “nonconformist.” His experiences in the Netherlands had led him to an advocacy of Congregationalism. He now embarked on a journey to advance the New Jerusalem by creating a new heaven in the New World. Although each new decision defined him more clearly in relation to other English Protestants, he continued to insist on the importance of Christian unity.

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s they prepared to leave England, the company Davenport and Eaton had gathered faced a number of obstacles. In December 1635 the Commission of Foreign Plantations, headed by William Laud, had issued orders to the officers of the port of London that they were “not to suffer any person, being a subsidyman [meaning a taxpayer], to embark himself . . . without license from us, his Majesty’s commissioners, nor any person under the degree of a subsidyman without an attestation from two Justices of the Peace . . . that he hath taken the oath of supremacy and allegiance, and the like testimony from the minister of the parish of his conversation and conformity to the orders and discipline of the Church of England.”1 Eaton and many of the other passengers were subsidymen, yet they somehow managed to have their departure approved. Davenport, like others who evaded the king’s agents, was likely smuggled on board in disguise.2 This was not the only challenge they faced. The aspiring colonists had hired the ship Hector, only to have the vessel subsequently impressed for the service of the crown.3 In January the ship’s owners petitioned the crown, explaining that the vessel had been “contracted for a voyage to New England for a plantation there.” They explained that “most of the passengers had engaged their whole estates, and all was ready for the voyage, when the ship was pressed for the King’s service.”4 This was followed by another petition from the ship’s master in February.5 Finally, the Hector was released and the voyage to America began. Crossing the ocean was a difficult, often dangerous journey at this time. For all but the most fortunate passengers, most of the voyage was spent belowdecks, in crowded quarters with hammocks and sleeping mats shoved into every nook and cranny and little or no privacy. There was little ventila144



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tion or light, and the air was foul with the odor of the unwashed passengers and traces of vomit and feces that missed the buckets provided and could never be adequately scoured from the decks. Food was plain and on longer voyages threatened to run out. Storms were terrifying for those who had never set out to sea before and experienced for the first time how “the wind blew mightily, the rain fell vehemently, the sea roared, and the waves tossed us horribly.”6 The Hector arrived in Boston on June 26, 1637.7 By choosing Boston as their destination, the new colonists had avoided the challenges facing those who arrived, as had the first New England settlers, in an unsettled wilderness needing to immediately build their own shelters and plant the crops on which they would soon have to depend. Boston offered accommodation while the new arrivals learned more about the world they had come to, made their plans for their settlement, and replenished their supplies. Many were welcomed and offered shelter by friends who had emigrated before them. Davenport himself was reunited with his friend John Cotton, who welcomed John and Elizabeth into his home.8 Under the leadership of John Winthrop, Massachusetts had indeed become a city on a hill that drew some puritans to New England while offering those who could not emigrate a model of a godly society. The colonists had developed a colonial government in which freemen (soon limited to church members) annually elected their governor and other magistrates and participated in meetings of the General Court that passed legislation. Town meetings of local householders managed the affairs of their individual communities and chose local officeholders. Churches were organized according to the same type of congregational principles that Davenport had encountered in Rotterdam, with each community organizing a local congregation and selecting its religious leaders. While only members could participate in the Lord’s Supper and present their children to be baptized, all in the community were expected to gather in the meetinghouse to worship and attend to sermons. Clerical conferences, comparable to those that had brought English puritan clergy together to discuss common issues, were instituted to help the separate congregations strive toward unity. The population of Massachusetts had grown to about six thousand during its first five years, and that growth fueled expansion in and beyond the Bay Colony. As some of the older towns grew in size, the townspeople found that they had inadequate pastureland to sustain the increasing population,

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Map of New England. Map by Dana Edsall, Geography Department, Millersville University.

which led some residents to move on and settle new communities. Some of these were in the Connecticut River Valley and encroached on the lands claimed by Lord Saye and Sele and the other holders of the Warwick patent. This contributed to a growing instability in southern New England. The resulting events changed the character of the region where the DavenportEaton group would soon settle. In addition to the Bay colonists who settled towns such as Hartford and Wethersfield, and the Saybrook settlement at the mouth of the Connecticut River that John Winthrop Jr. established, both the Plymouth Colony and the Dutch colony of New Netherland asserted claims to the region. Matched against these conflicting European claims were territorial disputes between the natives in southern New England. The key tribes along the Connecticut River were the Pequots and their kin, the Mohegans. Both of these were rivals of the larger Narragansett tribe, which controlled the land to the east. All the tribes sought to maximize their own trade with the various European groups in the region, and each sought to further its ends through alliances



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with the Europeans. Pequot influence was waning, and their neighbors were eager to take advantage of the situation. Tensions in the region continued to simmer, and the situation was exacerbated by the consequences of two epidemics, in 1633 and 1634, that were devastating for the southern New England tribes and that further upset the balance of power between them.9 Various native leaders tried to play on the new colonists’ fears with warnings about the intentions of their rivals. The Pequots had already been blamed for the death of more than a dozen Europeans in southern New England when John Oldham’s corpse was found on his ship off the coast of Block Island near Rhode Island. In 1636 the Massachusetts authorities decided that the time had come for a show of force. John Endecott commanded a military expedition that laid to waste native lands on Block Island, and then, moving along the coast to the Pequots’ main village, he demanded the surrender of those responsible for English deaths. Fighting broke out and some natives were killed in a running battle, but most escaped. The English burned the Pequots’ wigwams and destroyed as much of their corn as they could, then returned to Boston. The commander at Saybrook, Lion Gardiner, and the leaders of the other river towns were sharply critical of Endecott’s expedition, recognizing that the result would be to turn what was admittedly a dangerous situation into open warfare. Almost immediately following Endecott’s departure, the Pequots attacked English farms along the river. The resulting Pequot War was short and bloody. A force consisting of troops from the Bay, Saybrook, and the Connecticut River towns attacked the fortified Pequot village at Mystic in May 1637. An initial assault revealed the difficulties of storming the native palisade. Had they breached the walls, the colonial forces would have had to advance into the densely packed village and engage in wigwam-to-wigwam fighting against superior numbers. As a result, the English commanders, John Mason and John Underhill, withdrew their troops to the perimeter and set fire to the village. More than six hundred natives—women, children, and the elderly as well as warriors—were burned in the village or killed trying to escape the flames. In the following months small tribes that had allied themselves with the Pequots sued for peace. Another English military expedition pursued the remnants of the tribe and dealt them another serious blow in the Great Swamp Fight, killing many and capturing more than two hundred. The Pequot chieftain Sassacus and some of his fellow chiefs escaped the English cordon and sought refuge with the Mohawks. Their hoped for protectors killed them and sent the scalp of Sassacus to the English.

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The conflict removed the main native obstacle to the further growth of English colonization in southern and central New England, but not before some of the key Saybrook proprietors appear to have lost interest in the region. The tensions leading up to the war, followed by the fighting itself, at the least delayed the implementation of their plans. John Winthrop had told the first colonists that if they lived as God desired them to, he would allow them to “see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth than we have formerly been acquainted with.”10 Winthrop had not provided a clear blueprint of what a godly kingdom should look like, and much of the early history of New England was spent in discussions as to how to properly order the state and church. The influx of new colonists into New England in 1634 and 1635 had fueled this process. Whereas the men and women who had sailed with Winthrop in 1630 had feared the consequences of the direction that Charles I and his bishops were taking the church, clergy who came later, such as Cotton and Hooker, had actually lost their livings. Lay believers had experienced the loss of their spiritual guides. Many English puritans had been radicalized by those events. Some laypeople deprived of clerical guidance were forced to reach their own conclusions on matters of faith. The newcomers appreciated the opportunity to practice their faith more freely than ever before. Sermons were discussed as residents drew water from the local spring and at the marketplace where they bought food for their tables. Most colonists could hear two sermons every Sunday and another on the town’s lecture day. For some, this wasn’t enough, and they traveled to neighboring towns to hear other lectures. John Wilson regularly led members of the Boston congregation to other communities to hear sermons, and many ministers and lay men and women came to Boston to hear John Cotton preach on Thursdays. The clergy gathered after such occasions to dine and exchange views, but the laity also discussed the sermons as they journeyed home together. As they searched for a better understanding of what God wished of them, the colonists worked to establish a perimeter fence that would be the defined boundary separating beliefs and practices that were acceptable from those that were intolerable. Among other issues, they debated whether women needed to wear veils in public, whether the cross of St. George on the English flag was a papist symbol, whether the Church of Rome was a true church, whether clerical conferences undermined the autonomy of



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individual congregations, and whether colonists who returned to England on visits could worship in the churches there. In most cases the colonists achieved a consensus or agreed to disagree. But when, as in the case of Roger Williams, controversial views were not presented for discussion but asserted as unquestioned truths, the colonists were forced to agree or disagree. In the end, few supported Williams in his rejection of the king’s right to have granted the land of Massachusetts to the colonists, his demands for complete and explicit separation from the Church of England, his insistence that magistrates must not administer any oaths, and his refusal to accept the legitimacy of opposing viewpoints. Unwilling to cease arguing his points, Williams was banished. As each arriving ship brought men and women with something new to contribute, the religious conversation broadened to include new ideas. Perhaps no congregation in Massachusetts was more affected by the influx of newcomers and the expression of different beliefs than that in Boston. As the chief port of entry, this was where most arrivals disembarked, and although some moved on to join friends and family who had settled in outlying towns, many stayed to take advantage of the opportunities in the colony’s principal port. During the period from 1634 to 1635 the town’s population grew from four hundred to eight hundred. In many ways this stimulated the religious climate of the community, and those who valued the exchange of religious views reveled in the situation.11 As in England, in addition to attending services, families gathered together for prayer, Scripture readings, and the review of sermons. Neighbors sometimes joined them, and it was also customary for friends to gather in one of their homes in godly communion, praying and singing Psalms. Excited by the freedom to worship and debate as they wished, some of the members of the Boston congregation abandoned the caution with which many puritans had customarily pursued the secrets of God’s work, precipitating a crisis that threatened to tear the community apart at the time when the Hector sailed into Boston harbor. Most puritans believed that the sanctification resulting from God’s saving grace represented the restoration to the saint of the righteousness that Adam had when originally created. Two of the Boston newcomers, William Dyer and Henry Vane denied this, Dyer arguing that Adam had not been made in the image of God, whereas Vane similarly asserted that Adam had never received the seal of the spirit.12 Anne Hutchinson, another new arrival in Boston, likewise questioned whether God’s image in Adam consisted in the holiness experienced by the saints.13

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Vane may also have been developing the views on Christ’s active and passive obedience to the will of God that he would later express and that his critics would label anti-Trinitarian.14 Hutchinson may have also been drifting toward anti-Trinitarianism by questioning the eternal sonship of Christ. She believed that her views came from an understanding of the Scriptures that was directly inspired by the Spirit.15 Hutchinson also considered whether the resurrection of the body was possible.16 She, Vane, and others in the colony claimed a union with the Holy Spirit that confirmed their belief in their election. They were worried about the emphasis many clergy and laypeople placed on behavior as evidence of one’s spiritual state, believing that it represented a danger of drifting into a reliance on the anti-Christian covenant of works.17 It seemed to some that Vane and Hutchinson were suggesting that the presence of the Spirit made the instructions of Scripture superfluous. Many of these ideas had been circulating in the English puritan underground for some years, but it would be wrong to simply see these lay men and women as disciples of English radicals and to dismiss the possibility that they were adding their own glosses to ideas they had encountered. In addition to these views, it is likely that some individuals tested other radical notions and abandoned them after discussion. It is possible that the dynamic of the discussions would have eventually pushed some of the members of the Boston church to express ideas that would have carried them beyond the perimeter fence as defined by the majority of the congregation. But the attempt to more precisely identify opinions, and to brand some of them as heterodox, came not from within, but from outside the Boston community. The man who threw the first stone was Thomas Shepard, who took it upon himself to act the part of heresy hunter in revealing what he was convinced were the false teachings of Cotton and the erroneous beliefs of his disciples. Shepard, the pastor of the Newtown (later Cambridge) church, became convinced that the religious discussions going on in the Boston church were too dangerous to be tolerated. Identifying John Cotton as the inspiration for those opinions, Shepard challenged the Boston pastor early in 1636, writing a letter demanding that Cotton explain his position on various controversial matters. Among the false opinions that he suspected Cotton of was that the revelation of the Spirit was “a thing beyond and above the word” of Scripture, and he also suggested that some of Cotton’s followers, if not Cotton himself, were dangerously close to familist opinions—views expressed by the heretical sect referred to as the Family of Love.18 In June, Shepard began to



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preach a series of sermons that would later be published as The Parable of the Ten Virgins. This was an unabashed attack on the ideas that he believed were circulating in the Boston church. He believed, as he complained to an English correspondent in the 1640s, in the need for “axes and wedges . . . to hew and break this rough, unhewn, bold, yet professing age.”19 By wielding his rhetorical ax, Shepard initiated a process of polarization in which individuals of various opinions gradually abandoned dialogue and began to hurl negative labels at one another with about as much accuracy as one finds in modern political campaigns. Simplify, exaggerate, and demonize your opponents became the strategy adopted by both emerging camps. As each side came to believe the categorization they had shaped to define their opponents, they hardened their own stance in ways that must have surprised anyone who had observed the dialogue and tolerance that had once categorized the affairs of the colony. The colony’s religious peace had become a matter of broad concern when the General Court convened in Boston in October 1636. While the Court was in session, the colony’s leading clergy gathered informally to discuss Shepard’s charges. That meeting, at Cotton’s home, included Hugh Peter, who had been selected the pastor of the Salem congregation after his arrival from the Netherlands. Another new arrival was John Wheelwright, a kinsman of Anne Hutchinson, who was seen as inclined toward the controversial views. According to John Winthrop’s account, both Cotton and Wheelwright satisfied their colleagues’ concerns about their teaching. It was then decided to invite Anne Hutchinson herself, along with Boston’s lay elder Thomas Leverett and the church’s deacon John Coggeshall, to join the discussion. The meeting then became more controversial, though the details are unclear. Hugh Peter later claimed that Hutchinson asserted that “there was a wide and broad difference” between the teachings of Cotton and Wheelwright on the one hand, and the rest of the clergy on the other hand, and that she accused the other ministers of not being “able ministers of the new testament” and of preaching a covenant of works.20 Shortly after this, Winthrop, Wilson, Cotton, and Vane engaged in a written exchange of views over “the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in a believer,” a belief central to the positions of Vane, Hutchinson, and others. In the end, all agreed that “the Holy Ghost is God, and that he doth dwell in the believers (as the Father and Son are both said to), but whether by his gifts and power only, or by some other manner of presence, seeing the scripture does not declare it—it was earnestly desired that the word person

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might be forborne, being a term of human invention, and tending to doubtful disputation in this case.”21 This may have been the last occasion for some time that principal figures in the dispute cooperated in an effort to hold the center and keep the church and colony from dividing. Increasingly, men and women under attack on each side were responding by attacking those with whom they disagreed. Church meetings—and not just in Boston—became “full of disputes,” as men and women whose views were being questioned “grow bold, and dare to question the sound and wholesome truths delivered in public by the ministers of Christ.” In the Boston church, those who saw themselves as disciples of Cotton had turned on John Wilson, and when he rose to preach or pray, “many of the opinionists, [rose] up and contemptuously turn[ed] their backs” upon him, and left the meetinghouse.22 Such disturbances threatened the overall stability of the colony, and in December 1636 the General Court appointed a day of fast to be held on January 19. Meanwhile, Winthrop worked to mend the breach that threatened the colony. He wrote a summary relation of his Christian experience that asserted not only the importance in his own life of the direct experience of God’s Spirit but also the importance of sanctification as evidence of inner transformation and an obligation placed on the saints by God. In essence, he was trying to remind his fellow saints that few found assurance either purely from the touch of God’s Spirit or from the evidence of sanctification. Perhaps, as he looked at Vane and Hutchinson, he reflected on his own youthful experience, when, as he had recorded it, he “grew full of zeal (which outran my knowledge and carried me sometimes beyond my calling).”23 On the appointed fast day Cotton began the day by preaching on the need for peace and reconciliation. In the afternoon Wheelwright delivered what can be described only as an inflammatory sermon. He announced that Christ had recently withheld his presence from Massachusetts because of the actions of an anti-Christian people who advanced a covenant of works. It was time for the true believers to “prepare for spiritual combat,” “to show themselves valiant” and “have their swords ready,” and to “fight and fight with spiritual weapons.” They must “kill” their anti-Christian enemies “with the word of the Lord,” but also “be willing to be killed like sheep” if that was the Lord’s will. Warning against indulging in behavior that might “give occasion to others to say we are libertines or Antinomians,” he branded their enemies as being the ones who were “the greatest enemies of the state that can be.”24 It would be wrong to draw too close a connection between Wheelwright’s inflammatory rhetoric and the forms of religiously inspired terrorism that



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rack our world today. But at the same time it needs to be remembered that New Englanders were well aware of the Catholic plot to kill the king and the nation’s leaders by blowing up Parliament in 1605, the murder of thousands of French Protestants by Catholics in the St. Batholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, the rampages in Munster in the early decades of the German Reformation, and the anti-Arminian riots in Leiden and other Dutch cities in 1619. Edward Johnson of Woburn pointed to this concern when he wrote, a short time later, that while the Boston enthusiasts made “a great talk of new light, . . . it proved but old darkness, such as sometime over-shadowed the City of Munster.”25 The potential for religious enthusiasts to precipitate violence was a commonplace of the time, and so it is not surprising that Wheelwright’s sermon was a major topic of concern at the March 1637 General Court. The magistrates called on the clergyman to answer charges of having stirred up the people against their leaders with much “bitterness and vehemency.” After listening to his explanations, the court (over the objection of Vane and most of Boston’s deputies) found him guilty of sedition for having sought to inflame the people against their spiritual leaders, but also of contempt of court, as he had inflamed the public on an occasion the court had appointed for reconciliation. Sentence was deferred until the next session of the court, and that session (including the colony elections that would precede it), was ordered to be held in Newtown rather than the customary location of Boston.26 On May 17, 1637, men from all over the colony gathered on the Newtown common as they prepared to decide who would serve as the colony’s governor, deputy governor, and assistants for the coming year. When the votes were counted, John Winthrop was restored to the governorship, with Thomas Dudley deputy governor, and Henry Vane not even chosen to be one of the assistants. Following the election, the new court convened. One of the first steps taken was to organize the military expedition against the Pequots, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that all the debates over free grace were being conducted against the background of looming conflict and then actual warfare with that tribe. Another fast day was appointed. The sentencing of Wheelwright was deferred yet again in the hope that the clergyman could be persuaded to recant. And the court took two steps to define what the limits of toleration would be. It called upon the churches of the region to send representatives to a synod that would debate the theological issues that were troubling the colony and to identify errors that could not be tolerated. And the court passed an order preventing any person or town from offering

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accommodation to any new arrival for more than three weeks without the approval of two of the magistrates. This was the situation when the Davenport group arrived in the colony on June 26. John Winthrop noted in particular the arrival of Davenport, Eaton, and Edward Hopkins, recording in his journal that they “were men of fair estate and of great esteem for religion, and wisdom in outward affairs.”27 According to Cotton Mather’s account, Cotton welcomed his friend as Moses did Jethro, hoping that he might be “as eyes unto them in the wilderness.”28 The recent order of the General Court required the approval of the magistrates for the new arrivals to take up temporary residence in Boston, but no one appears to have had concerns about these newcomers. Nevertheless, the arrival of some 250 men and women needing temporary accommodation in Boston and its surrounding must have been extremely disruptive—the entire population of Boston was no more than 800. The town of Boston itself was much smaller in size as well as population than the cities in which Davenport had spent most of his life. If the New World offered the opportunity to build from scratch forms that would mirror the ways of the early church or a New Jerusalem, it also required the building from scratch of homes, farms, and schools. Imagine Boston as an irregular, diamond-shaped peninsula running on a north-south axis. At the south end was a quarter-mile-wide neck of land connecting it to the mainland. The western sides of the diamond were bordered by the Charles River, which flowed from the interior into Massachusetts Bay. Along the southwest side of the diamond were marshes and a common pasture where the townspeople grazed their livestock. The bay wrapped around the eastern sides of the diamond. The town dock, where the Davenport group disembarked, was in a cove along the northeastern side. Slightly inland from the cove was a freshwater spring that had first drawn Winthrop to the peninsula, and where townsmen still went to draw water for their homes. Just to the south of the harbor, on the eastern point, was a high hill on which the colonists had erected a fort to protect the town. Opposite Fort Hill, on the western side of the peninsula, was a cluster of three hills, the largest of which became known as Beacon Hill because of the alarm beacon that was placed on the crest. The town marketplace was in the flat area between Fort Hill and the Trimount, as the three hills came to be known. The first homes in Boston had been erected along the paths that connected the fort, the harbor, the pasture, and the spring. The two principal



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streets crossed at the marketplace. One connected the town dock on the north shore with the pasturelands on the south side of the peninsula. The other street traversed the marketplace from east to west. On that street, near the market, was the home of John Winthrop, the first governor and still the leading political figure in the colony. Across the street from Winthrop was the home of John Wilson, the town’s first minister, who in 1637 was the teacher in the Boston Church. The meetinghouse, where the congregation worshipped and where town and colony meetings were held, was on the south side of the marketplace. A short distance west of the market, on the slope of one of the three hills, was the home of Davenport’s friend John Cotton, who had arrived in Boston in 1633 and been chosen the congregation’s pastor. Henry Vane had joined the Cotton household after his arrival in 1634 and had built an addition onto the minister’s house.29 The Cottons now welcomed John and Elizabeth Davenport into their home. By the time the Hector arrived, the population had grown sufficiently for the town meeting to take steps to regulate its growth. Most settlers had at least small gardens, and rules had been passed that required planting ground to be fenced in to protect the crops from cattle. The town meeting prohibited anyone from keeping more than two milch cows on the peninsula. Dumping waste and refuse along the waterfront was prohibited. In 1635 it was ordered that no new arrivals could be allotted land unless they were likely to be church members, and no resident could sell a house or allotment without the permission of the town’s land committee. Streets were being more formally laid out, and for the first time in 1636 anyone who wished to build had to get approval of the site from the town officers.30 Beyond the physical challenge of housing the Davenport-Eaton group, Bostonians must have been concerned with the impact that the new arrivals would have on the dispute that was raging in their church. Some newcomers would have found the suggestions of antinomianism familiar, having witnessed similar divisions in London in recent years. Some may have known former Londoners such as William and Mary Dyer, who were strong supporters of Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson. Other members of the Davenport group may have been friends with supporters of John Wilson, such as the merchant Robert Keayne, who had listened to Davenport preach at St. Stephen’s and who had himself only recently come to Massachusetts from London. Some may have had friends on both side of the divide that was growing in the Boston church.

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It can be argued that John Davenport’s standing in London in the 1620s and his friendship and cooperation with clergy such as Sibbes and Preston made him the most significant puritan minister to have come to Massachusetts.31 In agreeing to take up residence with John Cotton, Davenport made a statement of support for his old friend, which would have pleased Governor Winthrop, who was trying to hold things together, and would have displeased those who had targeted Cotton as ultimately responsible for the controversy. Once he had grasped the nature of the divisions in the colony Davenport assumed his customary role as a force for unity. On August 17, he preached the weekly lecture in the Boston church. The text was from 1 Corinthians 1:10—“Now I beseech you brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” In the sermon, according to Winthrop, “he fully set forth the nature and danger of divisions, and the disorders which were among us,” and he “clearly discovered his judgment against the new opinions and bitter practices which were sprung up here.”32 The General Court had issued a call for representatives of the churches to assemble and discuss the colony’s theological disputes. Davenport joined with other clergy in preparing lists of errors that deserved to be refuted and condemned. While this groundwork was being prepared, Henry Vane left the colony, a departure that significantly weakened the Spiritist faction. The gathering of church representatives was referred to as a synod, although it was agreed that it would be advisory only and have no power over individual churches. It opened on August 30 in the Newtown meetinghouse. The approximately twenty-five ministers from Massachusetts and Connecticut were joined by lay elders from various churches in the region, additional “messengers” sent by the laity of some congregations to represent their views, and magistrates from the Bay Colony and Connecticut. It has been estimated that there were more than a hundred participants, with additional men and women crowding into the meetinghouse and gathered outside as spectators.33 Following an opening prayer by Thomas Shepard, a list of eighty-two errors was read out to the assembly, setting the agenda for the discussion that followed. According to Winthrop, at the end of that first week the synod unanimously condemned the errors. The following week focused on efforts to heal the divisions that had developed between the clergy, particularly the issues that seemed to separate Cotton and Wheelwright from the rest of the



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ministers. At one point, according to an account passed on by one of the clergy present, Cotton “was so far cast down from what he met with from his brethren at the Synod, that one day coming out of the assembly, he sat down alone on a cartwheel in the way, in more grief and perplexity of heart, than for any cause with men that had ever befallen him.”34 Throughout the synod John Winthrop and John Davenport led a moderate party that sought to persuade the participants to find common ground of agreement but to accept disagreement where unity was not yet possible. A contemporary observed that Winthrop exercised wisdom and an excellent spirit in “silencing passionate and impertinent speeches as another Constantine, desiring the divine oracles might be heard speak and express their own meaning, adjourning the assembly when he saw heat and passion.” As a result, “through the blessing of God,” the assembly so concluded that “jarring and dissonant opinions, if not reconciled, yet are covered.” Those “who came together with minds exasperated, by this means depart in peace, and promise, by a mutual covenant that no difference shall alienate their affections any more, but that they will refer doubts to be resolved by the great God at that great day when we shall appear at his tribunal.”35 This was to overstate things, because Wheelwright remained alienated from his colleagues. But Cotton was brought back within the perimeter fence, and Davenport played a large part in that important outcome. Davenport was invited to preach at the closing session of the synod. Choosing as his text Philippians 3:16—“Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing”—he “laid down the occasions of differences among Christians, etc., and declared the effect and fruit of the assembly, and, with much wisdom and sound argument, persuaded to unity, etc.”36 On November 2 the General Court convened in the Newtown meetinghouse and quickly proceeded to put on trial those whose support of Wheelwright was believed to have threatened the civil order.37 Wheelwright, having been given time to reconsider and apologize for his inflammatory fast-day sermon, refused to admit any error and refused to leave the colony voluntarily. The court sentenced him to be disenfranchised and banished. Next the court tried William Aspinwall and John Coggeshall for having spearheaded the petition supporting Wheelwright and having challenged the authority of the court. Aspinwall was banished. Winthrop exerted himself on behalf of Coggeshall, who was disenfranchised but not banished. The court then proceeded to deal with Anne Hutchinson. In addition to other charges, she was accused of having troubled the peace of the colony and of being largely

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responsible for the opinions that had divided the community. As a woman, Hutchinson had no political status, and this complicated the task of finding her guilty of a legally punishable offense. While it may have been common knowledge that she was a major cause of the disruptions, she had done nothing—such as signing the Wheelwright petition—that was actionable. In the end, however, it was clear that her position was not one that she merely wished to have tolerated. She asserted that hers was the true understanding of the nature of salvation, and that all the ministers (save for Cotton and Wheelwright) were preaching errors that could not be tolerated. And she claimed direct revelation as the basis for her conviction. In short, she was every bit as intolerant of the majority of colonists as Thomas Shepard was of her. When she claimed that God had shown her that she would be delivered from the hands of her enemies, and that the magistrates and their posterity would be ruined, she gave the court reason to condemn her for slander and sedition. She was sentenced to banishment and ordered to leave the colony by the following March. In the meanwhile she was kept under what amounted to house arrest while awaiting a trial of her religious views by her Boston congregation. Davenport would have closely observed the civil proceedings, though the surviving records do not indicate any direct participation on his part. He would, however, be involved in her church trial in the Boston congregation. In the meantime, he and Eaton were considering where they and their followers would settle. Although they likely had planned to be part of the Saybrook Colony, it had become apparent that Lord Saye and Sele and the other prominent proprietors were not going to come to America. Having witnessed Davenport’s effectiveness in minimizing the damage from the colony’s divisions, the Bay Colony leaders hoped to persuade the newcomers to settle within their jurisdiction. The General Court offered them any unoccupied lands within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. The town of Charlestown, across the bay from Boston, offered some of its land. The townspeople of Newbury, to the north along what would be the New Hampshire border, planned to resettle and offered their entire existing township.38 Members of the Davenport-Eaton group examined some of these possibilities but found them unsatisfactory. Even while the newcomers were being urged to stay, Davenport and Eaton seemed to be focused on the southern New England coast, which likely had always been their objective. Hugh Peter had been impressed with the region when he had journeyed there as a representative of the Saybrook



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proprietors in July 1636. The colonial forces pursuing the Pequots from the Mystic Fort massacre had journeyed through the region, and soldiers returning from the war spoke highly of the possibilities for settlement, with the Pequots having been crushed. Israel Stoughton had written of the “excellent country at Quinnipiac River,” to the west of Saybrook, as a desirable site for a settlement, and he warned that if the English did not seize the opportunity, the Dutch might well do so. Another officer on the expedition wrote to Massachusetts governor John Winthrop that he “must extol Quinnipiac.” And Captain John Underhill wrote of “that famous place called Quinnipiac,” with “a fair river fit for the harboring of ships” as well as “right and goodly meadows.”39 As the synod to define the religious errors gathered in Newtown at the end of August, Eaton and other members of the company sailed to investigate the region. They explored the mouth of the Quinnipiac River, and Eaton was impressed by the site, which had an adequate harbor, a good supply of timber, salt meadows that were essential for the grazing of English livestock, springs with fresh drinking water, and an abundance of shellfish. He would also have noted that the local bands of natives were willing to welcome English settlement. The Quinnipiac natives had been decimated by the epidemics of the early 1630s and forced by the Pequots to pay tribute to them. Before the Pequot War, some of the Quinnipiacs had moved to live under the protection of English towns along the Connecticut River. Having returned to the mouth of the Quinnipiac, they were thankful to the English for having freed them from Pequot oppression. With the approval of the local sachem Momauguin, Eaton left Joshua Atwater and several other members of his party behind to winter there and do what they could to prepare for the arrival of the entire company in the spring.40 On March 12, 1638, Davenport and Eaton wrote to the Massachusetts General Court to officially announce their intent to move to Quinnipiac, though their plans must have been widely known by then. They claimed that their “desire of staying within this patent was real and strong, if the eyes of God’s providence (to whom we have committed our ways especially in so important an enterprise as this, which, we confess, is far above our capacities) had guided us to a place convenient for our families and for our friends,” and they claimed that this was evidenced by their “almost nine months patient waiting in expectation of some opportunity to be offered us for that end, to our great charge and hindrance many ways.” They explained why some of the sites offered them were unsatisfactory. They had determined on Quinnipiac and had taken steps to purchase land there from the natives. They concluded

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by hoping that this would be of benefit to Massachusetts as well as to them, and they committed themselves “to be any way instrumental and serviceable for the common good of these plantations as well as of those . . . joined together, as Hippocrates his twins, to stand, and fall, to grow and decay, to flourish and wither, to live and die together.”41 During the winter of 1637–1638, Davenport was also engaged in preparing statements of congregational principles in response to questions and criticisms that the colonists had received from English ministers. At the request of the colonial clergy he prepared two works—An Apology of the Churches in New England and An Answer of the Elders of the Several Churches in New England unto Nine Positions Sent Over to Them, which were likely circulated in manuscript form in England until finally being published in 1643. Inviting Davenport, who had lived in the region for less than a year, to prepare these defenses of the New England Way is less surprising than it might appear. One reason for calling upon him was his stature in the broader puritan community. Another was the fact that his experiences in London and the Netherlands had forced him to focus on issues of church government and the relationship of newly formed congregations to larger religious communities.42 Responding to the questions of English ministers in An Answer of the Elders, Davenport began by seeking to explain why those in New England had not followed Congregational practices while they had themselves been in England. He acknowledged that “in our native country, when we were first called to the ministry, many of us took some things to be indifferent and lawful which in after times we saw to be sinful, and durst not to continue in the practice of them there.” Explaining their new practices in New England, he stated that “such things as a man may tolerate when he cannot remove them, he cannot tolerate without sin when he may remove them.” Free to explore these matters in America, he indicated that the colonists were still searching for the truth, and he expressed a willingness to heed what their brethren may suggest and to “attend to what further light God may send unto us by you.” The first specific issue that he addressed was English concern about the New England abandonment of a set liturgy. Davenport acknowledged that the colonists believed that set forms had not been commanded by God but were introduced as the church degenerated from its original purity at the end of the second century. He cited Thomas Cartwright and others who had taken the same position. He pointed out the dangers of formal liturgies



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but specifically avoided condemning those Protestant churches, including the Church of England, which did use them. He further stated that he had no objection to someone in England “joining in some few selected prayers read by an able and faithful minister out of the Book” of Common Prayer. To distinguish the New England churches from the views of Separatists and of Roger Williams, he wrote, “We are not of their judgment who refuse all religious communion with such as are not church members.” Taking up the arguments he had made in the Netherlands, he defended the practice of limiting baptism to the children of members of a particular church whose faith had been approved by the congregation after an examination. This led to a discussion of the importance of church covenants and the congregational basis of ministerial authority that he would further elaborate on in An Apology. He discussed the importance of congregational communion. Those who swore to a church covenant “will perform all duties of brotherly love and faithfulness to all the members of the body,” including “diligent watchfulness over all his brethren . . . to prevent sin, so [also] of faithful admonition after their falls to regain them to the Lord from their sin.” Once joined in the body of the church, no “particular member should depart at his own pleasure,” but only with the approval of the congregation. Davenport would continue to insist on this principle, though it would place him in difficulties during a Hartford church dispute in the 1650s and in the case of his own call to a new church in the 1660s. Davenport’s strong congregationalism was tempered, however, by the need for unity, and he wrote that “members of other churches well known and approved by virtue of communion of churches, do mutually and without exceptions communicate each of them at others’ churches, even so often as God’s providence leads them thereunto.”43 In An Apology Davenport dealt in greater detail with the subject of “the covenant between God and men, and especially concerning Church-covenant,” defending the practices of the New England churches while still trying to assert communion with the parishes of England. He asserted that a church covenant was the means “whereby a company of Christians do become a church.” That union was between the saints, for if individuals “be not united to Christ by faith, they are not fit materials for such a building as a Church of God.” Christians were “living stones” that “must be compacted together, and builded up together.” The result was that “every true church is a city of God.” Anyone—including “some Indians, Moors, and other natural persons come into our meetings in New England”—could attend church

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services, but what made the church a church was the covenant between the saints, and only those who were thereby members could participate in the sacraments. This, of course, was a position that had been suggested in his reply to Paget written in the Netherlands. It was the covenanted members who called and empowered their minister. “If they never choose such a man to be their minister, nor covenanted to be subject to him in the Lord, then he can have no power as a minister unto them, because they have right to choose their own ministers.” Davenport had come to believe that a covenant such as that which Hugh Peter had called the Rotterdam church to accept was the ideal way for a church to be formed. There was no question but that English parishes and most Reformed churches were not organized on such a basis, and yet Davenport’s instinct was to seek unity with them as true churches. He drew on John Foxe’s history of the origins of Christianity in England to argue that “if the Gospel and Christian religion were brought into England in the apostles’ time, and by their means, it is like that the English churches were then constituted by way of covenant,” though implicit covenants. Such covenants were eternal, and impurities introduced into the churches since then were insufficient to invalidate those covenants, as long as the doctrines of the English Church were pure. He likewise argued that implicit covenants were to be found as the foundations of most Reformed churches, such as those he had encountered in the Netherlands. The churches of England, he argued, insofar as they fail to observe God’s design, “do not sin of obstinacy, but of ignorance . . . of the corruptions that are amongst them, in respect of their constitution, and worship, and ministry.” This was different from the situation of the Catholic Church, which was impenitent and obstinate. He acknowledged that “some of us, when we were in England, did see the necessity of church covenant, and did also preach it to the people amongst whom we ministered, though neither so soon nor so fully as were meet, for which we have cause to be humbled and to judge ourselves before the Lord.” Some, like Davenport, had “lived a long time in conformity to the ceremonies imposed in our native country, and saw not the evil of them,” but when they finally saw the truth, they were forced to obey it.44 In the spring of 1638, while preparations were under way for the move to New Haven, Davenport participated in the trial of Anne Hutchinson before the Boston church, which began on March 15. The issues before the church,



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as opposed to those in the civil trial, were theological. Following John Cotton’s morning sermon, the members of the congregation were asked to separate themselves from others in attendance because only the church members would be entitled to cast a vote. Two lists of opinions that Hutchinson was said to hold were read out. The first, largely drawn up by Thomas Shepard, concerned her ideas about the body, the soul, and Christ, which were believed to be comparable to those held by a radical sect, the Family of Love. The second list, drawn up by the clergymen Thomas Welde and John Eliot, focused on what were viewed as antinomian opinions. Cotton, pastor of the congregation, indicated that Hutchinson should respond to these one at a time.45 The first point to be discussed was Hutchinson’s claim that the spirit, but not the soul, was immortal. Many felt that she was expressing the ancient heresy of mortalism, which held that the soul ceased to exist in death, thus leading some of its adherents to believe that they could do what they wished in life.46 Davenport engaged her on this matter, perhaps because he believed her views were the same as those of the English radical John Pordage, whom he had preached against in London.47 He explained to Hutchinson that “they that speak for the mortality of the soul speak for licentiousness and sinful liberty.” Hutchinson offered her view that the soul was mortal and made immortal only by the redemptive work of Christ. Davenport countered with the argument that the soul was not immortal in itself, but God, “from whom it hath its being,” made it immortal. Hutchinson confessed that she had “more light a great deal by Mr. Davenport’s opening of it.” Davenport told her she must “distinguish between the life of the soul and the life of the body. The life of the body is mortal, but the life of the soul is immortal.” The two continued their discussion, with occasional interjections from others, until Hutchinson stated that “now Mr. Davenport hath opened it, it is clear to me, or God by him hath given me light.”48 Declining to admit that she had embraced an error, Hutchinson was willing to acknowledge that she had been mistaken. This wasn’t enough for some of her clerical critics, who were less interested in reasoning with her than Davenport was. When the discussion moved on, Hutchinson denied that the mortal body “that dies shall rise again.”49 Peter Bulkeley, the minister at Concord, considered the position she had taken as close to the “foul, gross, filthy and abominable opinion held by the familists.”50 Again it was Davenport who tried to lead her back to orthodoxy. At one point he told her that her views challenged the fact that there was a resurrection, and that

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“these are opinions that cannot be borne. They shake the very foundation of our faith and tend to the overthrow of all religion.”51 John Wilson asked the congregation to condemn her views, but one of Anne’s sons, Edward Hutchinson, was not convinced of her guilt. Davenport told him, “You are not to be led by natural affection but to declare your opinion for the truth and against error, though held by your own mother.”52 Interestingly, Edward would be one of the strongest supporters for calling Davenport to the ministry of First Church Boston in the 1660s. Others also hesitated to condemn Hutchinson. Davenport stated that he believed it proper “that if any of the brethren have any scruples upon their spirits about this or any other point, that they should have free leave to propound it” so that their questions might be resolved. But as for formally admonishing Anne Hutchinson, he reminded them that “admonition is an ordinance of God and sanctified of him for this very end as a special and powerful means to convince the party offending” rather than a final casting off of the individual admonished.53 His goal was to bring as many members of the congregation back within the perimeter fence, and eventually, all but a few of Hutchinson’s family were willing to cast their votes against her on the points that had been discussed. In the course of reaching the point of the congregants passing judgment, Davenport had addressed the scruples some in the congregation had as to whether “they may express their judgments by vote or no.” This issue of how a congregation was governed was something that Davenport had thought long and hard about in the previous few years. He expressed his belief that there was no other way the members of a church “can bear witness to the truth or against any error but by expressing their assent or dissent, either by silence and lifting up their hands.” And for those who asked what was meant by the scriptural warrant (in Matthew 18) that such matters be dealt with by “the church,” he claimed that it was “plain it is the whole church” and not just the officers. This was another indication of his adoption of his commitment to a strong Congregational position on church governance.54 The initial admonition of Hutchinson, approved by the congregation and delivered by John Cotton, brought the first part of the church trial to an end. Further examination of her views was put off to the following week, and in the meantime Anne was placed in Cotton’s home, where the pastor and Davenport would have the opportunity to further persuade her of the error of her views. Winthrop believed that progress had been made in bringing Hutchinson to recognize her errors. This was a community that was not



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rushing to cast anyone out of its fellowship but rather to heal the breach in their communion. When the trial resumed, it initially appeared that Davenport and Cotton had succeeded in their task. They had, as Cotton later remembered, “convinced her of her erroneous ways in judgment and practice, so as that under her hand she presented a recantation before the whole church.”55 In that statement Hutchinson retracted her erroneous opinions expressed the previous week, which she claimed had not been fully formed until after her banishment. She apologized for her threat to the magistrates and for having disrespected the ministers, and she accepted that sanctification could be evidence of justification. At this point it appeared that she might be able to enter her banishment as a member in good standing of the Boston church. But again it was Thomas Shepard who pushed for a clear admission that she had held the errors she had apologized for before her civil trial. This may well have been Shepard’s effort to bring the debate back to Cotton’s role in her heresies. In a sharp exchange with her chief opponent, Hutchinson refused to concede his point. Others jumped in, and she appealed to Davenport to explain how in the previous weeks he had helped her to understand that the expression of her beliefs had been in error. As the debate continued, it became evident that on the key issue of inherent grace in the elect, Anne had indeed held a position before the trial that she was claiming was a recent belief.56 Shepard pushed for a judgment of excommunication, though others, including many of the clergy, still hoped to bring Hutchinson to a true repentance. After a good deal of wrangling, however, Davenport spoke for many when he told her, “You must freely confess the truth, take shame to yourself that God may have the glory.” “I fear,” he told her, “that God will not let you see your sin and confess it till the ordinance of God [excommunication] hath been taken against you. So it seems to me God hath a purpose to go on in the course of his judgment against you.”57 Cotton acquiesced and the congregation moved to excommunicate her, hoping that this ultimate weapon of discipline would serve to eventually bring her back to the truth and the church. The decision having finally been cast, as she was leaving the meetinghouse she was heard to say, “Better to be cast out of the church than to deny Christ.”58 With the trials of Anne Hutchinson concluded, Davenport had no further reason to linger in the Bay Colony. In mid-April he left Boston for

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his new home on Long Island Sound. Joining those who had followed him from England was a smaller group of about sixteen families led by another clergyman, Peter Prudden. These families came from Hertford and adjacent parts of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire in England.59 Davenport also discussed with his friend John Cotton the possibility of that clergyman joining the new enterprise. Cotton’s standing in Massachusetts had been damaged by the turmoil in his church and its spread to the rest of the colony. Among his clerical colleagues, Thomas Shepard was probably not alone in suspecting him of holding false beliefs. Cotton was concerned about his ability to continue in his Boston ministry, and he considered “if my continuance here would certainly, or probably, breed and further offensive agitation.” If such was the case he was willing, “with common consent [of the congregation], to remove to Quinnipiac.”60 In the end he was persuaded by Winthrop, Davenport, and others to remain in Boston.

Ch a pt e r 1 1

A New Heaven in a New Earth

O

n Sunday, April 25, 1638, the ships bearing John Davenport and his fellow adventurers sailed into the broad estuary on the northern shore of Long Island Sound that was Quinnipiac Harbor. Before them was a plain situated between a rampart of hills to the west, north, and east. The plain itself was cut by three rivers—the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, as they would be named—that flowed into the estuary. This was the southern terminus of the Central Valley of Connecticut, which had been carved by geological forces and by the glacial activities of the Ice Age. The two most notable hills were West Rock and East Rock, large traprock formations with north-south axes that loomed over the landscape. The southern side of each rises almost vertically from the plain. Both of the rock formations have considerable iron in their composition, and erosion leaves a coating of rust, creating a reddish-brown hue to their faces. In 1614 a Dutch explorer named Adrian Block had sailed into the harbor and named it Roodeberg for the red hills that dominated the landscape.1 The harbor itself was four miles long, with a width that varied between one and two miles. Shallow though it was, there was nevertheless a channel that was at least seven feet deep at low tide, sufficient for the vessels of that time. The location on Long Island Sound offered protection from major Atlantic storms. The sound also affected the climate of the region. Since the waters heat up slowly in the spring and stay warmer in the fall, summers are cooler and winters warmer than in the inland regions of New England, which results in a typical growing season of 195 days. The milder climate also made heavy snowfalls less common than in the interior of the region.2 As they sailed up the channel, the ships passed encampments of the Quinnipiac, the group of Algonquian Indians that lived in the region. A 167

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small village was located on the eastern shore of the harbor on what the colonists would call Indian Hill. From there the natives had previously signaled passing European ships in the hope of engaging them in trade. The principal burial ground of the band led by the sachem Momauguin was located on the northeast slope of the hill. Just to the north of Indian Hill and running along the harbor to the mouth of the Quinnipiac River was the main encampment of Momauguin’s band. On the west side of the harbor the new arrivals passed Oyster Point, a favorite location of the natives for gathering oysters and an occasional encampment site. Moving past Oyster Point, the ships anchored in the northwestern part of the harbor, where what they would call East Creek and West Creek flowed into the estuary, in the area between the West and Mill Rivers.3 This was evidently the land that Eaton had acquired Momauguin’s permission to settle on and where Joshua Atwater’s advance party had wintered. Davenport had been drawn to America by his friend John Cotton’s description of New England as “the New Heaven and the New Earth, wherein dwells righteousness.”4 Hope as well as faith drew English puritans to America, where they believed they could achieve the purity of life and worship that was denied them in England. Enthusiasm and hope drove John Davenport as he sought to shape the institutions and policies of the new settlement in a way that would advance the cause of godliness and provide for the material well-being of the colonists and their children. Stimulated by his experiences in the Netherlands, he had come to adopt a belief that men of his time could, with the help of the Spirit, approach the perfection of the civil and ecclesiastical forms of the New Jerusalem foretold in the Scriptures. In 1935 Perry Miller, who did more than anyone else in modern times to revive interest in the American Puritans, referred to Davenport’s achievement as “the most exclusively and aggressively puritanical of the colonies,” representing “the essence of puritanism, distilled and undefiled, the Bible Commonwealth and nothing else.”5 There is much to be said for this characterization, and the explanation for it lies squarely with John Davenport, who played a greater role in the shaping of his entire community—civil as well as religious—than did any other colonial clergyman, with the possible exception of Roger Williams. In doing so, his inspiration was drawn from the Scriptures, of which he stated in his own profession of faith, that “in all things which concern faith, and obedience, whether in God’s worship, or in the whole conversation of men, it holdeth forth a most perfect rule, where-



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unto nothing may be added.”6 Comparable in many respects to the orthodox puritan colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, in other ways New Haven was unique, and its special character reflected the particular vision of John Davenport. To understand the colony’s distinctive character requires an examination of Davenport’s understanding of man’s march toward the millennial kingdom foretold in Scripture and the ways in which his views were influenced by his understanding of the Old and New Testaments. The sixteenth-century Protestant reformers had been suspicious of millenarian speculation, but the religious struggles of the seventeenth century prompted new interest in the thousand-year rule of the saints that was foretold in the book of Revelation. Some reformers believed that they were living in a time when preaching and other reform efforts would purify the church, leading to the imminent establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth. A somewhat different view was expressed in the massive Apocalypsis Apocalypseos of Thomas Brightman. This was one of the most influential commentaries on the book of Revelation, published posthumously in Latin in 1609 and in an English translation two years later. Brightman drew on earlier works, but he emphasized the importance of the reformed church as the key agent in bringing about the kingdom of God. He argued that there would be a Middle Advent before the Second Coming. This would be an explosion of supernatural power that would enable men to restore the institutions and practices that God had established in the Israel of the Old Testament and that were found in the apostolic church. This was a position close to what today would be classified as postmillenarianism, with the Second Coming following and not preceding a period of reform within human history. While most authors who wrote on the approaching millennium focused on the apocalypse foretold in the book of Revelation, Brightman also found clues to the coming of God’s kingdom in the book of Daniel and in Canticles. The millenarian views of both John Cotton and John Davenport reflected this outlook.7 Speculation on the coming of the millennial kingdom was not limited to puritans, nor even to Protestants. But there were puritans who were deeply engaged with these issues, and within the puritan community this interest was particularly notable among those clergy, such as Davenport, who were especially attuned to the international dimension of the struggle for religious reform. In the first part of the seventeenth century, a group of English and Dutch ministers became noted for their attention to a particular gloss on millennial themes. While paying close attention to the book of Revelation, thinkers such as John Dury, Johann Heinrich Alsted, Henry

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Jessey, Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, and Davenport followed Brightman in drawing on Old Testament Messianic prophecies to understand God’s plans.8 This spurred them to a closer attention to the Old Testament, and in many cases to dialogue with prominent Jewish thinkers.9 Because of the large Jewish population in the Netherlands, that country became a hotbed for such exchanges.10 Amsterdam was a center of mystic spiritualists and millenarians. Key members of that community when Davenport was there were Petrus Serrarius and Menasseh Ben Israel. Serrarius was an Oxfordeducated clergyman who had settled in Amsterdam with contacts with the English clergyman William Ames and Henry Jessey.11 Menasseh Ben Israel was a leading member of the city’s Jewish community who was particularly engaged with Christian thinkers such as John Dury.12 One can find traces of Davenport’s interest in the millennium and in Old Testament prophecies in his early career, but his close engagement with these themes deepened during his time in the Netherlands. The Thirty Years’ War, which had erupted with the Bohemian Revolt of 1618, was viewed by many as a critical struggle in the march toward the millennium—some even viewed it as the climactic war between the forces of Christ and Antichrist.13 Davenport had preached on behalf of the Protestant cause in the conflict both in England and the Netherlands, had prayed for the success of the Protestant forces, and had raised funds for the refugees. His friendship with the Veres would have provided him with special insight into the war, as Sir Horace Vere commanded the English volunteers fighting in the Palatinate after 1620, and then in the Netherlands itself. The London clergyman was also in communications with ministers, such as Obadiah Sedgwick, whom he had recommended to Vere as chaplains. Davenport’s awareness of the struggle was enhanced during his residence in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam. In each of these cities he would have encountered men who had been on the battlefields. His friend Hugh Peter had served as chaplain to the English regiment commanded by Sir Edward Harwood (whose brother George had been a member of the Feoffees for Impropriation) and participated in the defense of the Dutch city of Bergen Op Zoom, writing a history of the struggle, Digitus Dei, or Good News from Holland (1631). In 1632 Peter was present at the siege of Maastricht and then accompanied John Forbes on a visit to the camp of Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus, whose intervention in the conflict had for the time swung the tide on behalf of the Protestant cause.14



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In addition to having the chance to discuss the conflict with Peter, Forbes, and others, Davenport may well have discussed with Forbes the millenarian views of that clergyman’s brother. Patrick Forbes had published An Exquisite Commentary upon the Revelation of Saint John in 1613, developing views that were similar to what Davenport would espouse. Like Brightman, Patrick Forbes had argued for the critical role of the church in bringing mankind to the millennium. Struggling through periods of persecution and corruption, the church, with the help of the Holy Spirit, would grow in awareness of the truth. Davenport too would believe that reform was incremental and that men would not be able to achieve absolute perfection. In An Answer of the Elders he would talk specifically about the need to attend to what further light God would provide. His focus would be on the Middle Advent and how he could help restore the church to biblical purity.15 Preaching on the coming millennium was not widespread among puritan clergy. John Cotton preached the sermons published as A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles . . . Lively Describing the Estate of the Church in All Ages (1642) in Boston in the 1620s, and he continued to preach on millennial themes in the early 1640s.16 Much of his insight was drawn from Canticles, or the Song of Solomon, which would also be the inspiration for much of Davenport’s writings on the millennium.17 This interest was unusual among puritan preachers in England. Attention to eschatology was more common among those who labored in the Netherlands during the 1630s, perhaps spurred by their proximity to the cockpit of the Thirty Years’ War. William Bridge, Jeremiah Burroughes, and Thomas Goodwin all preached on the coming of Christ’s millennial kingdom from Dutch pulpits.18 Yet, according to Cotton Mather, at a time when in Old and New England the millennium was “hardly apprehended by many divines,” Davenport clearly apprehended its coming, and “both preached and wrote those very things about the future state, and coming of the Lord, the calling of the Jews, and the first and second resurrection for the dead.”19 His most complete thinking on the subject was undoubtedly an Exposition on the Whole Book of Canticles, which English clergy unsuccessfully sought to publish in 1687, almost twenty years after his death.20 In the absence of that manuscript we can only piece together his views from scattered references in his surviving writings as well as from comments by others. Davenport’s millenarianism was rooted in his belief that the way to know God and God’s plan was the Scriptures, as he explained in detail in

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The Knowledge of Christ.21 His was a millenarianism that differed from that of those who used their belief in the imminence of the Second Coming to justify a revolutionary social or political agenda. Nor did Davenport believe that New England, or even New Haven, would be the location for the dawn of the kingdom of the saints.22 It would be not the ultimate center of the kingdom, but a step toward that goal. His focus was not on the Second Coming but on the intermediate Middle Advent. The Old Testament Israel and Jerusalem were examples for the reformation of the church, examples for spiritual guidance.23 A glimpse of his beliefs can be detected in the writings of William Hooke. Hooke served for a time as Davenport’s colleague in the ministry of the New Haven church. The two discussed the biblical prophecies during those years and, after Hooke returned to England, he corresponded frequently with Davenport on millennial themes and saw the New Haven clergyman’s Saints Anchor Hold to the press. In words that likely reflected their shared position, Hooke wrote of “a great effusion of the Spirit of God” so that there would be “a very great light of knowledge in this day. . . . The Light of Knowledge shall have a great influence unto the hearts and lives of men, who shall shine eminently in holiness.”24 As with Davenport’s known writings, Hooke’s emphasis was on progress, not completion. In elaborating on the incremental nature of Davenport’s millennialism that was characteristic of those who believed in the Middle Advent, Cotton Mather wrote that the New Haven clergyman believed that “when a reformation of the church has been brought about in any part of the world, it has rarely afterwards carried on any one step further than the reformers did succeed in their first endeavors.” This may have been part of his reason for not remaining in Massachusetts, seeing that puritan experiment as valuable but unlikely to be able to be improved upon. Instead, as Mather put it, he was “quickened to embark in a design of reformation wherein he might have opportunity to drive things in the first essay as near to the precept and pattern of scripture as could be driven.”25 As near to, but, again, not completed. Davenport’s intent for New Haven was evident in the very title of his Discourse About Civil Government in a New Plantation Whose Design Is Religion, not published until 1663 but written at the time New Haven was settled.26 John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” set out a communitarian Christian philosophy for Massachusetts, but it did not spell out a precise vision of how the colony should be organized and governed. It was only after years of discussion and modifications that the structure of the Bay Colony emerged. Though John Cotton had preached on Revelation and



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Canticles in England and would continue to preach on millennial themes in New England, those views did not have a significant impact on the Bay Colony. Davenport, profiting from what he had seen in Massachusetts and from his discussions with the likes of Winthrop, Cotton, and Hugh Peter, had a specific plan in mind when he departed Boston in the spring of 1638, the nature of which soon became evident. In his Discourse, Davenport would frequently return to the point that new plantations offered the opportunity to institute a social and religious order that reflected God’s desires. His effort to find that order took him to the Scriptures. Like many puritans, Davenport sought to find meaning from parallels between the story of God’s actions in ancient times, as recounted in Scripture, and events of his own time. Typology was a popular form of biblical exegesis that sought to find connections between events (types) in the Old Testament and events (antitypes) they prefigured in the New Testament. A central purpose of this was to link Christ and his life to the prophecies of the Old Testament. Thus, for example, Jonah being cast off the ship in troubled waters to appease the wrath of God was seen as prefiguring Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale as a type for Christ’s three days in the tomb before the resurrection.27 Some writers expanded this form of allegorical examination of the Scriptures to look for insights into the events of their own times. In his Apology of the Churches in New England, Davenport wrote that “many things that literally concerned the Jews were types and figures, signifying the like things concerning the people of God in these latter days. . . . And therefore the captivity of Babylon to Antichristian bondage, and their return from Babylon to Sion, a type of the return of Christians from Romish slavery to the true Sion, the Christian Church.”28 For Davenport and other puritans the story of Israel, the scriptural accounts of the life of Jesus and the early church, and the book of Revelation all offered examples to learn from as they tried to perfect their churches and societies.29 The way in which Davenport understood the Scriptures was also influenced by his exposure to currents of utopian and mystical religious thought as a member of the Hartlib circle. Writers such as John Dury, Johann Heinrich Alsted, and Johann Valentin Andreae drew on specific currents of millennial and utopian thought in their efforts to reform the world. Andreae, in his Christianopolis (1619), argued that when Christ enters one’s life, that person is better able to recognize God’s plan for the universe.30 In that book an imaginary traveler discovers a Christian utopia in the New World where the

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inhabitants are committed to right living.31 Christianopolis had been established by Christians who had been forced into exile and built their new home after a perilous journey. Proper knowledge of the Scriptures—comparable to what Davenport would distinguish as true faith as opposed to intellectual faith—was required to be a citizen.32 One of the central features of the community was its commitment to education, a feature of particular interest to Hartlib, Comenius, and other members of their circle. The combination of mysticism and practical concerns that are characteristic of the members of that circle are evident in Davenport’s efforts to understand the patterns of godly order needed to create the ideal society in Quinnipiac. Making the point that what was difficult to impose on a settled society was possible in a “new plantation,” Davenport argued in the Discourse for what he explicitly called a theocracy. Only men who were members of the church were to be “free burgesses,” or voting citizens. Like his friend John Cotton, and following Alsted and the English millenarian writer Joseph Mede, he believed that the unregenerate would be excluded from the blessings of the millennium.33 Thus, he maintained that only those who were members of the church should be eligible to hold political office in New Haven. These were positions that the colonists in Massachusetts had moved to by this time, but in New Haven they were to be foundation principles. But it is to be noted that all the colonists—not just those who would actually be empowered as church members—were asked to approve this and did so. In addition, the law of God as revealed in Scripture was to be the basis for the administration of justice. For Davenport, the chosen people of the Old Testament were a type for the invisible community of Christian saints, and the temple of Jerusalem an exemplar that should inform Christians in his time.34 Brightman had argued that the “new Jerusalem . . . is not that city which the saints shall enjoy in heaven after this life, but a [transfigured] church to be expected on earth.”35 This was what Davenport sought to achieve in New Haven, using Old Testament examples to inspire the building of a new Jerusalem.36 His effort to shape the plantation by reference to the Scriptures was evident from the very first. Entering the estuary, the sight before the colonists evoked thoughts of the plain of Judea and the holy mount rising above it. Three types, recurring in the Scriptures, would feature significantly in Davenport’s preaching— Israel, the wilderness, and the covenant. The story of God’s first chosen people would be central to how Davenport would view New Haven. Years later,



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at a time of struggle, he would speak of the colonists as “dealing with God, as the people of Israel did in the wilderness.”37 The American wilderness also called to mind New Testament messages. Disembarking from the ships in 1638, the colonists celebrated the Sabbath with Davenport taking a position under a large oak tree and preaching a sermon on Matthew 4:1: “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil.” Peter Prudden followed with a sermon on Matthew 3:3: “For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Both sermons placed the enterprise in the context of Biblical parallels, and included a warning that the wilderness, though a place of opportunity, was also a place of temptation. When he concluded his sermon, Davenport was said to have remarked that he had “enjoyed a good day.”38 Shortly thereafter, following “a day of extraordinary humiliation” and fast, “the whole assembly of freeplanters” agreed to a “plantation covenant” that committed them to the establishment of a theocracy as defined by Davenport. The settlers pledged that “in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public offices which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing of laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, we would all of us be ordered by those rules which the scripture holds forth to us.”39 The commitment to use scriptural guidelines for the administration of justice would be one of the most distinctive aspects of New Haven’s polity, though in practice the result was not that different from what English law dictated. In his Discourse, Davenport wrote of a “Christian Communion,” which he saw as the genus or foundation of society, with separate ecclesiastical and civil compacts as the species.40 In line with this thinking, in New Haven the plantation covenant was the foundation of the new town, with separate church and civil covenants to be developed from it later. Over the following months the combination of scriptural and utopian inspiration were clear in the laying out of the town and assignment of home lots, the organization of a church, and finally the organization of the town’s civil government. Whereas many colonial towns (Boston being a prime example) evolved from the random pattern created from individuals claiming a piece of land and building upon it, a town plan for New Haven dictated where individuals would build. The community was laid out as a perfect square positioned between East and West creeks. That square was then divided into nine smaller squares. The middle square was to serve as the

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location of the meetinghouse and as a marketplace, despite the fact that one might have expected the commercial center to be along the riverfront. Each of the other squares was divided into home lots. There was an additional “suburb” of smaller home lots contiguous to the large square. The surrounding meadows were to be used for farming and pasture land.41 This nine-square plan was derived from John Davenport’s understanding of Scripture and his reading of utopian works. In a further defense of his views against Paget, which he was working on at the time when New Haven was settled, Davenport wrote of the ideal church, citing Revelation 21:15, that “members so qualified as Christ requireth, and so confederating, should ordinarily meet together . . . according to the measure of the reed, whereby the City and Gates, and the dimensions of the New-Jerusalem are measured.”42 Having led his followers to the American wilderness, he wished to establish a community that would evoke the Jerusalem of the Old Testament. “Solomon,” he wrote, “though the wisest of mere men, [did not] act by his own wisdom in building the Temple, but he was guided therein by the perfect pattern.”43 During Davenport’s lifetime, students of the Bible believed, as one scholar has expressed it, that “the perfect pattern for the community of God’s chosen resides in the type of the Temple.”44 They identified this physical pattern in the encampment of the Israelites in the wilderness, Solomon’s temple, Ezekiel’s vision of the temple, and the New Jerusalem seen by John in Revelation. Solomon’s temple, in particular, replicated the organization of the tribal encampments with a central sanctuary, such as had featured in the Israelites’ desert wanderings and thereafter.45 Just as Davenport would make the notion of the temple central to his vision of New Haven as a reformed community, his friend Thomas Goodwin would use the same comparison in his 1642 sermon to Parliament, published as Zeruubbabels Encouragement to Finish the Temple (1642). As early as 1635 Goodwin had discussed the vision of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation and identified the outer courtyard with “carnal and unregenerate Protestants” and the true saints as those within the temple.46 In addressing Parliament in 1642, he spoke of the how the “sharp sickle” of God’s vengeance “hath gone up and down in Germany for well-nigh these twenty years,” creating “an overflowing of blood and misery as hath scarce been paralleled in any age.”47 Goodwin explained that “all things happening in the Old Testament . . . are written for our admonition.” Like Davenport, Goodwin saw the church ascending to the light after having been freed from the antiChristian corruption of the papacy. Like Davenport, he cautioned “let no



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church . . . think itself perfect.” It was when, in Revelation, “the saints had got a Temple over their heads” that “they call for a true and right worshipping of Christ,” in “matters civil and ecclesiastical.” With “the building of the Temple . . . more immediately carried on by the working of the Holy Ghost,” the ministers and magistrates of England were called to repair the church, just as in the Old Testament Zerubbabel had been called to complete the building of the temple of Jerusalem.48 Goodwin warned those committed to reform the church not to rest too quickly in their labors, believing that they had completed the work.49 Like Davenport, he believed that reform came in stages and would never be perfected by men. The Old Testament temple in its various manifestations had long been a central element in millenarian thought. Bede, the eighth-century monk and theologian who had spent his life at Monkswearmouth (near Hilton Castle) and nearby Jarrow, had written commentaries on the apocalypse, the temple, and the tabernacle.50 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, new translations of the Bible led to a greater attention to how biblical stories offered explanations of not only the human condition in general but also directions to a better world. The designs of the encampment of the tribes of Israel around the Ark of the Covenant described in the book of Numbers, the original temple built in Jerusalem by Solomon and recorded in Kings I and Chronicles, the second temple in Jerusalem built by Zerubbabel after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and the vision of the temple described by Ezekiel were all used as types or metaphors to better understand the contemporary world and times to come.51 Specifically described in Scripture, they were considered designed by God himself. For many, the plan of the temple was seen as a model for the ideal utopian city, as the inspiration for the New Jerusalem foretold by John in Revelation, and as types for the reformed church. This was not limited to Protestants. The temple described by Ezekiel, in particular, became an inspiration for urban design in Catholic Spain’s New World settlements in the sixteenth century.52 Davenport preached that the temple was “a type of Christ. . . . As God’s presence was, in a special manner, in the Temple, . . . so in Christ dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Just as “prayers made in the Temple, or looking towards it, were graciously answered, so are the prayers believers make to God, according to his will, in the name of Jesus Christ.” According to Davenport, “The Lord vouchsafed blessing and protection to his people in the Temple.”53 Creating a community that would physically represent the temple would provide a constant reminder of the mission of the puritan colonists and their covenanted union as a Christian body.

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The hand-colored poster used by Jacob Juda Leon to advertise his reconstructed model of the temple. The twelve tribes of Israel are in the center, grouped around the tabernacle in the desert. Templo’s portrait is at the top. Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam. Photo: Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam.

To achieve such a goal required some understanding of the appearance of the Old Testament temple, and in the earliest seventeenth century, numerous biblical commentaries were published that examined the scriptural descriptions of the patterns in which God dwelled. These, as well as illustrations in a variety of published Bibles, would have been available to Davenport. In the 1550s, the French Calvinist Sebastien Castellion published his understanding of the temple envisioned by Ezekiel, a square with the temple in the middle, surrounded by eight courtyards.54 The 1560 Geneva Bible was an English translation with woodcut illustrations that included depictions of



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Map of New Haven in 1641. The Whitney Library of the New Haven Museum.

the Israelite encampment and the Jerusalem temple. Between 1568 and 1573 the Biblia Polygotta was published in Antwerp. Edited by Benito Arias Montano, this presented Hebrew-Latin, Greek-Latin, and Aramaic-Latin texts of the Old Testament in parallel columns and included illustrations of the temple.55 Juan Bautista Villalpandus, a Spanish Jesuit, published a commentary on Ezekiel in 1604 that was widely reprinted throughout Europe. In it, Villalpandus offered illustrations of the Israelites camping in the wilderness, the Old Jerusalem, Ezekiel’s temple, and Solomon’s temple. All were characterized by large squares divided into smaller squares, with the Ark of the Covenant in the center.56 The Geneva Bible included a full-page ­illustration of the temple as described in Ezekiel’s vision, in which it was presented at the center of a large square.

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Jewish scholars as well as Christians contributed to such efforts to envision the physical temple, and Davenport was likely to have joined in discussions of the subject when living in Amsterdam. Certainly, there was no better place in Europe to engage with leading Jewish scholars. Jacob Judah Leon Templo was likely living in Amsterdam during Davenport’s stay. He devoted much of his life to understanding the physical organizations of the Jewish people as described in the Old Testament. Encouraged by the Dutch theologian and Hebraist Adam Boreel, Templo would publish diagrams indicating the encampments of the Israelites in the wilderness.57 Templo built a physical model of Solomon’s temple that attracted considerable attention in England and throughout Europe. John Dury was familiar with Templo’s work, and in a 1646 letter to Samuel Hartlib commended the model of the temple, which he described as having been done “in a most exact way according to the description made thereof in the Scripture.”58 The New Haven plan bears striking resemblances to the images of the temple that appeared in such works. The new Jerusalem of Revelation was a perfect square, as was New Haven. Villalpandus, among others, had depicted the temple of Ezekiel’s vision as in the center of nine squares. But the town plan also suggested other scriptural parallels. The meetinghouse itself was built of wood and was fifty feet square; the measurements of the wooden tabernacle in Exodus were thirty cubits square (roughly fifty-two feet). Each of the New Haven squares surrounding the meetinghouse square contained the home lot of a separate leader of the community, and each such cluster was a separate center of religious communion, evoking the distribution of the tribes of Israel in a similar pattern as described in the book of Numbers—that “every man of the Children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard with the ensign of their father’s house, . . . about the tabernacle they shall pitch.”59 Davenport and Eaton’s home lots were to the east of the central square, just as Moses and Aaron had been described as camping to the east of the tabernacle.60 The dimensions of the sanctuary in chapter 43 of the book of Ezekiel are virtually the same as the dimensions of the central square of New Haven.61 The overall positioning of the town plan may have been so laid out that the small stream running into the central square where the meetinghouse was to be built would evoke the river flowing outward from the threshold of the temple, bringing life to the lands along its banks, as described in Ezekiel 47.62 The physical layout of New Haven was intended to inspire the colonists to bring the Spirit of Christ into their community as they strove to advance God’s kingdom. Their next task was to create the institutions of church and state that would make that task possible.

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sing the town plan to evoke in the settlers a sense of their religious obligations was a first step, but it was the work to follow that was to be critical. On June 4, 1639, all the free planters assembled at a large barn owned by Robert Newman to begin the process of formalizing the organization of the church and civil government that they had pledged to establish in their plantation covenant. Davenport took the lead in directing the meeting. Having opened the session with prayer and invoked the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Davenport propounded a series of questions that the settlers were asked to vote on. The first question was “whether the scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men, as well as in the government of families and commonwealths as in matters of the church.” In a show of hands, the gathering unanimously agreed. After Robert Newman recorded and repeated the question, the vote was again taken and recorded. Next Davenport asked the settlers if they held themselves still bound by the agreement they had taken earlier, pledging to direct all their affairs by the rules of Scripture. Again, everyone, including some who had arrived since the plantation covenant had been sworn to, raised a hand to show assent. The third question was whether they had a “purpose, resolution, and desire that they may be admitted into church fellowship according to Christ as soon as God shall fit them thereunto.” All there “did express this to be their desire and purpose by holding up their hands twice, (viz) both at the proposal of it, and after, when these written words were read to them.”1 Davenport next asked if “they held themselves bound to establish such civil order as might best conduce to the securing of the purity and peace of the ordinances to themselves and to their posterity.” After everyone had 181

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again assented, “Mr. Davenport declared unto them by the scripture what kind of persons might best be trusted with matters of government,” and he elaborated on the texts of Exodus 18:2, Deuteronomy 1:13, Deuteronomy 17:15, and 1 Corinthians 6:1–7 in discussing what this would mean.2 The texts demanded that “wise men, of understanding, and known among your tribes” be chosen as rulers whom God would empower and that believers be judged by those who were of the faith community. All agreed with this. The fifth question posed by Davenport was “whether free burgesses”— those who would have the right to vote—should be church members. “This was put to vote and agreed unto by the lifting up of hands twice,” but then “one man stood up after the vote was past” and expressed his dissent. This was likely Peter Prudden, and while he agreed that magistrates should be god-fearing men, and that the church was the place where such men were most likely to be found, he nevertheless did not believe that the free planters assembled should give up their authority to the members of a church that had not yet even been formed. In the ensuing discussion, Theophilus Eaton pointed out that it was not unusual for a large group to entrust authority to a portion of its members, pointing out that in the London livery companies (trade guilds), authority was vested in those who were of the livery (voting members) by the ordinary members of the company who did so anticipating that eventually they would be of the livery.3 Some urged Prudden to elaborate on his position, but he demurred, saying that he didn’t want to hinder what they had already agreed to. Prudden and his supporters had previously decided to move on from New Haven, having purchased land for the town of Milford. Davenport reviewed previous discussions he had with Prudden and his own reasons for limiting the franchise. But he urged the assembled settlers “that nothing might be concluded by them in this weighty question, but what [they] themselves were persuaded to be agreeing with the mind of God.” He urged they take another vote, and “all of them by holding up their hands did show their consent as before.”4 This concluded the ratification of the “fundamental agreement concerning civil government.” Next, the gathering proceeded to lay the foundation for the church. In the months since the first settlement, “several private meetings” had been organized in which “they that dwelt nearest together gave their accounts one to another of God’s gracious work upon them, and prayed together and conferred to their mutual edification.” This sharing of religious experience was a method long used by puritans to bind themselves



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into spiritual communion with one another. Davenport was familiar with the practice of volunteering, or even requiring such relations when one was presenting oneself for church membership. He had known of such a practice in the Jacob church in London, presided over it in the Rotterdam church, and certainly had discussed it with Cotton and other friends in Massachusetts. In New Haven at this time it was being employed to evaluate those being considered as the human pillars upon which the church was to rest. The settlers of each square in Quinnipiac were to gather, just as the Israelites had encamped in tribes around the Ark of the Covenant. In each of these individual conferences the settlers were to choose those “more approved of all than any other” as suitable to be a foundation stone for the church. It is likely that individuals who participated in these gatherings shared stories of their religious experience.5 With all the groups assembled on June 4 in Newman’s barn, Davenport asked them to nominate twelve men who were considered fit to advance the work of church formation. Those assembled nominated Davenport, Eaton, Newman, Ezekiel Cheever, and eight others. The settlers as a whole then subjected those nominated to scrutiny and approved them, though not until one individual was asked to respond to a concern that he had charged an excessive price for meal he had sold. Before adjourning, the planters further attested to their commitment to the fundamental covenant by signing their names to a record of the meeting and adopting an oath of allegiance.6 By August the twelve men charged with organizing the church had selected seven of their number to be the pillars of the church. Those seven then made a church covenant and drew up a confession of faith. It is likely that the document published as The Profession of the Faith of That Reverend and Worthy Divine Mr. J. D., Sometimes Preacher of Stevens Coleman-Street, London Made Publiquely Before the Congregation at His Admission into One of the Churches of God in New England (1642) demonstrates the knowledge of faith that Davenport and the faithful expected those seeking membership to express. The church having been formed, other planters could present themselves for membership, making their own professions of faith, with the everincreasing membership determining the qualifications of each candidate. Davenport’s Profession repays examination both for what it suggests regarding the type of statement expected of those who wished to join the church and as a statement of the beliefs Davenport considered essential at this time in his life. It begins with an assertion that “all Scripture is by divine inspiration, or inbreathing of God,” and is “profitable for doctrine, for

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reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” The second point describes God as “a spirit most holy, immutable, eternal, every way infinite, in greatness, goodness, power, wisdom, justice, truth, and in all divine perfections.” It affirms that “in this Godhead are three distinct persons, coeternal, coequal, and coessential, being every one of them one and the same God, not three Gods.” The third point, dealing with the divine decrees of God, is a strong Calvinist statement, that “God hath according to his most wise, free, and unchangeable purpose in himself, before the foundation of the world, chosen some in Jesus Christ to eternal life, to the praise and glory of his grace, and rejected or reprobated others to the praise of his justice.” The fourth point asserts that all that is was created by God and that nothing happens that is not part of God’s providential plan. Discussing “the fall of man and original sin,” Davenport begins by asserting that “inasmuch as Adam was the root of all mankind, the law and covenant of works was given to him, as a public person, and to an head from which all good or evil was to be derived to his posterity.” As a result of his sin, “death came upon all justly, and reigned over all, yea, over infants also.” All men are “by nature children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins, altogether filthy and polluted throughout in soul and body; utterly averse from any spiritual good, strongly bent to all evil, and subject to all the calamities due to sin in this world, and forever.” The sixth point offers hope, stating that “all mankind being thus fallen, yet the elect, and only they, are redeemed, reconciled to God and saved, not of themselves, neither by their own works, but only by the mighty power of God, of his unsearchable, rich, free grace and mercy through faith in Jesus Christ.” The seventh point asserts the divine and human natures of Christ, whereas the eighth identifies his offices as prophet, priest, and king of the church. The ninth through the twelfth points elaborate on these offices. “The Application of Redemption,” the thirteenth point, was one of the longest. Davenport states his belief that “the holy Ghost is sent by the Father and the Son to make application of Redemption only to those whom the Father hath by his eternal decree given to Christ.” A sinner is “awakened and humbled by the Law” so that he judges “himself worthy to be destroyed for his sins, and . . . utterly destitute of all help or hope” of saving himself. But “the Lord in the preaching of the Gospel, by the powerful work of the Holy Ghost,” reveals the grace and salvation which is possible in Christ. The “same Spirit, having thus enlightened him, does leave a supernatural virtue and impression of God’s love upon the soul, whereby the soul is drawn to



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close with Christ.” The sinner is then justified, “absolved from sin and death and accounted righteous”; adopted, “accepted for Christ’s sake to the dignity of God’s children”; sanctified, “really changed by degrees from the impurity of sin to the purity of God’s image”; and glorified, “changed from the misery or punishment of sin unto everlasting happiness, which begins in the inward sense of God’s love to them in Christ.” The next six items in the Profession deal with the nature of the church, something that Davenport had been considering and writing about for the past few years. A church is “a company of faithful and holy people . . . united . . . by a holy covenant for mutual fellowship.” A particular church is gathered and formed by Christians who, “having renounced all false ways of idolatrous, Antichristian, and superstitious worship,” come together, enlighten one another through prophesying, and then covenant and choose their officers. Each church has full power to govern itself, free from the authority of any other church or ecclesiastical body or officials. Yet although each is independent, “all churches [are] to walk by one and the same rule, and . . . have the counsel and help of one another.” Each congregation should choose “pastors, teachers, deacons, [and] elders for the instruction, government, and service of his [God’s] church to the world’s end.” The twentieth and final item in the Profession declares that “unto all men is to be given whatsoever is due to them, in regard of their office, place, gifts, wages, estate, and condition.” Puritans wished to limit admission to the Lord’s Supper to those they believed to be elect, and one way of doing this was to regulate admission to a congregation. It has commonly been assumed that membership in a New England congregation required applicants to offer a personal account of how they had experienced God’s grace and been born again. This was not the case in New Haven, undoubtedly because of Davenport’s understanding of the process of salvation and how true faith could be detected. Conversion narratives typically traced the story of how God’s grace transformed a sinner and generally pointed to specific events that signaled the reception of grace that brought the sinner rebirth. Davenport, like John Cotton, never addressed himself in print to the stages of conversion. His inattention to issues of the saint’s preparation was similar to John Preston’s preaching on calling, and to his friend Thomas Goodwin’s statement, “I knew no more of that work of conversion than these two general heads, that a man was troubled in conscience for his sins, and afterwards was comforted by the favor of God manifested to him.”7 Goodwin has been described as coming

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close to denying any form of preparation as a necessary step in salvation. Nowhere is there any indication that Davenport ever recorded the progress of grace in his own soul as Thomas Shepard did in his autobiography and diary, as John Winthrop did in his statement of his “Christian Experience,” and as numerous ordinary men and women did in the conversion narratives recorded by Shepard in the Cambridge church. In this, Davenport was closer to his friend John Cotton, who similarly left no record of the steps in his personal pilgrim’s progress to assurance.8 In 1683, when William Hubbard was working on a history of New England, he wrote to Increase Mather to ask him “to send me by this bearer a few words concerning Mr. Davenport’s conversion if you know anything about it.” In fact, Mather had no details, as it appears that Davenport did not have such an experience, or did not share it if he did.9 Given this background, it is not surprising that what was required to join the New Haven church was evidence of godly behavior and a true profession of faith. Davenport consistently maintained that saints were revealed by their faith, but he was careful to explain what true faith was. He was aware that there were those “who consider faith in Christ merely as the best of various religious options,” others, “like Catholics, who take faith as a simple intellectual assent to certain revealed truths,” and “finally those who consider themselves to be Christians because they have always lived as part of a Christian culture.”10 True faith was different from mere intellectual understanding. In discussing the consequences of election, Davenport preached that “the Holy Spirit brings into the soul” of the elect “a self-evidencing light whereby he doth manifest unto the renewed soul that it is himself, and no delusion, who testifieth to us our interest in God.” A true and sincere faith was one that embraced the heart as well as the will. This “saving conviction is a greater and stronger light, like the light of the Sun,” and “is only from the sanctifying spirit of God.” It is this “new light whereby we are enabled to see other things, or the same truths in a more spiritual and effectual manner.”11 This closely resembled a fairly common distinction that John Cotton expressed as being between two forms of understanding the faith—an act of simple understanding and an “acquaintance” with the truth that was grounded in the will.12 English puritans of the Cumberland and Westmorland Association similarly wrote that they were “so far from resolving to satisfy ourselves with the bare recital and repetition of the words of the Profession, &c, that we shall endeavor to make the people not only to profess with understanding, but (so far as we can) with feeling apprehension of what they speak.”13



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Davenport’s understanding of faith as expressed here was no different than what he had preached to his parishioners at St. Stephen’s in the early 1630s. He had told them that “through the exercise of faith grace may be manifested.” Grace kept one from a faulty faith—“the word of God having place in the heart” of believers, it was “a strong preservative against errors. If the word was in you, you would not maintain such errors as those that are so directly against the word.” The calling from God, he had preached, was the source of good works, as it gave the elect “an illumination of their understanding whereby they see sin otherwise than other men do.”14 And it could be a source of guidance. When threatened by Archbishop Laud’s interest in him, he had left St. Stephen’s for a time, “the truth is, to wait upon God, upon the settling and quieting of things, for light to discern my way.”15 Like his friend Richard Sibbes, Davenport stressed the duty of the elect to come to Christ.16 Only those chosen by God had the ability to respond properly to his call. The Lord added to the church not only “by giving them [the elect] saving faith, and so adding them to the invisible church, but also by inclining their hearts to the fellowship of the visible church.”17 Those who acted on this inclination to present themselves for membership could be assumed to be among the elect if the spirit had led them to a true and sincere knowledge of doctrine and a proper course of behavior. While hypocrites might on occasion feign such knowledge, all who were elect had a true understanding. Personal tales of how and when an individual had experienced God’s grace could be edifying, but such motions of the spirit were not felt by all whom God had chosen and were generally not considered a prerequisite for church membership. It should also be pointed out that whatever the form of the test for membership, the decisions were made by those who believed that they could recognize a fellow saint. In a letter written to the Separatist Pilgrim William Bradford shortly after the settlement of Salem, John Endecott wrote that “God’s people are all marked with one and the same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have for the main, one and the same heart, guided by one and the same spirit of truth; and where this is, there can be no discord, nay, here must always be sweet harmony.” Similarly, Oliver Cromwell characteristically dismissed doctrinal niceties and believed he could discern those who had “the root of the matter in them.” A belief that the applicant had “the root of the matter” in him or her is what ultimately determined whether one was admitted to the church, regardless of the particular hoop he or she was forced to jump through.

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While Davenport believed that the Spirit was an inner light in the soul, he rejected any notion that a personal experience of the Spirit was alone sufficient for assurance. In London he had preached against John Pordage’s views that such an “overpowering light” negated the need for further evidences of salvation.18 In Massachusetts, his belief in such light may have made him more willing to engage with Anne Hutchinson, but he would not accept her claims of the Spirit’s guidance as justification for false doctrine. In Davenport’s view, the light that came with the Spirit’s gift of grace made one recognize true doctrine and make the right choices in behavior. Like Thomas Goodwin, he believed that while anyone could read and profit from the Scripture, only the elect, illumined by the Spirit, truly understood it.19 In taking this position, both Davenport and Goodwin were following Calvin’s views that the illumination of the Spirit was necessary for a true understanding of Scripture. Davenport believed that a godly life, along with proper knowledge, was a likely sign of an individual’s election. In a series of sermons in the late 1650s he compared such evidence to the treasure of a man who, when his “house is on fire and is in danger to be lost, . . . cries out, Oh!, Let me have my box of evidences, they are my treasure, the principal of my estate.”20 The light of conversion bestowed true understanding and the ability to make godly choices. Such understanding and behavior evidenced saving grace. This may have been similar to what Thomas Hooker meant when he referred to “saving knowledge.”21 How did Davenport’s approach to church membership in New Haven compare to the positions he had taken in Amsterdam? That church required applicants for membership to make a confession of faith and bring two members of the congregation to testify to their good behavior.22 They opened the sacraments to these church members. Members had the right to present their children for baptism. Davenport had no issue with this but objected to the Dutch custom that required him to baptize any child presented at worship, even if the parents were not members of the church, indeed, even were they non-Christians. His refusal to do so was at the heart of his dispute with Paget and the Amsterdam classis. In the ensuing debate he indicated a desire to privately examine parents of non–church members to assure himself of their doctrinal beliefs and good behavior. At this stage these were the criteria he felt essential for those who wished to receive the sacraments. When Davenport moved on to Rotterdam, he had found himself in a new situation. His friend Hugh Peter had reorganized the English congre-



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gation there, requiring all who wished to join to accept a covenant, the first article of which stipulated that all who sought membership in the church should undergo a “meet trial for our fitness to be members.”23 Exactly what this entailed is unclear. Certainly, candidates were expected to make a profession of their faith, have a reputation for godliness, and accept the covenant. They may have been publicly questioned on their statements to ensure that they were sincere, as that was the practice in many Separatist congregations. Sharing the story of one’s personal progress to God occurred on occasion but was not necessarily required. In the New Haven church, Davenport appears to have been more concerned with doctrinal purity than with personal statements of religious experience. In his 1638 Apology he called on churches to see that candidates “manifested and professed both faith and obedience, both that they believed what God promised and that they would be obedient to what he required.”24 True faith led to true obedience. Elsewhere Davenport talked of “a public profession of faith as the church may, in charitable discretion, judge has blessedness annexed unto it, and such as flesh and blood hath not revealed.”25 Preaching to the members of his church years after its formation, he declared that it was “the duty of the ministers and members of Christian churches to see, so far as they can according to rule, that all they receive into church fellowship be such visibly as are here described, viz. 1. That they are true believers in Christ. . . . 2. That they profess their faith and holiness in good conversation . . . 3. That they make public confession of their faith before the church.”26 In his Another Essay (1663), arguing against the change in admission standards later known as the Half-Way Covenant, he stated that adults seeking admission should demonstrate “regeneration visibly manifested to the charitable discretion of the Church . . . and made visible by a right confession and profession of faith.”27 Davenport did encourage the sharing of personal experience among those seeking to identify the pillars of the new church. Accounts of how a woeful sinner was touched by grace and born again could guide and inspire those who were still struggling with their unworthiness. Personal narratives also tended to highlight the role of preachers as a means which God used to open the sinner to grace. Such narratives were not uncommon in the informal Tuesday prayer gatherings of members that were part of the spiritual practices of the New Haven Church. Like his friend Thomas Goodwin, he believed that sharing stories of how God worked in one’s soul was an

Title page from John Davenport, The Profession of the Faith of That Reverend and Worthy Divine Mr. J.D.



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i­mportant factor in the ongoing communion of local saints. But there is no evidence that such accounts had to be delivered to the congregation for an individual to obtain membership. They were seen instead as a way of enriching the community’s religious life. New Haven’s membership having been expanded beyond the original pillars to include many other settlers who presented themselves, in late August the church formally organized itself and chose John Davenport as the pastor, with Robert Newman and Matthew Gilbert as deacons. The ministers Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone traveled to New Haven from Hartford, no small journey at that time, to assist in the service. Members of the congregation ordained Davenport as pastor with a laying on of hands, after which Hooker and Stone led those assembled in prayers and extended the right hand of fellowship from the Hartford church. Samuel Eaton, who assisted Davenport in his ministry during the early years of the church, appears not to have been formally ordained to the congregation’s ministry, but in all likelihood he continued his services unofficially.28 In the first decades of colonization, when it appears that a bare majority of heads of families were church members throughout New England as a whole, 64 percent of New Haven men were members.29 Following the formal organization of the church, the colonists completed the structure of the civil order. On October 25, 1639, the seven founding members of the church met as the town General Court and invited all who had been admitted to the church to swear the oath as freemen. Davenport preached on Deuteronomy 1:13 (“Take your wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.”) and Exodus 18:21 (“Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens”), describing the attributes of a godly ruler. The freemen then chose Theophilus Eaton as magistrate, and Davenport gave him his charge based on Deuteronomy 1:16–17—“And I charged your judges at that time, saying Hear the causes between your brethren and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.” Next the freemen elected Matthew Gilbert, Thomas Fugill, Robert Newman, and

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Nathaniel Turner as deputies. The assembled court then determined that the town officers would be elected annually during the last week in October and reaffirmed that “the word of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in ordering the affairs of government in this plantation.”30 The final step in providing the framework for the new settlement was the negotiation of a series of formal treaties with the local tribes that secured for the colonists firm title to the lands they were settling on. In November 1638, the town leaders purchased land from Momaugin, the sachem of the Quinnipiacs. In the following month they purchased additional land form Monowese, the sachem of the Mattabesek. The two agreements transferred approximately 110 square miles to the town proprietors and included all or most of present-day New Haven, East Haven, Branford, North Branford, North Haven, Hampden, Chesire, Wallingford, Meriden, Prospect, Bethany, Woodbridge, Orange, and West Haven. The combined tract had irregular boundaries and was approximately ten to eighteen miles north from the coast and thirteen miles from east to west. Altogether it encompassed 110.8 square miles. The town proprietors had the responsibility of distributing individual allotments among the residents. The first division of land, which included the town lots in the eight residential squares, was probably completed by 1641. As was the case elsewhere in New England, the size of each home’s lot was determined by a formula that took into account both the family’s size and its wealth.31 For the Davenports, the fall of 1639 also brought personal joy when their son John arrived from England, accompanied by a family servant. The boy had been left in the care of Lady Mary Vere when John and Elizabeth embarked for the New World. Thanking her for her kindness, John specifically mentioned her bringing him to Sir Thomas Maherne, the king’s physician, when the boy had been suffering pain in his neck and, on another occasion, having bought young John a coat. In the same letter, he commiserated with Lady Vere on the death of one of her sons-in-law, and he shared with his onetime patron his enthusiasm for the new settlement. “The Lord God hath here bestowed on us the greatest outward privilege under the sun,” he wrote, “to have and enjoy all his ordinances purely dispensed in a church gathered and constituted according to his own mind in all things,” and his belief that God “had promised that in every place where he shall so set his name, he will come upon his people and bless them.”32

Ch a pt e r 1 3

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E

ven before they undertook the organization of their civil and church institutions, the colonists’ first task was to provide shelter, and this initially came in the form of cellars dug into the ground along West Creek. Michael Wigglesworth’s family settled in Quinnipiac in its first years and lived in such a shelter. The future clergyman and poet described how his family “lived in a cellar partly underground, covered with earth the first winter. . . . I remember that one great rain broke in upon us and drenched me so in my bed, being asleep, that I fell sick upon it.”1 Such shelters continued to be used by newcomers over the following years, but on December 2, 1640, the town “ordered that all that live in cellars and have families shall have liberty for three months to provide for themselves, but all single persons are to betake themselves forthwith to some families, except the magistrates see cause to respite them for a time.”2 Most settlers had been quick to erect more substantial structures, often one story with sharply pitched roofs. But because the New Haven settlers numbered among some of the wealthier immigrants to early New England, some homes were more than merely substantial. An estimate of the wealth of the townsmen in 1641 showed five individuals assessed at more than £1,000 each, a very large sum for that time. Within a few years such individuals had erected some of the finest homes to be found anywhere in New England. Theophilus Eaton’s home, on what is now the corner of Elm and Orange streets, was constructed like an English manor house, three stories tall with a number of chimneys to heat the interior. Those who visited it later in the century described an E-shaped structure with five chimneys feeding as many as twenty-one fireplaces. Inventories and recollections of those who saw the home decades after Eaton’s death have allowed historical architects to 193

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s­ uggest the original layout, though we need to remember that some of what is described may have been later additions. Entering the house from the front walk leading from today’s Elm Street, a visitor would enter a large hall. This is where Eaton conducted public meetings and also where the family would have dined. To the left was the wing that included a business room or library and a parlor. The other wing contained the pantry and kitchen. Normally, the owner and his wife would have their bedroom on the second floor above the hall, in the center of the house. Evidence suggests, however, that this room may have been used by the governor’s mother. Theophilus and Anne initially occupied the “green chamber” (so called because of its hangings), which was on the left wing, at the front of the house. The remainder of that wing was occupied with a “blue chamber.” It had a bed for guests but seems to have used primarily to store linen. On the wing to the opposite side of the hall were two other chambers, providing sleeping accommodation for the servants. The governor’s inventory also listed a bed in the garret above the second floor. The house and its furnishings (virtually all of which would have been shipped from England) were probably the grandest to be found anywhere in New England.3 Less information survives to tell us about the Davenport home, which also fronted today’s Elm Street, in a separate square near State Street. Ezra Stiles, depending on his own boyhood memories as well as the recollections of an aged woman who had been born in the seventeenth century, described the house as built in the form of a cross, with a large central chimney, and this is verified by the depiction of the building on an eighteenth-century map. Some of what is shown there was likely added years after the initial construction; one scholar suggested that the protruding front and rear rooms that gave the home its cruciform shape were additions. Slightly smaller than Eaton’s, the house still had a large number of rooms. A recollection that it contained thirteen fireplaces would mean that it had more than a single chimney. Because the inventory of Davenport’s estate was conducted after he died in Boston, there is no indication of how his possessions had been distributed in the rooms of his New Haven home. The house would, however, have contained kitchen, pantry, hall, and a study on the first floor, and sleeping chambers on the second floor. When he died, Davenport’s library contained close to a thousand books, many of which came with him when he emigrated from England.4 Others were sent him by Samuel Hartlib and other friends in England during the years when the clergyman was living in New Haven.



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Elizabeth Davenport supervised the household. She was a loving spouse and devoted mother. When the Davenport’s son John was seriously ill in December 1660, she nursed him day and night until he recovered, coaxing him to eat by preparing foods that would tempt him, such as a baked apple. She solicited medical advice from John Winthrop Jr., who among his other talents was a skilled physician. Elizabeth sent Winthrop (via her husband) detailed descriptions of her son’s symptoms and administered the recommended medicines. She also played a key role in the life of the town. Her interest in medicine extended beyond her family. While she could not write and thus relied on John to write to Winthrop on her behalf, she became, in essence, Winthrop’s assistant in New Haven. She reported on illnesses that afflicted her fellow townspeople, solicited advice and medicines, and spent many hours administering the remedies and comforting those who were ill. Many of the herbs she used in her medical practice were grown in her garden, while other, more sophisticated drugs were obtained from Winthrop.5 Despite some grand homes, New Haven was still a frontier settlement, and the threat of attack from natives or from the Dutch (who claimed the region) was never far from the settlers’ minds. A common stock of powder and shot was maintained for the defense of the colony.6 Some “great guns” were positioned on the New Haven green.7 Every male inhabitant of the settlement between the ages of sixteen and sixty was to maintain a serviceable gun and a good sword and was assigned to militia squadrons that trained monthly. A chest of pikes was kept in the meetinghouse.8 This is not to say that everyone was well trained and disciplined. On one occasion Robert Lea walked to the training ground with his gun fully loaded, which was against orders. It accidently discharged and the bullet narrowly missed members of Thomas Gregson’s family in their home. Lea was fined and ordered to repair the window.9 In October 1643, at a time when there were fears of native attacks, the town’s General Court “ordered that one of the squadrons in their course shall come to the meetings every Sabbath completely armed, fit for service, with at least 6 charges of shot and powder, and be ready at the meetinghouse within half an hour after the first beating of the drum,” and that “the sentinel and those that walk around shall have their matches lighted during the time of the meeting if they have matchlocks.”10 In 1644 the Colony General Court authorized the formation of a separate and voluntary Artillery Company, similar to the London band that Davenport had addressed

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years before. Those admitted as members drilled with the company and were therefore freed from their town militia responsibilities.11 In the early 1640s there was particular concern about a possible attack by the Narrangansetts. Though that tribe had been allies with the English in the Pequot War, their sachem Miantinomo had been increasingly concerned with what the growth of the English settlements meant for his people. He was reported to have addressed native leaders on Long Island on the need for all natives to unite. If they did not, he warned, “we shall be gone shortly, for you know our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our woods and plains were full of deer and turkeys and our coves of fish and fowl. But the English cut down the grass with scythes and with their axes felled the trees. Their cows and horses eat up the grass and their hogs spoil our clam beds and we shall be starved.”12 Uncas, the sachem of the Mohegans, opposed the Narragansett plans, and in June 1645 the New Haven Colony General Court decided that “there is need of sending forth some soldiers to strengthen Uncas against the Narragansett Indians.” With tensions growing over the summer, the court ordered smiths to lay aside all other work and repair defective guns, farmers to store cheese and butter in case of emergency, and farmers in their fields and “those that go forth with herds and flocks” to carry guns.13 In the conflict that followed, Uncas and his native forces defeated Miantinomo and captured the Narragansett chieftain. The commissioners of the New England Confederation, asserting that Miantinomo, because of his “proud and turbulent spirit,” was a threat not only to Uncas but to the English as well, advised that he be executed, which Uncas did.14 From the first of March till the last day of October a night watch was to patrol the settlement. A drum would beat at the setting of the sun as a signal for the assigned watchmen to repair to their posts with their arms. They would patrol without breaks for sleep until a half hour after the drum beat again to mark the sunrise.15 The town’s General Court passed various regulations for the welfare of the community. Because many chimneys were made of wood and covered with plaster, it was essential that they be kept in good repair. Every household was to douse the fire and clean their chimney once a month, with John Cooper chosen to inspect them and be paid two pence for every chimney under one story and four pence for taller chimneys.16 Fire hooks were “made at the expense of the town” and hung where they could be used in emergency.17 Another measure to prevent fires was a court order prohibiting the burning of leaves or rubbish in the gardens of houselots.18 Fence viewers were also



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appointed to survey the land divisions and ensure that proper fences had been erected around the allotments to prevent hogs from destroying crops.19 Because wolves and foxes were “seizing upon sheep, goats, swine, and the smaller and weaker sort of great cattle,” bounties were placed on the predators, with fifteen shillings paid for every wolf ’s head and two shillings six pence paid for every fox head.20 The sale of wine and other alcohol was regulated by the magistrates “to prevent that excess of drinking, that God may not be dishonored nor religion reproached.”21 The town court established the location for cart bridges to be built over the East, Mill, and West Rivers and supervised the work on the projects.22 A lengthy case involving the quality of shoes between a tanner and a shoemaker in 1647 led to the appointment of an inspector to seal all leather sold to shoemakers and the requirement that shoemakers place their mark on their products.23 Weights and measures were regulated, and in 1649 eighteen individuals were fined for neglecting to bring those they used in their businesses for inspection.24 Agriculture was an important part of the New England economy, as the colonists worked not only to provide their own food but also to produce grains and livestock for export. Over the early decades of the town’s history, land in the surrounding fields was assigned to the householders. In the first division, in January 1640, each free planter was granted land in the neck (the area between the Mill and Quinnipiac Rivers), the salt meadows, and the uplands outside the town. As in many other New England communities, the townspeople or their servants resided in the town itself and walked out to their various fields to farm the land or tend their cattle. Other divisions over the years expanded each family’s holdings. Land transfers allowed some to consolidate their holdings, and in such cases outlying farm buildings were erected. Eventually, Davenport would come to hold 16 acres of upland, 19 acres of woodlot, and 160 acres of other lands. The starting place for the puritan struggle to create a godly kingdom was the individual. Each person was called by God to lead an exemplary life. For heads of household this included making sure that the family was a godly society. Social order rested on the family, the little commonwealth that nurtured the values that defined the society. Davenport and his fellow leaders expected the heads of New Haven’s households to teach civic responsibility and to regulate the behavior of those under their care. Among the responsibilities of parents was to see to it that children and apprentices be educated sufficiently to read the Scriptures and other “good and profitable books in

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the English tongue” and to be catechized so that they might “in some competent measure . . . understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation.”25 Though perhaps not typical, the experience of Theophilus Eaton represents the type of life that Davenport urged on all believers. Eaton rose early and spent time in his study, praying and considering the tasks that would be before him that day. He then gathered the members of his household together—sometimes numbering as many as thirty, including his servants— before they began the day’s labors and read them a passage from Scripture, discussed it, and then offered a prayer. At the end of the day, he gathered everyone together again for a similar period of Scripture reading and reflection, and then he retired to his study for private prayer. Puritans identified dusk on Saturday as the start of the Sabbath. That evening Theophilus would review a past sermon with his household and catechize the members on matters of faith.26 On Sunday evening the household gathered to review the day’s sermons, Eaton and perhaps some others having taken notes. Repetition of the lessons and efforts to incorporate its message into each individual’s life and prayers was a key part of puritan spirituality.27 In preparation for specially appointed days of fast or thanksgiving, he discussed the meaning of the day’s activities.28 Davenport’s household consisted of the clergyman; his wife, Elizabeth; his son, John; and servants. Young John had been baptized in The Hague in 1635. He had been left in the care of Lady Mary Vere when his parents embarked on the journey to America and was reunited with them in 1639. His parents taught him to read and write, and it is likely that he received his advanced schooling in the household as well rather than in the town’s grammar school. More surprising, he was not sent to study at Harvard when he was an age to do so, though other New Haven youth studied and received their degrees there. This may have been because he appears to have been prone to illness, which made John and Elizabeth reluctant to send their only child to the Bay Colony. As he grew up, he assisted his father in various tasks connected with the family’s farm and matters concerning the church. He also aided his mother in her efforts to minister to the sick in the colony. Davenport believed in the value of ejaculatory prayer—short, spontaneous outreaches to God prompted by everyday events. He once advised a young minister, quite possibly Increase Mather, “that he should be much in ejaculatory prayer; for, indeed, ejaculatory prayers [are] as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. . . . Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them.”29



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Cotton Mather recorded the tradition that “Mr. Davenport . . . was well used unto that sacred skill of ‘walking with God,’ and ‘having his eyes ever towards the Lord,’ and ‘being in the fear of the Lord all the day long’ by the use of ejaculatory prayers.” When troubled by everyday matters, he would tie “the wishes of his devout soul unto the arrows of ejaculatory prayers, [and] would shoot them away into the heavens, from whence he expected all his help.”30 While the family was the foundation of a godly community, the meetinghouse was the focus of public activity, both civil and religious. During the early years of settlement religious services and meetings of the General Court would have taken place in a large barn or outdoors. In August 1644 work was still going on to complete the meetinghouse.31 In February 1646 work was finally completed. “Elder Newman and the two deacons” were instructed to develop a seating plan, and in March orders were given to make sure the seats were ready when the plan was completed.32 The Sabbath was observed from sunset on Saturday until sundown on Sunday. During that time no one was to undertake any ordinary labor, exceptions only to be made for extraordinary occasions and acts of mercy. Saturday evening was the time to prepare for the following day’s worship. For the first decade this was an agreed-on cultural imperative, with the court rarely having to charge someone with violations, though in 1648 offenses were common enough that the court legislated the practice.33 The completed meetinghouse itself was fifty feet square, with a small tower containing a turret on top, where an armed sentinel was posted during times of potential conflict. At eight o’clock on Sunday morning a drum was beat from the tower to alert the townspeople of the approach of the services. A half hour later a second drumbeat called families forth to process to the place of worship. All inhabitants of the town were expected to attend the services. On entering, family members separated, for, as typical of English churches and New England meetinghouses, seating for men and women was on different sides of the church. At the front of the room, opposite the entrance, was the pulpit, which was the focal point for puritan worship. Behind the pulpit was a bench for the clergy; John Davenport; and, as of 1644, William Hooke. In front of the pulpit, facing the congregation, was a bench for the lay leaders of the church, the ruling elder and deacons. There was a shelf in front of the elders’ bench that had a hinged front. When the congregation was to receive the Lord’s Supper, the shelf was raised to form a table.

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At the front of the church on each side there was a set of five benches facing one another across the pulpit. Looking forward from the rear of the meetinghouse there was a center aisle and two side aisles. In the two sections of benches to the left of the center aisle were the seats for the male members of the congregation, allocated according to social rank. Governor Eaton sat in the front row. To the right of the center aisle was the seating for the women of the congregation, again assigned according to status. The soldiers on duty for the particular week had seats assigned at the rear of the church (on both sides) and children sat behind them.34 The service itself began at nine o’clock, with Davenport offering up prayers of intercession and thanksgiving lasting for about fifteen minutes. Following this, the pastor might read notes submitted to him by members of the congregation, seeking the prayers of their brethren for particular intentions. Davenport, dressed in a black suit and his Oxford scholar’s gown, would then read and expound on a passage of Scripture, following which the congregation would all join in singing a psalm. There were no musical instruments to accompany them. After the psalm Davenport would preach a sermon of an hour or longer, with many members of the congregation balancing notebooks on their knees and recording key points of the message. Another psalm and a lengthy extemporaneous prayer would conclude the morning service unless it was a week when the Lord’s Supper was to be celebrated. On those days, scheduled weeks in advance so that members could prepare themselves spiritually, the front of the deacon’s bench was raised and the church members gathered around while the clergy sat at the table. Davenport said the words of consecration, and the plate of bread was passed around to all, followed by a cup of wine. An afternoon service began at around two o’clock. The order of service was essentially the same as the morning’s, featuring prayers, Psalms, Scripture reading, and sermon. When Davenport had a colleague in the ministry, such as William Hooke, one would normally preach in the morning and the other in the afternoon. It is likely, though not absolutely clear, that following the sermons there was an opportunity for lay members of the congregation to raise questions or say something by way of prophesying. The baptism of the children of church members followed the afternoon service when there were infants to be presented. The pastor would pray and exhort those gathered for the event. Puritans rejected the custom of godparents, and so it would be the father who held the infant while baptized in the “name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” by “washing and sprinkling.”35 Following



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this, the congregation admitted new members, decided on any individuals propounded for membership, and addressed any disciplinary offenses.36 The purpose of disciplinary actions was to bring the offender back onto a path of godliness. When an individual was suspected of sinful actions or beliefs, every effort was made to reform the person through private intercession by the church elders. If such admonitions were unsuccessful, the pastor or ruling elder would bring the matter before the congregation. The New Haven Church chose Robert Newman as ruling elder in 1644, but after he left the office in 1650, he was not replaced, the congregation then following the example of nearby Guilford in dispensing with the office. That would mean that disciplinary matters would have been brought before the church by John Davenport. He would identify the objectionable belief or behavior, demonstrating the particular divine law that was being violated and explaining what steps had already been taken to persuade the individual of his or her error. As in civil cases, two witnesses were required to establish the facts of the case. The offender was given a chance to respond and the congregants an opportunity to ask questions, after which the members voted to establish whether an offense had actually occurred. If the vote was in the affirmative, the congregation then addressed the issue of punishment. Normally, the first disciplinary measure was an official admonition. The hope was that this would bring the offender to repentance, and in the days and weeks to follow, the elders continued their efforts to draw the individual back to the fold. When such steps proved ineffectual, the congregation might, on a later date, proceed to a judgment of excommunication. It should be noted that excommunication was not a final casting off of a former member. Like formal admonition, it was viewed as a corrective measure that would stimulate repentance and reconciliation.37 In most cases, such as that of Henry Glover, who was excommunicated from the congregation in 1644 for “scandalous behavior,” the individual was readmitted to the fellowship after confessing his or her error.38 A place was set aside just beyond the threshold of the entrance where excommunicated members could listen to the sermons. In addition to Sabbath services, members of the church gathered on Tuesdays to confer and discuss various religious subjects, with the clergy in attendance to offer instruction and encouragement. Separate meetings of believers in private homes continued to be held as well, as they had been in the lead-up to the formation of the church. The mere existence of such gatherings was testimony to the confidence in lay believers at the heart of Congregationalism. Reviewing the previous Sunday’s sermons was often one

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of the features of such meetings, and the process was typically a collaborative one, with different individuals focusing on those parts of the message that had most meaning for them. Some writers described this process of reviewing sermons as “eating” or “digesting” the message.39 Puritans in England and in New England were accustomed to having the opportunity to satisfy their appetite for such fare with additional sermons on appointed lecture days. Davenport had undertaken such duties in London at St. Botolph’s, St. Lawrence, and St. Stephen’s. Wednesday was the appointed lecture day in New Haven.40 Davenport’s vision for New Haven included a well-educated citizenry. As a member of the Hartlib Circle he had engaged in discussions on the connection of educational reform as part of the overall effort to reform society. Jan Amos Comenius, a member of the group, was particularly engaged in efforts at educational reform. Their biographies make it virtually impossible that Davenport and Comenius could have actually met, but the Englishman was certainly aware of the Czech’s writings. Comenius sought to effect reformation through a collaborative and systematic effort to identify the fundamental principles underlying all knowledge.41 He envisioned the creation of a network of spiritually minded philosophers, theologians, and scientists who would improve the world for the second coming of Christ. This pansophism was influenced by the writings of reformers such as Tomasso Campanella; J. V. Andrae; Francis Bacon; and Comenius’s professor at the academy of Herborn in Nassau, Johann Heinrich Alsted. In the 1630s Davenport’s friend and collaborator Samuel Hartlib was the principal promoter of the educational ideas of Comenius. Lord Brooke, another friend of Davenport, was also a strong advocate for Comenian reforms. The goal of Comenius was “nothing in fact less than the improvement of all human affairs, in all persons and everywhere.” One of the radical elements of this program was the belief that education was for all men and women, not, as he put it, “that all men should become learned but that all men may be made wise unto salvation.” With basic education ordinary men and women would be able to read the Scriptures, sift truth from error, and strive for moral and religious perfection, “embracing of that Golden Age of light and knowledge, which hath been so long foretold.” This enlightenment was a key to the Middle Advent. As William Hooke put it, “Even carters, cooks, and kitchen maids shall shine in purity of life.”42 Such light and knowledge would include greater insight into the natural world, which



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Comenius referred to as “the first and greatest book of God.”43 This fit in smoothly with Hartlib’s interest in promoting and publicizing scientific discoveries and technological innovations. Millennialism, the advancement of science, and universal religious reform were perceived as shared objectives by the members of the Hartlib circle. The influence of Comenius and similar thinkers is evident in Davenport’s educational plans for his colony. Certainly the emphasis on teaching all of New Haven’s youths and servants to read in the vernacular was in keeping with Comenius’s agenda, though not necessarily directly inspired by him. Because not all parents were capable of effectively instructing those in their charge, Mark Pearce was engaged to teach writing and arithmetic. Grammar schools, as they were then known, were schools in which young men learned Latin to prepare for university studies. In 1631 Comenius published a revolutionary text for the teaching of Latin, Janua linguarum reserata (The gateway of languages opened). In it he departed from the traditional memorization of texts and advocated a method of teaching vocabulary by linking words to daily experiences of life and the natural world. In preparing the migration to New England, Davenport engaged Ezekiel Cheever, a resident of the parish of St. Antholin’s, London, and a recent graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to teach in the colony. Cheever would become seventeenth-century New England’s most famous schoolmaster, and he began the instruction of youths almost as soon as he arrived in New Haven. Not satisfied with this ad hoc arrangement, the town court quickly ordered that a school be set up “for the better training up of youth in this town, that through God’s blessing they may be fitted for public service hereafter, either in church or commonwealth.”44 The court appointed “our pastor Mr. Davenport, together with the magistrates, [to] consider what yearly allowance is meet to be given to it out of the common stock of the town, and also what rules and orders are meet to be observed in and about the same.”45 Cheever was officially named schoolmaster and paid a yearly stipend for his efforts until he left the colony.46 It is plausible that Cheever introduced some of the methods suggested by Comenius.47 Michael Wigglesworth was one of his pupils and later recalled that “under him, in a year or two I profited so much, through the blessing of God, that I began to make Latin and to get on apace.”48 Davenport had been named one of the original overseers of Harvard College when it was founded in 1636. He planned to establish a separate college in New Haven, but until that could be effected, he saw to it that the colony’s General Court appropriated support for scholars who would attend

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Harvard.49 About a half dozen New Haven youths matriculated there during the independent life of the New Haven colony, among them Michael Wigglesworth, Nathaniel Brewster, and the sons of both Theophilus Eaton and Isaac Allerton. Davenport’s interest in education did not end with the creation of the town grammar school. The economic struggles of New Haven thwarted his efforts to establish a Comenian-style university in the region. Davenport had been impressed with the Moravian’s educational program when he first encountered the ideas in England, and he had hoped to establish such a college in New Haven from the early days of the colony. When land was initially distributed by the town court, a forty-acre tract called Oyster-Shell Field was set aside for the use and benefit of a college.50 In 1643 Davenport wrote to Hartlib seeking an update on Comenius’s plans. In response, Hartlib informed the New Haven clergyman of his own efforts to raise funds for a Comenian educational effort.51 Walt Woodward has suggested that if, as Cotton Mather recorded in the Magnalia, John Winthrop Jr. had indeed invited Comenius to head a college in New England, it was likely to have been a new venture in New Haven (where Winthrop had ties) rather than, as Mather indicated, Harvard.52 Comenius, if he was offered such a post, turned it down. But plans did go ahead for a New Haven College, with Hartlib and Dury both being consulted. In March 1648 the court instructed a land committee “to consider and reserve what lot they shall see meet and most commodious for a college, which they desire may be set up as soon as their ability will reach thereunto.” In 1652 the issue of a college was raised in the court. Responding to that discussion, the townspeople of Guilford (which was part of the New Haven colony) voted in June “that the matter of a college at New Haven is thought to be too great a charge for us of this jurisdiction to undergo alone, especially considering the unsettled nature of New Haven town, being publicly declared from the deliberate judgment of the most inhabitants there; but if Connecticut do join, the planters are generally willing to bear their just proportion for erecting and maintaining a college there.”53 Further plans were discussed at a general court May 22, 1654.54 In 1655 Theophilus Eaton spoke in favor of the establishment of a college. Late in 1654 Henry Dunster, the president of Harvard, had resigned his post because he could no longer agree with the orthodox New England position supporting infant baptism. The resignation shook the puritan establishment, and Eaton suggested that the turmoil at Harvard made it a good time for New Haven to act, but again the plans came to nothing.

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T

he colonists who had gathered in Robert Newman’s barn in 1638 had created a structure of town government. Yet they expected that other communities would be established near them in the western portion of the land that had been granted to the Saybrook proprietors. Davenport’s influence can be detected in the establishment of a number of these towns, which, over the following five years, would evolve into a colony. Before the first election of New Haven magistrates the followers of Peter Prudden had made clear their intent to form their own town outside of Quinnipiac. Five members of that group had purchased land from the natives lying to the west of Quinnipiac toward the Housatonic River. They soon settled Wepowaug, later called Milford. A church was formed according to the same process as at New Haven, and it was formally organized on the same day as the New Haven church or within a day of that event. Reflecting Prudden’s disagreement with Davenport on the nature of the franchise, the new town allowed all of its free planters the right to vote.1 The ship that carried the Davenports’ son John to New Haven in September 1639 also carried Davenport’s friend Henry Whitfield along with members of his Ockley, Surrey, congregation. Another passenger on that vessel was George Fenwick, the only one of the Saybrook proprietors who had actually settled in New England. Fenwick was returning to Saybrook after briefly journeying to England to bring his wife to the colonies. Whitefield and his followers had come to the region to “settle and uphold the ordinances of God . . . with the most purity, peace, and liberty for the benefit of ourselves and our posterity after us.”2 They took up temporary residence in New Haven while they looked for land that resembled their former homeland in Kent and Surrey, finally purchasing a tract of land east of Quinnipiac 205

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from Shaumpishuh, the female sachem of the Menunkatuck tribe.3 Their town would be named Guilford. Fenwick clearly approved of the new settlements in the region and would later officially transfer the Saybrook proprietors’ title to the territory around Guilford to the residents of that community. The leaders of Guilford included Samuel Desborough, who despite being only twenty years old, quickly emerged as one of the leading settlers and the town’s first magistrate, and William Leete, who would later serve as governor of the New Haven colony. John Higginson, the son of the early Salem minister Francis Higginson, was serving as chaplain at Saybrook at the time. He soon moved to Guilford, where he married one of Whitfield’s daughters. Unlike most of his New England peers, Henry Whitfield insisted that his English ordination was sufficient and did not have himself reordained by his congregants when the Guilford church was organized. Guarding his clerical authority, he also persuaded the congregation to do without a lay ruling elder.4 In all other respects, Guilford followed the practices of New Haven. Davenport and Eaton had also persuaded Ezekiel Rogers to settle in their region. Rogers was the son of the notable puritan divine Richard Rogers of Wethersfield, England. In 1636 he had been suspended from his living in Rowley, Essex. Ezekiel’s connection with Davenport may have been through some of the Saybrook grandees, or perhaps through Samuel Rogers, his nephew, who was known to Davenport as one of Lady Vere’s chaplains. Ezekiel emigrated to New England along with about twenty other families in 1638, having agreed to settle in Quinnipiac. Rogers and others wintered in Boston, requesting permission to communicate in the Boston church, and some members of the group, including the Wigglesworth family, went directly to New Haven.5 During that winter Rogers had second thoughts about locating at New Haven. It has been suggested that when he planned to emigrate he was anticipating being joined by some of the Saybrook promoters, but he became convinced that they would not be coming. Rogers accepted an offer of land in the Bay Colony to the north of Ipswich.6 Those settlers named their new town Rowley, organized a church, and called Rogers to the ministry. Rogers sent a pinnace to New Haven to bring back the members of his company who had already settled there. Davenport and Eaton, who had planned on the new additions, detained the pinnace and protested to Rogers about his breach of their agreement. The elders of the Bay Colony churches found in favor of Rogers’s claim that circumstances justified the change of plans, though the dispute dragged on for some time. While some of the original Rogers company did relocate to Massachusetts, others—including



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Thomas Fugill, George Lamberton, and Edward Wigglesworth—stayed in New Haven.7 Davenport was more fortunate persuading the Reverend John Youngs and his followers to settle on land across Long Island Sound, which had been purchased from the natives by New Haven. Youngs organized a church in the new community, named Southold, in October 1640.8 Another land purchase by New Haven led to the settlement of Stamford. Having acquired the land in July 1640, the town sold it in November to some twenty families who left Wethersfield, along the Connecticut River, to establish a new town. Richard Denton, a Yorkshire clergyman who had settled first in Watertown, Massachusetts, and then in Wethersfield, became the first pastor of the congregation.9 Both of these communities were under the direct jurisdiction of New Haven, and Stamford had deputies at the New Haven General Court in 1641. New Haven effectively became a colony rather than a single town when the General Court appointed a constable for Southold and agreed to meet twice a year to deal specifically with the governance of that town and Stamford.10 New Haven continued to expand. In the spring of 1640 James Forrett, an agent of William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, had visited New Haven. The earl had previously lost considerable sums in efforts to establish a colony in North America, but he was undeterred and was hoping to develop Long Island. Davenport assisted the earl’s agent in purchasing from the natives lands that became Southampton. Following news of the earl’s death in that same year, Forrett mortgaged the land to George Fenwick, Theophilus Eaton, and others. In November 1640 Hugh Peter recorded that Abraham Pierson, another Yorkshire puritan who had been driven from his living, had been ordained by a company of settlers in Lynn, Massachusetts, who proceeded to emigrate to Southampton. Pierson favored the church and civil polity promoted by Davenport and sought to persuade his fellow settlers to join the New Haven colony. When, in 1644, the residents of Southampton chose to accept the jurisdiction of Connecticut instead, Pierson and some of his followers moved to Branford, a town recently established between New Haven and Guilford. At that point the colony of New Haven consisted of New Haven itself, along with Southold, Stamford, Guilford, Milford, and Branford. In April 1643 the New Haven General Court appointed Theophilus Eaton and Thomas Gregson to journey to Boston to participate in discussions about forming a union of the separate New England colonies.11 In May

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articles of confederation were agreed to and signed by the representatives of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven. Plymouth’s representatives agreed, but their signatures weren’t affixed till they were specifically authorized to do so by their colony authorities.12 One significance of this agreement was the recognition of New Haven by its sister colonies. Guilford formally joined the colony, as did Milford. In the latter case, the broader franchise delayed incorporation until an agreement was reached that while non–church members could vote in Milford, none would be allowed to hold office. On October 26, 1643, Theophilus Eaton was elected governor of the New Haven colony. A formal oath was prepared, and in July 1644 Eaton swore “by the great and dreadful name of the ever living God to promote the public good and peace” of the colony according to the best of his ability, and to “maintain all the lawful privileges of this commonwealth, according to the fundamental order and agreement made for government in this jurisdiction.” The oath was then administered to all the freemen.13 The Colony General Court would meet twice a year, with four deputies from New Haven and two from each of the other towns. The settlers of New Haven and towns that joined with it had come to the region believing that their success in creating a godly kingdom would be matched by economic prosperity. There were a number of things that led to such expectations, but those hopes proved false promises. The settlers had anticipated establishing a center for trade, shipping furs and food products abroad and serving as an entrepôt for an expanding agricultural hinterland. Quinnipiac harbor was sufficient for those purposes, but various factors limited the marketable commodities to be shipped abroad. The fur trade had been an important boon to New England colonies prior to this date. Plymouth’s survival in the 1620s had owed much to the trade. John Winthrop, William Pynchon, and other Massachusetts leaders had engaged in the trade in the 1630s, with Pynchon in particular having great success at Springfield on the Connecticut River. But the expectations of the Davenport group were soon dashed. While a small natural pond near the West River was called Beaver Pond, the supply of beaver pelts and animal furs in the area of Quinnipiac had been largely depleted through trade with the Dutch earlier in the century. Recent epidemics had decimated the local tribes, with adverse consequences for the trade. Most important, perhaps, was that the rivers that flowed into Quinnipiac Harbor did not penetrate deep enough into the interior of the region, where the supply of



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furs and pelts was more abundant. While Connecticut’s Central Valley terminated at Quinnipiac, the Connecticut River itself jogged to the southeast at present-day Middletown, finding its exit into the sound at Saybrook. From Springfield and Hartford south to Saybrook, towns on that river were better located to exploit the opportunities of the southern New England hinterland. The colonists also anticipated a vibrant agricultural future at Quinnipiac, planning to grow crops for export overseas. The first year’s harvest would be abundant and reinforce those hopes. But subsequent harvests did not live up to that promise, largely because the soil was not as rich as it first seemed. Moreover, the same geographical deficiencies that impeded fur trade with the interior prevented the development of an agricultural hinterland. Changes in the political situation in England also proved harmful to the colony’s bid for economic success. During the 1630s the established New England colonies prospered by selling newly arriving colonists food and livestock that they needed to begin their own lives in America. The outbreak of the first of England’s wars of religion in 1638, followed by the Puritan Revolution in the 1640s, changed the dynamics of puritan migration. Many potential emigrants reconsidered coming to New England. The possibility of a new day for religious reform in England may have been one of the reasons for the decision of the Saybrook patentees to remain at home, but they were not alone. Immigration largely dried up, plunging the entire New England economy into a sharp economic decline. From this perspective, the settlement of New Haven could not have come at a worse time. In an attempt to find a new avenue to profits from the fur trade, a group of New Haven’s leaders, including John Davenport, organized what became known as the Delaware Company in the spring of 1641.14 Two members of the company, George Lamberton and Stephen Goodyear, journeyed to the Delaware Bay to purchase land from the local natives. Those lands were claimed by both the colony of New Sweden and the Dutch New Netherlands Colony, which latter also laid claim to much of the New Haven Colony itself. The Dutch repeatedly complained about the illegal settlement of western New England, but it was, as one Dutch official wrote, like “knocking at a deaf man’s door, as they did not regard these protests or even take any notice of them.”15 If the English were allowed to locate on the Delaware, or what the Dutch called the South River, the official recognized that “once settled there, we should lose the river or hold it with much difficulty, as they would swarm there in great numbers.”16

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Ignoring the claims of the Dutch, in the fall of 1641 the New Haven General Court listened to the report brought by Lamberton and Turner and officially sponsored the activities of the Delaware Company. In the following spring the New Netherlands authorities seized Lamberton’s vessel and incarcerated the Englishmen in New Amsterdam until they paid a fine and were allowed to return to New Haven. Despite this setback, the English purchased additional lands and built a fortified trading post on the Schuykill River near the Dutch Fort Nassau. Another trading post was established on the other side of the Delaware Bay, at Varkenskill in New Sweden. In May 1642 the Dutch authorities captured the Delaware Company outpost and burned the storehouses, though allowing the Englishmen to return to New Haven. Less than a year later Johann Printz, the commander of New Sweden, ordered the twenty families who had set up the Varkenskill trading post to swear allegiance to Sweden or depart. When they did neither, Lamberton was arrested and charged with inciting the local natives against the Swedes. In July 1643 he was fined and released. This brought New Haven’s Delaware adventure to a temporary halt.17 With the Delaware Company’s efforts effectively blocked, in 1645 a new effort to jump-start the New Haven economy was launched. Until that time most of the colony’s trade with England was carried through Boston, as few large vessels journeyed to New Haven. A group of colonists including Joshua Atwater organized a consortium that became known as the Ship Fellowship and purchased a large vessel of 150 tons capacity that would become known as the Great Ship. Eaton, Gregson, and others acting as the Company of Merchants of New Haven then chartered the vessel for a transatlantic voyage that would hopefully initiate direct trade with the mother country. Lamberton was appointed captain, and Gregson was named the merchants’ agent to sell the cargo. The vessel was refitted. The cargo was loaded in January 1646 and included lumber, hides, furs, and other commodities. Davenport sent some of his sermons and other writings to be printed in England, and Thomas Hooker sent some of his manuscripts. Gregson was additionally charged with seeking from Parliament a charter that would provide the colony with clear written documentation of their right to own and govern their jurisdiction.18 The time for this seemed propitious, with many of the colony’s friends, such as the Earl of Warwick and Lord Saye and Sele, prominent figures in Parliament. The decision to make a winter voyage speaks to the desperate needs of the colony to generate income. The harbor was frozen and a three-mile channel had to be cut



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through the ice for the ship to reach Long Island Sound and set off to the east. The view of her departure was the last that anyone saw of the Great Ship, other than an apparition many claimed to see in the summer of 1647. It was lost at sea, and the last good hopes for prosperity went down with it. Over the following years the colony was able to scrape by. Cultivation of grain and pastoral agriculture provided sufficient goods for trade with Virginia, Barbados, the Canary Islands, and other Atlantic outposts. But scraping by was not what Davenport and Eaton had had in mind when they planted their New Jerusalem. While New Haven would never achieve the economic success that its leaders had counted on, in other ways Davenport and Eaton were satisfied with their accomplishments. One of their more notable successes was in the administration of justice. The settlers having agreed in their plantation covenant that the law of God as discovered in Scripture was to be the basis for colony legal practice, Davenport’s influence on the shaping of the judicial system and its operation would have been considerable if not official. The decision to look to Scripture for legal guidance was reaffirmed in April 1644, when the colony General Court ordered that “the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law,” aside from the Jewish ceremonial law, “shall be accounted of moral equity and generally bind all offenders, and be a rule to all the courts in this jurisdiction in their proceeding against offenders.”19 Of course, England’s common and statute laws were shaped by centuries-old Christian traditions. There were few New Haven laws that stood out as significantly different from those that the colonists would have known in the mother country, though in publications of the law scriptural glosses showed the precise biblical passages that underlay the statutes.20 To codify their previous applications of scriptural laws, in 1654, the General Court requested that Governor Eaton make a digest of the laws as applied in the colony. They also asked him to send a copy to the Massachusetts magistrates for review and to examine a recent English publication purported to have been prepared by John Cotton. When completed and approved, five hundred copies of the code were published so that it could be distributed to the residents of the colony.21 In civil cases litigants appeared before the magistrates themselves or were allowed to have a representative make their case. The goal of the magistrates in such cases was to reconcile the parties, so that the normal procedure was to appoint arbitrators acceptable to both sides and to supervise and

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approve the resolution they reached.22 Such cases rarely moved beyond the town level. The foundation of the criminal justice system was the expectation that godly men would be chosen to serve as magistrates and that they would execute justice according to God’s rules. There were a number of distinctive features of the New Haven system of justice. One was the absence of trial by jury, which may have been a reflection of the lack of any reference to jury trial in the Bible. Offenders were brought before two or more magistrates for a private preliminary examination, an inquisitorial procedure that was designed to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused. If the magistrates concluded that the individual was innocent, or if they determined that there was not sufficient proof of guilt, the charges were dropped. If they believed that there was substantial evidence of guilt they bound the individual over for a public trial. In virtually all cases (190 of 201 for which records survive) the accused was free to resume normal activities while awaiting trial.23 Public trials of civil matters and of lesser criminal offenses were held during the regularly scheduled meetings of the individual town’s monthly court. The bench for these courts consisted of the town magistrates (nominated by the town but appointed by the colony’s General Court) and the elected town deputies.24 More serious criminal cases were heard before the colony’s General Court, which normally met twice a year but would hold an extraordinary meeting to provide speedy justice if the wait for a regular court session would be more than a month. As was the case throughout the colonies and in England’s quarter sessions and assize courts, the legal system was centered on the efforts of the judge to ask questions of the defendant and the witnesses in an effort to elicit the truth. There was no prosecutor nor defense attorney such as we are familiar with. Defendants could dispute the testimony of witnesses but did not have the right to cross-examine them. One of the features of judicial proceedings in New England that was explicitly drawn from Scripture was the requirement that there be two witnesses to a crime for a defendant to be convicted. The nature of some crimes made this evidentiary standard virtually impossible to meet, thus leading some colonists to question its use. The Massachusetts authorities raised this issue with the elders of New England’s churches, including John Davenport, in 1641. The judgment they rendered was that in cases where a crime was incontrovertible, such as when an unmarried woman became pregnant, that “one clear witness with concurrent and concluding circumstances” would be deemed adequate. Following this interpretation, New Haven courts would



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accept as clear evidence testimony from those who had actually seen the crime, who had direct knowledge of physical evidence that pointed to the offense, or who had heard the defendant confess. Another distinctive feature of justice in New Haven was the unwillingness of the magistrates to ask witnesses to testify under oath, a decision no doubt largely stemming from the puritan abhorrence of the ex officio oaths that the ecclesiastical Court of High Commission had required of accused nonconformists. But puritans were generally uneasy with oaths. Roger Williams’s extreme argument that magistrates should never administer oaths to unregenerate men was one of the issues that led to his being banished from Massachusetts, but Williams had been probing a sensitive issue. No magistrate wished to be responsible for an individual swearing falsely, an action that might have severe consequences not only for the soul of the offender, but for the justice responsible. If a defendant challenged the testimony of a witness and requested that it be repeated under oath, the magistrates would consent only if they were confident that the testimony was indeed truthful. But such requests were extremely rare. Despite, or perhaps because of these peculiarities, the New Haven legal system was remarkably successful in achieving the goals of the founders. During the history of the colony as an independent entity there were no murders and few crimes of violence. Theft was rare after the first few years of settlement.25 Those brought to trial for crimes—drunks, sexual offenders, and the disorderly for the most part—received swift justice, the process from accusation to trial generally taking less than a month. Because the magistrates rigorously sought to establish the truth of the offense before bringing it to public trial, the conviction rate was more than 90 percent. A search of the records reveals that 85 percent of those who were brought to trial confessed, which raises two issues.26 While confessions may have been elicited by strong verbal interrogation, torture was not part of the criminal justice system in New Haven, or in other New England colonies. (It should be noted that in many European countries where the two-witness rule was in force, torture was used to gain confessions and thus convictions.) The rejection of torture was primarily based on English cultural opposition to the practice, but it also reflected the fear that employing torture might make magistrates culpable of eliciting false statements.27 Why, though, go through the procedures of a public trial if the accused had already confessed? The reason is based on the puritan belief in the importance of trials as a form of public education. Tightly knit puritan

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communities used the punishment of crimes to reinforce their values. Trials demonstrated the community’s commitment to the law. Confession, conviction, and punishment shamed the guilty before their peers. This was particularly true when punishment was public exposure in stocks or pillory, public whipping, or forcing the guilty to wear a badge of dishonor. Executions, which were rare, offered an occasion for a sermon at the gallows to warn the community about following in the same path as the offender.28 The lesson was often reinforced by a statement of repentance by the guilty party. The court’s interest in stimulating good behavior is illustrated when, after Richard Lambert, who had been guilty of “sundry miscarriages,” acknowledged his guilt in court. The magistrates accepted his gesture but warned him to “be careful to make his peace with God and seek to get to that bitter root whence such evil fruits did spring,” so that his repentance might be evident in his future behavior.29 By engaging in such processes, the magistrates also demonstrated to man and to God that they were properly performing the tasks they had been called to. An examination of some of the cases brought before the New Haven courts demonstrates the way the system worked and gives a flavor of life in early New Haven. The operation of the judicial system began almost immediately following the first elections. On October 26, 1639, two natives entered the town for the purpose of conducting trade with the settlers. One of them was recognized as a brave who had been involved in the killing of some Englishmen during the recently concluded Pequot War. The newly elected town marshal, Robert Seeley, hurriedly obtained a warrant and arrested the man, whose name was Nepaupuck. Two days later Nepaupuck was brought before Theophilus Eaton for an investigation of the charges. Momauguin and several other Quinnipiac Indians were asked to give testimony, and they affirmed that the accused had murdered several English; cut off their hands; and presented them to Sassacus, the Pequot sachem. The accused didn’t deny that a native named Nepaupuck had committed the crimes, but he denied that he was that Indian until other witnesses confirmed his identity. He then “boasted he was a great captain, had murdered Abraham Finch and had his hands in other English blood.” The confession was sufficient for a trial before the General Court, which was held the following day. The court ruled that “he that sheds a man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” The following day Nepaupuck was executed by beheading, and his head stuck on a pole in the marketplace.30 The trial was notable for the assumption that the courts were entitled to try anyone in their jurisdiction and not merely En-



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glishmen, but also for a willingness to accept native testimony and to offer to natives the same procedural safeguards as available to Englishmen. During the early years of the colony few other cases were as significant or as dramatic. Many of them dealt with servant misbehavior. Thus, in February 1640 the court fined “Captain Turner’s man” £5 for “being drunk on the Lord’s day,” and “William Bromfield, Mr. Malbon’s man, . . . in the stocks for profaning the Lord’s day,” and it sentenced to whipping “Elice, Mr. Eaton’s boy, . . . for stealing a sow and a goat from his master and selling them.”31 But servants were also protected by the law. William Wilkes was found guilty of “undue correcting” of his servant John Davis, “striking him upon the head with a hammer, he being on top of a ladder,” and Davis had his length of servitude reduced.32 When a servant charged that he was being kept beyond his agreed time of service, the court allowed the master to find witnesses to defend his practice but to pay the servant for any time beyond his agreed service if no such witnesses could be found.33 Puritans had no prohibitions regarding drinking alcoholic beverages; indeed, like most Englishmen in an age when water was contaminated by waste and milk was not pasteurized, most of what they drank was alcoholic—beers, ales, ciders, and occasionally wine. But drunkenness was a sin and a problem in early New Haven. Thomas Franckland was punished for “drinking strong liquors to excess and entertaining disorderly persons into his cellar to drinking meetings.”34 In 1644 nine men were fined for a “drunken disorderly meeting at the prison” after sundown on the Sabbath.35 In the colony’s history offenses involving the abuse of alcohol averaged about twenty per decade.36 Incidents of theft were similar to those of drunkenness. Typically, those prosecuted for theft were young, male, unmarried, and servants.37 In 1639, for example, two servants were whipped for taking money from their master’s chest on the Sabbath.38 Other crimes brought to the attention of the courts included neglecting to properly perform one’s duties as a member of the town watch, violating court orders designed to regulate wages and prices, and failing to keep fences mended or chimneys in repair.39 Because merchants had to import many of the goods they sold and protect themselves against the loss of cargoes that never made it to the New World, they charged prices that were considerably higher than colonists were used to in England. Setting the balance between the legitimate profit interests of the merchant and the needs of the colonists for the goods being offered was difficult. The most famous New England dispute over these conflicting needs involved Boston’s Robert Keayne. But

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New Haven had a similar case involving assertions that a widow, Mrs. Stolion, had overcharged her customers.40 Sexual offenses regularly made their way to the courts’ attention. While some within puritan culture (including Michael Wigglesworth) clearly held to traditional positions, clergy could be heard reminding their parishioners of the “duty to desire.” Intercourse between husband and wife was viewed by these men and women as the proper use of the sexual drives God gave them and as something to celebrate and rejoice in. Any other form of sexual activity was viewed as an abuse. Puritans condemned fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and other sexual indulgences outside of marriage and punished them severely, their harshness being the other side of the value they placed on marital sex. These are the matters that concerned the New Haven courts. Compared to other legal systems of the time, what is striking in the adjudication of sexual offenses such as fornication, adultery, and rape is the credence the magistrates gave to women’s testimony. Citing Deuteronomy 22, Eaton believed that a young woman would not be likely to make such charges if they were not true. Scholars who have investigated the court proceedings have found New Haven’s “courtroom more hospitable to women than they were in the king’s courts in England.”41 Fornication was a sin that the magistrates asserted did “shut [the sinners] out of the kingdom of heaven without [their] repentance, and a sin which opens them to shame and punishment in this court.” The first couple tried for the offense appeared before the court in 1642. They were whipped and given permission to marry, which was an outcome the court encouraged.42 In many cases, it was the obvious pregnancy of a newly married bride that suggested fornication. More than two-fifths of those prosecuted were married at the time they appeared in court.43 It was considered appropriate for the guilty to be severely beaten, but on many occasions the court merely fined the individuals and put them on public display to be shamed.44 Yet when the circumstances called for it, whipping was imposed. That was the fate of Sarah Doolittle, a servant who confessed to having sex three times in her master’s house with Joseph Preston—twice in the wood yard and then in “the chamber, upon her bed, when all in the house were in bed.”45 Some cases of fornication suggested rape. One such case involved a man who first “made [his victim] drunk with strong water”; during the trial, both were caught in lies, and a sentence of whipping was imposed.46 In another case, a man forcibly pulled his victim “upon his knee, put his hand under her



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coats, toward her naked belly, pulled out his member, and bid her take it in her hands.”47 Ellis Mew was accused of attempted rape in 1653. James Clarke complained that one day Mew had come “into the room where his daughter . . . was, and offered to abuse her in a filthy way, throwing her down on the bed, kissing her, pulled down his breeches, and would have forced her, but she cried out and he left.”48 William Plain was a servant in Guilford who had arrived in the colony in 1639. He was accused of having “corrupted a great part of the youth of Guilford by masturbation, which he had committed & provoked others to the like about a 100 times.” Investigation revealed that prior to coming to the colony, he had “committed sodomy with two persons in England.” The magistrates and clergy who were present at the initial hearing—Davenport was likely there with Guilford’s Henry Whitefield—also discovered that in justifying his behavior, he “did insinuate seeds of atheism, questioning whether there was a God.” This, together with the fact that his sexual crimes “tended to the frustrating of the ordinance of marriage and the hindering of the generation of mankind,” led the magistrates to believe that a death sentence was justified. After consultation with the leaders of Massachusetts, Plain was executed at New Haven.49 There were a few trials for homosexual acts. In 1652 three young men were charged with having whipped one another, “handled one another’s members,” and engaging in some unspecified homosexual acts. They were convicted and whipped.50 The most notorious cases of sexual abuse involved bestiality. In some predominantly rural societies in early modern times this was not uncommon, so we should not be surprised at examples of bestiality prosecuted in early New Haven. In 1641 a sow that John Wakeman had recently purchased from another colonist gave birth to a litter of piglets, one of which was described as a “prodigious monster.” Stillborn, the pig was hairless, with skin “a reddish white color like a child’s.” It had but one eye, and above the eye “a thing of flesh grew forth and hung down, . . . hollow, and like a man’s instrument of generation.” At this time there were no natural explanations for such “monstrous births”—whether human or animal; they were seen as divine signs. In the case of Mr. Wakeman’s sow, speculation soon arose that George Spencer, a man “notorious in the plantation for a profane, lying, scoffing, and lewd spirit,” had engaged in “unnatural and abominable filthiness with the sow.” The fact that he had only one good eye and a glass eye that seemed to resemble the single eye in the pig appears to have led some of the townspeople to suspect him of the crime.51

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Imprisoned on suspicion of bestiality, Spencer confessed, recanted, but then admitted his guilt. Visited by Davenport and Governor Eaton, he told them that he had been tempted to force himself on the sow for a few days before committing the act. He didn’t pray for help in resisting the temptation because he didn’t believe that God would help him. He confessed that he had not prayed since coming to New Haven four or five years before, and he had attended services and read the Scripture only when forced to by his master. Brought to court for his trial, Spencer retracted his confession, but numerous witnesses came forth to attest to his having confessed the crime to them and discussed the details. Referring to the “fundamental agreement made and published by full and general consent when the plantation began . . . that the judicial law of God given by Moses and expounded in other parts of the Scripture . . . should be the rule of their proceedings,” the court sentenced him to be executed, citing Leviticus 20:15—“And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death; and ye shall slay the beast.” The sentence was deferred, however, while the magistrates consulted with the Massachusetts authorities, who concurred, having themselves previously executed William Hatchet for bestiality with a cow.52 A similar case came before the court in 1646. Another servant, Thomas Hogg, was brought before the magistrates for a preliminary examination when a sow of Mrs. Lamberton’s gave birth to two monsters, one with fair and whitish skin and a childlike head with only one eye. Like Spencer before him, Hogg had a disreputable background, which led to his falling under suspicion. There were various “loathsome passages concerning him,” most involving tales of his walking around with his penis hanging out of his trousers, and suspicions that in doing so, he was trying to corrupt others. Challenged with having engaged in sex with Mrs. Lamberton’s sow, “he fetched a deep sigh, fell in his countenance, but denied it.” The examination proceeded to focus on his public lewdness while the magistrates sought further evidence of bestiality. Eaton and the deputy governor brought him to Lamberton’s farm and “bid him scratch the sow that had the monsters.” “Immediately there appeared a working of lust in the sow, inasmuch as she poured out seed before them,” while when Hogg was asked to scratch another sow, that one “was not moved at all.” Hogg acknowledged that the hand of God seemed to be pointing at his guilt, but he steadfastly maintained his innocence. During his trial there was insufficient testimony regarding the charge of bestiality, but substantial witness testimony to his lewdness, lying, and pilfering. The court sentenced him to be whipped for those offenses and, while in prison,



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to “be kept with a mean diet and hard labor, that his lusts may not be fed.”53 But he was never convicted of bestiality. Spencer and Hogg had been servants. The case of William Potter must have been far more troubling. Potter had started his life in New Haven as a servant but had become a landowner and member of the church. His son first accused him of “the sin of bestiality with sundry creatures,” having caught him in the act. When examined by the magistrates, he denied the offense. Questioned by Davenport and the congregation, Potter “did confess and judge himself worthy to be cut off from among men and to be given over to be among devils.” Back in court, he told the magistrates that the first time he sexually abused animals was as an apprentice in England when he was about eleven years old. “When he came to New England these temptations followed him,” though for periods he was able to resist them. He “acted with a cow” which had since died. When George Spencer was hung for bestiality “he was much startled,” and desisted for a time, but then “acted . . . with a bitch, which he hanged, thinking he should be free from the temptation when she was gone,” but that proved not to be the case. He subsequently “acted this wickedness” with, among others, two sows, two heifers, an adult cow, three sheep, and an old mare. The court questioned him to discern what had led him down this path and urged him to acknowledge and repent his actions. The law was clear, and he was sentenced to “be hanged on the gallows till he be dead, and then cut down and buried, and the creatures with whom he had thus sinfully acted to be put to death before his eyes.” While sexual offenses catch our attention, they were not common. There were only six prosecutions for fornication in the first decade of the settlement, and only seven in the following decade.54 No adultery cases were brought to court. There were three bestiality trials, and two convictions. Looking at the entire range of criminal cases, it is striking how few crimes marred the record of John Davenport’s godly kingdom.

Ch a pt e r 1 5

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D

uring the early decades of New Haven’s history the colony earned a reputation among other puritans for being a model society. But as Davenport well understood, the best efforts of men to reform society would remain imperfect. During the 1640s two major disruptions in the church shook the colony’s foundations. The first of these occurred in the household of Governor Theophilus Eaton. Eaton was the head of a blended family. His wife, Anne Eaton, was the daughter of George Lloyd (bishop of Chester from 1604 until his death in 1615) and widow of Thomas Yale. Anne was well educated and prosperous in her own right. Accompanying her to New England in 1637 were her son David Yale, her daughter Anne Yale Hopkins, and her son Thomas Yale. Mary and Samuel Eaton—the governor’s sons from his first marriage—were also part of the household. There was another Mrs. Eaton in the household, Theophilus’s aged mother, Elizabeth. Completing the family unit were Theophilus and Anne’s two children, Theophilus and Hannah. The household also contained a number of servants, who in the early 1640s included Elizabeth Browning; Mary Breck; Mary Launce; “Sister Maudline”; Ann Smart; John Massom; “Brother Brad­ ley”; “Brother Lupton”; and two black servants, one of whom was named Anthony. Despite the relative elegance of the Eatons’ home, the comforts available were far less than Anne had been raised with and had enjoyed in their London residence. In all, up to thirty individuals resided in the governor’s home. Managing such a large household would have been difficult under any circumstances. For Anne Eaton the situation would have been made more difficult because of the presence of her mother-in-law, who had been accustomed to running Theophilus’s household between the death of his first 220



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wife and his marriage to Anne. Anne’s relationship with her stepdaughter Mary, about thirty at the time and unmarried, was likewise difficult. Theophilus, focused on his public responsibilities, was disinclined to interfere in household affairs, even when asked by Anne to support her actions. The financial losses suffered as a result of her husband’s investments in the Delaware Company and the Great Ship would have placed greater challenges upon her. Faced with these difficulties, Anne would have welcomed the support of her married daughter, Ann Yale Hopkins, but she had moved on to Hartford with her husband Edward Hopkins soon after the families arrived in the New World. In the early 1640s Ann Hopkins began to lose her sanity. In April 1645 Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop reported that Edward Hopkins, then governor of Connecticut, had brought his wife to Boston in hope of finding a treatment for her. Ann, referred to by Winthrop as “a godly young woman, and of special parts,” had “fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her for divers years.”1 Concern about her daughter would have added to the burdens borne by Anne Eaton. At some point, possibly even before she settled in New Haven, Anne Eaton had begun to question the legitimacy of infant baptism, doubts that may have been encouraged by contact in London with Lady Deborah Moody.2 Moody was the daughter and wife of members of Parliament and had moved to London following the death of her husband in 1629. Her immersion in the puritan spiritual life of the city led her to reject the practice of infant baptism.3 Moody emigrated to New England, probably in 1639, and in May 1640 was admitted to Hugh Peter’s Salem congregation. Recognized by Winthrop as “a wise and anciently religious woman,” she soon found herself in trouble when she questioned the congregation’s baptism of infants. After various clergy failed to dissuade her from her views, she left Massachusetts in 1643 “to avoid further trouble” and settled on the Dutch portion of Long Island, becoming the founder of Gravesend.4 Moody visited Anne Eaton and other friends in New Haven on her way to Long Island. The two women discussed the issue of baptism, and Anne “importuned her [Lady Moody] to lend her a book made by A.R.”5 The book in question was Andrew Ritor’s A Treatise of the Vanity of ChildishBaptism (1642), which Anne proceeded to “read secretly, and as secretly engaged her spirit in that way.” She didn’t discuss the ideas with her husband, her pastor, or any of the church elders, although she did share the book with

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some other women whom she thought might be sympathetic. Suddenly, on one Sabbath late in 1643 or early in 1644, as the congregation was preparing for the Lord’s Supper, Anne got up from her favored position on the front bench of the meetinghouse and walked down the aisle and out of the service. That afternoon, she left after the sermon was concluded and as the congregation prepared for an infant’s baptism. Over the following weeks she would occasionally absent herself from public worship in general.6 At one of the congregation’s regular Tuesday discussion meetings, “some of the brethren desired that Mrs. Eaton would declare her reasons.” She explained that she rejected the normative puritan view that infant baptism was justified as the Christian equivalent of circumcision. Davenport asked her “whether if that point were cleared she would be satisfied,” and she appeared to assent. He borrowed Ritor’s book from her and on the following Tuesday “began to speak to the first part of it in the meeting of the church.” On the next Sabbath he began to preach a series of sermons “out of Colossians 2:11–12 . . . to prove that baptism is come in the place of circumcision and is to be administered unto infants.” Many seemed to benefit from his explanation, but not Mrs. Eaton. Perceiving that there might be a personal reason why Anne would not listen to him, Davenport then gave Theophilus a written copy of the arguments he had offered at the Tuesday meeting as well as a copy of his sermons, asking his friend to join with elder Gregson and the congregation’s other minister, William Hooke (“to whom probably she would give ear sooner than to others”), in trying to persuade her of her error. Gregson would read from Ritor’s work, after which Hooke would read Davenport’s objections to the particular point and answer any questions she might have. “She neither would object, nor yield to the truth, but behaved herself with such contemptuous carriage that they were discouraged,” but at Davenport’s insistence, they persevered. Davenport “marveled at the hand of God herein, which to me seemed dreadful, fearing that, as before she would not seek light, so now God would not give her a heart to receive light.”7 While the efforts to win Anne Eaton back to orthodoxy slowly proceeded, new concerns arose about her treatment of members of her household. The records show that Davenport was clearly reluctant to give credence to the rumors that had begun to circulate, presumably because he would not have welcomed having to inquire into the household affairs of his friend. But faced with public questions as to why the church leaders were dragging their feet, Davenport, Hooke, and Gregson visited the Eaton household. What they found was worse than what they expected, and Davenport con-



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cluded that they would have to defer “treating with her any further about the error of her judgment, till we might help forward by the will of God her repentance for these evils in life.” They initially sought to admonish and deal with her privately, but after repeated efforts, having failed because of her “hardness of heart and impenitency,” the elders informed her that the matter would have to be brought before the congregation.8 In what was one of the most extraordinary events in the history of New England, on the Lord’s day, July 14, 1644, following the collection, John Davenport brought the misconduct of the wife of the colony’s governor to the attention of the New Haven church. The first charge was that “Mrs. [Anne] Eaton, sitting at dinner with Mr. Eaton and old Mrs. Eaton, Mrs. Eaton struck old Mrs. Eaton twice on the face with the back of her hand, which [old] Mrs. Eaton said she felt three days after.” On that occasion, Theophilus grasped his wife’s hands as she cried out, “I am afflicted! I am afflicted.” One of those who was there thought that the Davenports must have heard her across the street. On another occasion, Anne quarreled with her stepdaughter Mary, “grew outrageous, struck her, pinched her, . . . and knocked her head against the dresser, which made her nose bleed.” On a separate occasion she falsely accused Mary of being pregnant, “saying her carriage was wanton.” She also “charged Mary to be the cause of the ruin of the souls of many that came into the house.” Anne was also charged with accusing Mary of spilling some milk that Anne had actually dropped, and with claiming that her stepdaughter “wrought with the devil.” When a keg tap wasn’t where Anne expected it, she attacked the servant girl Mary Launce when she fetched it. Pinching her servant’s face, she then “struck her with the tap in the eye and made it swell, and made it black,” and then grabbed her arms and pulled her by the nose. Other charges involved disputes and lies regarding the allocation of household servants between Anne and her mother-in-law. Anne was further accused of having claimed that the Eaton’s black slave Anthony had bewitched the family beer. She “often charged” another servant, Mary Breck with “lying and theft,” having “worked with the devil in the house,” and “whored too.” She told all the maids that “God would send their souls to hell,” and called them all “wicked wretches.” During one of John Davenport’s sermons against Anabaptism, “Mrs. Eaton said as she sat in her seat, ‘it is not so,’ and when Mr. Davenport said he would be brief, [she said] ‘I would you would,’ or ‘I pray be so.’” When Davenport, Hooke, and Gregson were meeting with her and Theophilus in the Eaton home, she quarreled with her husband before them and accused him of lying.

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One morning, when she was dissatisfied with one of the male servants for not bringing water promptly into the house, she demanded that Theophilus reprimand the servant. Theophilus, “not seeing cause for it, did not reproach the man,” at which point Anne yelled at her husband, told him to get out of the house along with the servant, and bragged that she could pay for her own bread and keep.9 Each of the charges was supported by the testimony of two or more witnesses, and each was specifically referenced to the commandment she had broken. Davenport indicated that there were numerous other charges that were not brought before the church because of the lack of a second witness! When asked to respond to the charges, “she sat down and said nothing.” The church proceeded to discuss whether her actions merited excommunication. Davenport suggested that, serious though they were, the offenses did not merit that sentence, and he suggested that a formal admonition might be sufficient. With a show of hands the congregation agreed to this, and Davenport read out the sentence: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and with the consent of this Church, I do charge thee, Mrs. Eaton, to attend unto the several rules you have broken, and to judge yourself by them, and to hold forth your repentance according to God, as you will answer it at the great day of Jesus Christ.”10 Everyone expected that this would bring Anne to her senses, but they were surprised and disappointed to find that “she did continue offensive in her way” to her family and servants. When approached by the elders, she often quibbled. The church had identified her physical attack on the old Mrs. Eaton as a breach of the Fifth Commandment, but she told the elders that “she was not convinced” because “she did not acknowledge her husband’s mother to be her mother.” Finally, on May 20, 1645, following the Sabbath services, she was called to appear before the church with her response. When the discussion went late, it was decided to postpone the conclusion till after the Thursday lecture. She refused to repent, and the church then proceeded to discuss whether she should be excommunicated for the original charges and also for lies that she had been caught in during discussions of her admonition. Given the seriousness of the case, Davenport had invited representatives of other churches in the region to attend and advise. The congregation and the visiting clergy, “with much grief of heart, and many tears,” proceeded to excommunicate her. One of the visitors was heard to remark that “if this case had been in the churches up the river [Connecticut], it would not have been delayed so long.”11



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Excommunication was a church censure intended to jolt the offender and bring about repentance. It did not carry with it the need to leave the community. In this case, Anne Eaton never bent to the will of the congregation and remained in the town and colony. Reports were that she ceased to share a bedroom with Theophilus and denied him “conjugal fellowship.”12 Because she was no longer a member of the church in good standing, she had no stage on which to show her opposition to the congregation’s baptism of infants. She seems not to have continued efforts to persuade others of that position, and in return formal efforts to persuade her that she was in error appear to have ceased. This was in keeping with New England practice, which allowed the private holding of errors and challenged and punished only public demonstrations of heresy. Historians who have discussed the trial of Anne Eaton have generally used the event to criticize puritans for their attitudes toward women or their religious intolerance. Neither judgment seems appropriate. The fact that differences over doctrine were put aside to deal with more serious interpersonal violence is notable. And while some of the charges against the governor’s wife could be considered within the range of master-servant disputes, her physical assaults on members of the household merited punishment in any society. If anything is surprising, it is that criminal charges against her do not seem to have been considered. The many attempts to wean her away from her bad behavior bespeak anything but rigidity and intolerance.13 Within a year of the trial’s conclusion three other women in the town were brought before the General Court for publicly disparaging the leaders of the church. On June 2, 1646 Lucy Brewster, Miriam Leach, and Mrs. Moore were charged with “several miscarriages of a public nature” that involved slanders against John Davenport.14 Lucy Brewster was the wife of Francis Brewster, one of the wealthier men in the colony who had sailed on the Great Ship. She was a close friend of Anne Eaton. Miriam Leach was the wife of a prosperous trader, Edmund Leach, whose business often took him to Boston and the West Indies. In 1644 she had lost a child, which she blamed on a negligent servant. Mrs. Moore was the widowed mother of Mrs. Leach. Her daughter spent considerable time with her when her husband was away. All three had reasons to be disillusioned with how their lives in New Haven had failed to live up to the vision of a new heaven that had been painted by Davenport. The court heard a series of charges that had been investigated by the magistrates. Most of them were substantiated by the testimony of two of

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Mrs. Leach’s servants, Elizabeth Smith and Job Hall. In a conversation between the three women and Anne Eaton, Mrs. Brewster commented on a prayer which Davenport had recently offered up, along the lines of “Lord, add to the church such as shall be saved, and build up to perfection those whom thou hath added.” Mrs. Brewster criticized the prayer, indicating that the pastor seemed to be saying that one could not be saved without coming to the church. She also was disturbed by something she claimed Davenport had preached in a sermon on Ephesians 4:12, which she understood to mean that “if a man lived where he might join to the church and did not, it would prove a delusion to him.” Her understanding of this was probably correct, as Davenport had consistently, going back to his Hilton Castle days, argued that men were required to take advantage of the means of grace God made available to them. In Mrs. Brewster’s case, she said that “when she heard it her stomach wombled [sic] as when she bred a child,” and that she was “sermon sick” and when she returned home, she gave her sermon notes to her son with instructions to make wastepaper of them.15 On what might have been another occasion, Mrs. Moore asked Anne Eaton why she had not confessed her sins as the congregation had required. Eaton responded that she had, but not to the satisfaction of the church. Mrs. Brewster comforted Anne that the colony leaders “could not banish her but by a General Court, and if it came to that she wished Mrs. Eaton to come to her and acquaint her with her judgment and grounds about baptizing, and she would then by them seduce some other woman, and then she, the said Mrs. Brewster, would complain to the court of Mrs. Eaton, and the other woman would complain of her as being thus seduced, and so they would be banished together, and she spoke of going to Rhode Island.” Brewster was clearly dissatisfied with the church and its proceedings, and she complained that going to the front of the church to present one’s financial offerings was an experience that “was as going to mass, or going up to the high altar.” Yet when Mrs. Moore questioned the validity of that method of making offerings, Mrs. Eaton defended it. On another occasion the women discussed the actions that had been taken against Thomas Fugill. Fugill was originally a member of the Rogers congregation who had remained in New Haven and had been chosen as one of the pillars of the church. He had later been chosen the colony notary, responsible for keeping official records. In March 1645 he was brought before the General Court on charges of having altered the records of the second land division to engross more property for himself. It was found that he had



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actually kept two record books, which made his guilt evident, though he denied it—even offering to swear to his innocence. He was condemned by the court, which stripped him of his office. Mrs. Brewster saw the charges against Fugill as but one instance of the practice whereby the colony leaders “go, two and two together, and write down what scandalous persons say, and so hurry . . . and compare their writings, and if they find any contradictions they are charged with lies.” When William Fancy and his wife were whipped for “unnatural filthiness” at the order of the court, Mrs. Brewster said that “they were cruelly whipped and that her son said he had rather fall into the hands of the Turks and had rather be hanged than fall into their hands,” referring to the colony authorities. Brewster was also critical of the way the church had dealt with other individuals. Learning that two servants had laid complaints against her, Mrs. Brewster had accused Job Hall of telling lies and threatened that she “would have him and his slut, you and your harlot to the whipping post.” Coupled with all of these charges, which essentially amounted to slander against the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the court also listened to charges that Mrs. Brewster had violated ordinances regulating the sale of alcohol, selling “wine both out of doors by forbidden small parcels, and had suffered workmen and others to sit drinking wine by pints and quarts within her house.” As the court proceeded to listen to testimony under oath (which the accused had demanded) and solicited other testimony, new details emerged. The views of Mrs. Moore, whom Lucy Brewster had referred to as a “woman of wisdom,” were further explored. She was accused of having said, in leading prayers with her daughter’s family, “Lord, thou hast brought us indeed to a wilderness, the wilderness of Sinai where they are in bondage with Hagar and her children, but let never a soul of us [the Leach and Moore families], have any fellowship with them.” She further said that the apostles and evangelists whom Christ had directly charged with spreading his word were “gone through the world and now ascended to heaven,” and that in their own times “pastors and teachers are but the invention of men.” In a meeting with Mrs. Brewster she said “a veil is before the eyes of ministers and people in this place, and till that be taken away they cannot be turned to the Lord.” For her part, Mrs. Leach acknowledged that she had once thought to join the church but had changed her mind “because she found so many untruths among them,” and she claimed that the presence of hypocrites in the church invalidated it as a true church.

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During the trial of the three women Governor Eaton sought to engage Mrs. Moore in discussion of her views but failed to shake her. Explaining her offense, he told her “that had she kept her error to herself, herself only had been hurt. But it is not to be suffered that she should blaspheme and revile the holy ordinances of Christ and the Church and people of God . . . [and] by spreading her errors corrupt others and disturb the peace of the place.” This, of course, was the critical point that determined whether religious views were tolerated or not—private opinion was neither investigated nor punished, but public attacks on the church or its teachings were not acceptable. The town court referred the case against the three women to the colony court, which censured them. Mrs. Brewster was also fined, presumably for violating the ordinances for sale of alcohol.16 Complaints about the role of the church that occasionally came from those who were on the margins of the society were easily handled. More serious were the complaints that came from within the church. Following on the cases of Anne Eaton and Mrs. Brewster was yet another such case, involving Ezekiel Cheever, who had been one of the pillars of the church and was the town schoolmaster. In 1649 Cheever was brought to trial before the congregation. The record of the proceedings is found in a contemporary manuscript that may have been written by Cheever himself.17 Cheever first expressed his dissatisfaction with the governance of the church following the censure early in May 1649 of William Thorpe. Cheever believed that in presenting the offenses with which Thorpe was charged, the elders had shown partiality and had usurped the authority of the congregation’s members. Challenged to explain himself, Cheever acknowledged that he had charged the elders unjustly, but when the congregation voted to affirm the correctness of the actions taken by the elders, Cheever was one of three abstaining, indicating that he wished to answer in his own words. He then stated that he “apprehended the elders had walked faithfully according to their light,” but he refused to clear them of partiality. This troubled some individuals, who presented a bill of complaints about Cheever that they submitted to the elders. The number of complaints against him on May 20 showed that he had clearly rubbed some fellow members of the congregation the wrong way. The first few complaints concerned the recent church meeting. One was that his gestures and behavior in the church had been offensive both to members and to nonmembers who were in attendance. A number of in-



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dividuals testified that while the congregation debated the charge, he had lowered his head and laughed or smiled during inappropriate times. One member of the church remembered how Cheever had “wrapped his handkerchief about his face, then pulled it off again.” Three individuals affirmed that he carried himself more “as one acting a play, than as one in the presence of God.” Cheever suggested that he lowered his head because of a headache, but he could not explain how if that were the case, he would have laughed or smiled on the same occasion. A second complaint stipulated that his unwillingness to vote in the affirmative or negative on the question of whether the elders had acted properly toward William Thorpe “injuriously leaves the elders under a suspicion, as if they were guilty, and afterwards he involved the church under the same suspicion.” One of the church members indicated that this wasn’t the first time that Cheever had cast doubt on the judgment of the elders. He acknowledged this but argued that what he meant in charging Davenport and the other elders with partiality was that their judgment “in several cases when he himself could not see the reason seemed to him partiality.” There were additional charges that went back to previous conduct. Concerns were raised about things Cheever had said during the meeting of a private prayer group when the participants were discussing a recent sermon. The discussion had focused on how “brotherly love might be continued” in the community. Most agreed that the greatest risk to brotherly love was pride, but Cheever took a different tack, stating that “another hindrance of brotherly love was tale-bearing, and making things public which were secret.” He proceeded to question the practice whereby puritans were encouraged, when they discovered ill dealing by one of their brethren, to privately admonish the offender but then, if the individual did not repent, to bring the offense to the proper authorities. As the discussion proceeded, Cheever also expressed concerns about the administration of the two-witness rule that governed trials in church and state. He challenged the practice whereby the testimony of two individuals witnessing the same act by an offender on two different occasions was deemed sufficient for a conviction. Cheever asserted that “if three persons hearing one and the same thing from one and the same man [but] on three several times, they are all but one witness, and no competent testimony” to establish guilt. At a subsequent meeting of the prayer group Cheever was told that “Mr. Davenport had cleared this point in public,” refuting what Cheever had said. Cheever agreed to the fact that Davenport had addressed the issue,

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but he felt the clergyman’s words did not specifically address his concern. Cheever questioned his fellow saints as to whether “they thought themselves had all the light,” affirming that there were others in the town “whom both he and they ought to reverence that were of his judgment in this matter.” As some members of the group began to agree with him, others tested him with discussion of recent cases. One was that of William Plain, of Guilford, who had been “condemned and executed for much unnatural filthiness” despite the fact that “there was never two witnesses together at any time.” Cheever was careful to assert that “he would not meddle with the Court’s matters,” but he asked, “If all the world affirm a thing, is it therefore true?” Presented a hypothetical of three women who all testified that the same man had raped them on different occasions, Cheever acknowledged that it was a “gross act” but would not answer as to whether he would in such a case insist that the two-witness requirement had not been met. Challenged by one of the group that his view “would produce dangerous consequences, he answered we must attend rule and not consequences.” Over the course of the two meetings, it appeared to some that “he did not sufficiently witness against the abominableness of such practices,” but “rather seem[ed] to teach them how to secure themselves and one another from censure and punishment.” In the congregation’s discussion of this charge, Cheever denied that he was totally convinced by his position but rather had spoken “according to the best of his present light,” though others that were there testified that they had sensed no uncertainty in his advocacy. A more serious charge against the schoolmaster was that he had criticized decisions the congregation had previously made at the behest of the elders. As an excommunicated individual, Anne Eaton had not attended the church. When one individual commented on the fact that she had not yet satisfied the church with a spirit of repentance, Cheever responded that “the church had more need to give her satisfaction for the wrong they did her in not letting her come to church.” Referring to the way the elders prepared matters for the church for their approval, Cheever complained that the members of the congregation “have nothing to do now but to say Amen. We are all clerks now.” Most of the congregation was ready to vote to admonish Cheever, but a few asked for further discussion on his dismissal of the members as mere clerks. The charge implied, he was told, that “the elders usurp a lordly power over the Church which is neither granted not allowed by Christ,” and that “the brethren are weak and childish, either wanting light, or wanting courage



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to improve their light about the affairs of Christ in his church.” A number of members testified to that fact that he had often expressed himself along these lines, often “in a whispering way.” Now that it was brought into the open, the church expected him to acquit the officers and brethren of the charges or face a more serious penalty. Cheever tried to back away from the position he was accused of, though he did acknowledge that he had thought the elders occasionally acted without the approval of the congregation in dealing with Mrs. Eaton. As the attacks on him continued over the course of a number of meetings, Cheever ceased to deny his concerns and answered that “he thought the brethren had not their due liberty to act according to the light of their own consciences, and to dissent when they wanted light.” The ruling elder, Robert Newman, denied that the congregation was in bondage and asserted that “the brethren have ever had their full liberty to speak according to the rules of order and edification.” William Hooke and others added that “they had been often and long grieved by him,” and they criticized Cheever for his “contradicting, stiff, and proud frame of spirit.” The church then proceeded to vote that Cheever “be cast out of the body till the proud flesh be destroyed and he be brought into a more member-like frame.” Cheever prepared a lengthy written defense of himself. He complained that even if there were some basis in what he was charged with, the church had dealt with him improperly. Those who had been concerned with his behavior and statements had not discussed their complaints with him privately. Nor had the elders, as they were expected to do, called him before them for discussion of his offenses. The result was that he had been “censured without sufficient means for my conviction and light held forth to reclaim me from the conceived error of my judgment.” He further stated that he had “given the grounds of my opinion to the teacher [William Hooke] in writing” but had received no answer nor promise of a forthcoming answer. He was particularly critical of the fact that as the church was considering admonishing him for his expressions of concern about the application of the two-witness rule, new charges were introduced concerning his criticism of the way the elders exercised their authority and that the congregation had then proceeded to excommunicate him. On substantive issues, he felt that the vote whereby the congregation was asked to approve or disapprove of the elders’ conduct and his refusal to vote was unwarranted, as he knew of “no order appointed by Christ that the church shall require every member to act with them in every vote.” He did

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admit that he believed that to some degree “the brethren had not their due liberty to act according to the light of their own consciences,” and he found the assertion of Robert Newman that the members could speak “according to the rules of order and edification” dubious at best, since proper order was understood according to “the elders’ judgment.” If the brethren “think contrary, though amiss,” they “are rebuked, which doth impeach their true liberty and makes them afraid to speak when they apprehend they have just cause.” The position of the church was that he “must either act with their light, or may expect to suffer, as I have done, and do at this day for conscience sake.” This being the case, he affirmed that he would “rather suffer anything from men than make shipwreck of a good conscience, or go against my present light. . . . The fear of men hath not prevailed above the fear of God.” The initiative against Cheever seems to have come from fellow church members, and particularly Nathaniel Thorpe. William Hooke, the congregation’s teacher, admitted to having long been dissatisfied with Cheever. Davenport did not play an active role and may well have been concerned about the issues raised by Cheever. In May 1650 he sent John Cotton a copy of Cheever’s arguments regarding the two-witness rule and asked his friend to advise him “by the first opportunity, whether by land or sea,” promising that Cotton’s “letter of advice shall have the force of law with me.”18 As noted previously, the two-witness rule had troubled New Haven’s leaders when they first set up their judicial procedures, prompting them to consult some of the clergy and magistrates in Massachusetts. Cheever had clearly identified some of the flaws in the reasoning employed by the colony magistrates, but their fear of not being able to punish serious crimes made them reluctant to concede the point. Davenport may also have been concerned about the harshness of the church proceedings. He generally sought more moderate penalties, such as admonition, and sought to reconcile divergent elements in the church. He would also have been concerned about the consequences that the excommunication would have for the town school. It was Davenport who presumably circulated an account of the case to other clergy in the region, including Hartford’s Samuel Stone (Thomas Hooker had died in 1647). Cheever himself appears to have traveled to Hartford to consult with Stone. In his own correspondence with Cotton about the controversy, the Hartford clergyman sided with the New Haven authorities. Stone indicated that the facts of what had been said did not seem to be in dispute, and he said that he disliked Cheever’s “way and his spirit so far as it appears in his sinful expressions.”



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He indicated that the New Haven elders had responded to Cheever’s written explanation and that he was confident that the elders would “convince him of the evils for which he is censured.”19 Cheever, having spent some time in Hartford, moved on to Ipswich. His wife had died in 1649, which may have contributed to his decision to leave New Haven. He would serve as schoolmaster in Ipswich until 1661, moving then to Charlestown, Massachusetts. In 1670 he became master of the Boston Latin School, where he would teach Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, among others, and cement his reputation as America’s greatest colonial schoolmaster. During those stages of his career he appears to have avoided the types of controversies that plagued him in New Haven.20 The challenges to the church in the 1640s were indicative of the difficulties faced by puritans as they sought to set the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable views and behavior. The influx of new ideas carried by immigrants and also to be found in the flood of religious writings that emerged in England during the puritan revolution made this task especially challenging. Within each New England church there were those who welcomed discussion of new ideas and those who sought to suppress any questioning of established truth and practice. Despite his historical reputation, Davenport appears to have favored a big-tent form of church community. He was reluctant to act against Anne Eaton and when forced to do so was satisfied with ecclesiastical punishments, not insisting (as the Massachusetts authorities had in the case of Anne Hutchinson) that she be cast out of the community. Though Mrs. Brewster was a member of the congregation, there is no record of church proceedings having been initiated against her; her trial and that of her two associates were civil matters. Davenport’s lack of clear presence in the proceedings against Ezekiel Cheever may or may not have signaled a disinclination to rush to judgment. It is at least interesting to note that when Robert Newman, who as ruling elder had taken the lead in the trial, left the colony in 1650, Davenport and the congregation were content not to fill the position of ruling elder. The high-profile cases of Anne Eaton and Ezekiel Cheever took place against a background of growing discontent in the town. When the foundation covenant was developed, all the colonists expressed their hope of being included in the church. By the mid-1640s it was evident that some of the townspeople were unlikely to be admitted. As a result, they found themselves to be marginalized in many ways. Others had come to the colony without

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necessarily sharing the ideals of the founders. This was especially true of servants. In November 1645 Bamfield Bell was reproved by William Paine for singing profane songs. He answered and said, “you are one of the holy brethren that will lie for advantage.”21 Such complaints grew more common in the 1650s. In 1651 Thomas Langdon was charged with permitting the singing of obscene songs at his tavern. His defense was, “If we were in old England, we could sing and be merry.” Fined, he soon left the colony.22 Two years later Robert Bassett, at a town meeting in Stamford, said, “Let us have England’s laws, for England does not prohibit us from our laws or our liberties. Here we are made asses of, and bondsmen and slaves.” He was jailed and released only after posting a bond for good behavior.23 Such disregard for the holy mission of the colony was distressing to the founders. In January 1647 the colony’s General Court felt compelled to pass a law “for restraining of persons from their outward ordinary employments upon any part of the Sabbath.” Proper observance of the Sabbath had never been an issue in New Haven, but, the court noted, “some of have late taken too much liberty that way and have been called to answer for it.”24 Later that same year, Governor Eaton wrote to John Winthrop complaining that “our holy and righteous father hath just cause of controversy with all the colonies and churches in these parts for abating, if not declining, from their first love, zeal, works, etc.”25 Of even greater concern was discontent that arose within the church. In 1644, Henry Glover, who had been one of the town founders and who was a member of the congregation, was accused by the church of unspecified “scandalous behavior” that appears to have included contempt for the church. When milder correction failed, he was excommunicated. Yet he still continued to deny any fault in his actions and speech. It took Davenport many hours to persuade Glover to acknowledge his errors and be readmitted to the congregation.26 In the mid-1640s some of the inhabitants of New Haven began to question the actions of Davenport himself, something that would have been unthinkable in the early years of the town, when the clergyman occasionally sought and received special consideration. Indeed, it was his special status that began to be called into question. When the initial distribution of agricultural land was being approved, the General Court decided that “Mr. Davenport, pastor of the church, shall have his meadow and the upland for his second division both together, on the east side of the great river, where himself shall choose, with all the conveniency the place can afford for a farm,



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though by the natural bounds of the place, whether by creeks or otherwise, the upland or meadow prove more than his proportion.”27 In 1645 the pastor requested and received permission to relocate a fence on his lot.28 Later that same year Richard Malbon proposed to the New Haven town court that “our pastor’s lot may be fenced at a common charge,” volunteering to cart the materials needed to the lot himself. “It was generally approved” and Governor Eaton asked that those who were willing to help report to Malbon.29 The failure of the Delaware Company and the effort to launch the Great Ship strained the resources of the colony, which may have made men less willing to donate time and labor to Davenport, who was, of course, one of the richest men in the community. In February 1646, a month after the Great Ship had sailed, the fencing of Davenport’s lot had not yet been completed, and the court ordered that at the next training day, all the assembled men “may be spoken with to know what every man will do” and a time appointed for completing the work.30 Later, in January 1648, a similar issue was raised when Sergeant Munson was charged with having improperly taken some of the men from their militia exercise to work at Davenport’s. The charge was found groundless, but it also suggested a sense of grievance among some in the community concerning the minister’s special privileges.31 In 1645 Davenport had been accused of hiding a personal financial stake in the Delaware Company when he supported the town’s investment in the enterprise. George Ward first raised the charge. A slander suit led him to reconsider, and in 1646 Ward and his brother moved on to Branford.32 In another dispute, Henry Bishop, a tenant of Davenport who owed the pastor money, refused efforts to settle the matter amicably, rejecting the arbitrators who were chosen to adjudicate the matter and then challenging their decision. Throughout the proceedings, Bishop showed little respect for the minister or for the colony officials. Eventually he agreed to pay, but subsequently left the town.33 In 1647 Luke Atkinson revived the charge that Davenport had promoted the failed expansion into the Delaware for personal financial motives. There was no basis found for the charge. Atkinson admitted to the court that in addition to having questioned Davenport’s involvement with the Delaware Company, he had also said that “Mr. Davenport’s name has been very precious, but now it was darkened,” and to have claimed that “when Mr. Davenport spoke of the high priest, out of the 21st Leviticus on the Lord’s Day, Mr. Davenport spoke against himself.”34 Atkinson was fined £40, which was to be paid to the minister.35

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In 1659, John Browne was charged with drunkenness. During the proceedings it was observed that he had also been guilty of laughing during one of Davenport’s sermons and also of leaving church services before they had ended. His father, Francis, publicly apologized for his son, acknowledging that he had not supervised him well enough, but even as his father said this, John left the meetinghouse smiling in the middle of the proceedings.36 None of these offenses came close to the actions of Isaac Melyn and Sarah Doolittle. Melyn was a young man whose family had been banished from New Netherlands and then settled in New Haven. In 1663 Isaac was charged before the town court with fornication with Hester Clarke, a young woman who was a servant living with the Davenports. He was accused of taking her from the house when the Davenports were asleep to join in drinking parties, and on other occasions entering her bedchamber after the Davenports had retired for the night. Both denied that any sexual acts had been involved, but, after initially denying all the charges, they admitted they had been together, and they were fined for having first lied to the court. Melyn appeared to have been amused by the failure of the authorities to find him guilty of anything more than originally lying about being with Clarke.37 In 1668, just before Davenport left the colony to accept a post in Boston, Sarah Doolittle, another servant of the Davenports, was similarly charged before the town court with fornication. She confessed to having had sex with Joseph Preston three times “while she lived at Mr. Davenport’s, once in the chamber upon her bed when all in the house were in bed.” She also confessed that “one night John Thomas Jr. was at Mr. Davenport’s” and when others had left, Thomas had “desired to have use of her body, to which she consented.” Thomas, however, perhaps intimidated by the thought of Davenport sleeping in the same house, “attempted to penetrate her body, but could not, saying he was afraid.”38 Not only did these incidents reflect poorly on the moral tone of the community; they had to also have been intensely embarrassing to Davenport personally.

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hile dealing with troubles within his godly kingdom, Davenport kept one eye on the events beyond the colony’s borders. From the first days of his ministry in London, John had demonstrated a belief in the foretold millennium and a commitment to advancing God’s cause throughout the world. Following his settlement in New England, he continued to maintain contact with former allies in that effort, such as Samuel Hartlib and John Dury. He followed the events in Britain that led to the outbreak of the Bishops’ Wars between Charles I and the Scots in 1638, and, like many New Englanders, he saw the early efforts of the Long Parliament as offering a chance for the type of renewal he had long prayed and labored for. When Charles I rejected the parliamentary agenda and plunged England into civil war in 1642, Davenport and his fellow colonists supported Parliament and sought to do whatever was in their power to contribute to the triumph of their godly friends. William Hooke, then serving as pastor of the church in Taunton, within the Plymouth Colony, preached a fast-day sermon on July 23, 1640, which conveyed the feelings shared by many of the colonists. England was, he reminded his listeners, “a country well known to you, where you drew your first breath, where once, yea, where lately you dwelt, where you . . . have many a dear friend and countryman and kinsman abiding.” Now, that country was suffering, with “imminent calamities dropping, swords that have hung a long time over their heads by a twine thread [dropping, and] judgments long since threatened, as foreseen by some of God’s messengers.” His sermon was printed in England—through the assistance of his kinsman Oliver Cromwell—with the title New England’s Tears for Old England’s Fears 237

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(1641).1 Following the outbreak of war between the king and Parliament, Hooke again preached a fast-day sermon in Taunton. This time he urged his listeners to support the parliamentary cause through prayer. “The churches in this land in this day,” he preached, were as “so many regiments, or bands of soldiers, lying in ambush here under the fern and brush of the wilderness,” and they must “come upon the backs of God’s enemies with deadly fasting and prayer, murderers that will kill point blank from one end of the world to the other; . . . thousands will fall.”2 Drawn perhaps by Davenport’s equal enthusiasm for the godly cause abroad, Hooke soon thereafter moved to New Haven as the teacher of the church there. His correspondence with his English kinsmen and friends would be an important source of news for the colonists over the years to come. In 1642 copies of a letter were sent to New England by a group of English parliamentary leaders—five peers and thirty-four commoners—requesting “Mr. Cotton, Mr. Hooker, and Mr. Davenport to come over with all possible speed, all, or any of them if all cannot.”3 The Long Parliament had already taken steps to reform the Church of England. On December 11, 1640, a petition signed by 1,500 Londoners was presented to Parliament, demanding the abolition of the existing English Church, that “all its dependencies, roots and branches, may be abolished, and all laws in their behalf made void, and the government according to God’s word may be rightly placed amongst us.”4 One week later William Laud was impeached by the House of Commons. The following February thirteen articles of impeachment were specified, the seventh of which accused Laud of advancing “popery and superstition,” particularly through contacts with “Sancta Clara, alias Damport, a dangerous person and Franciscan friar.”5 Laud would be confined in the Tower of London and eventually put on trial. In November 1641 Parliament presented King Charles with a “Grand Remonstrance,” which included demands for church reform. In April 1642 members of Parliament adopted a declaration that they intended to reform the church and to “have consultation with godly and learned divines” in order to do so.6 The “Nineteen Propositions” sent to the king in June included a call for the king to promote such deliberations.7 It was likely this plan that led to the invitation issued to Cotton, Hooker, and Davenport. Among those who signed the letter were a number of individuals with whom Davenport had been associated, such as the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, and William Spurstowe, as well as others who were or would be prominent in the puritan cause, such as



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Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Barrington, Nathaniel Barnardiston, and Oliver St. John. The authors spoke of the troubled state of England, “whereby you cannot but understand how great need there is of the help of prayer and improvement of all good means from all parts for the settling and composing of the affairs of the church.”8 Some English clergymen also urged the trio of colonial clergy to come over.9 When clergy in the Boston area met to discuss the invitation, “most of them were of [the opinion] that it was a call of God.”10 But further news from England raised concerns about whether it would be the best way to help their English allies. The king repeatedly refused to call an assembly of divines to propose reforms. If such a gathering was convened, it was unclear how much support there might be for the congregational system that had become known as the New England Way. Some of those who had issued the invitation were friends of the colonies but were known to hold views that emphasized the importance of godly elders in church government. Thomas Hooker, in particular, concluded that there wasn’t “sufficient call for them to go 3,000 miles to agree with three men,” presumably referring to some of the Congregationalists who had returned to England from the Netherlands, such as Jeremiah Burroughes, who returned to England in the winter of 1640; Thomas Goodwin, William Bridge, and Sidrach Simpson, who returned in 1641; and Philip Nye, who was back in England by the spring of 1642. All of these men were well known to the three New England ministers. Davenport disagreed with Hooker and believed that it was his duty to return. The New Haven church “set apart a day to seek the Lord in it,” but he concluded that “seeing the church had no other officer but himself, they might not spare him.”11 It was about this time that Davenport invited William Hooke to join him in the ministry to the church, perhaps in the hope that he would then be freed to go to England. Cotton also “apprehended a strong call of God in it,” especially since he had been preaching on Acts 13 and had drawn from that text the “doctrine of the interest all churches have in each other’s members for mutual helpfulness.”12 Further news made him reconsider. In January 1642 Charles I had left London after failing to arrest five of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition. Interestingly, the five had taken refuge in Davenport’s old parish of St. Stephen’s, which was to be a hotbed of puritan zeal during the subsequent struggle.13 In August 1642 the king raised his standard and declared Parliament to be in revolt. Reform then was tied to revolution. Letters from England advised the three New England

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clergymen to postpone coming until the situation was clear. Connecticut Governor John Haynes agreed, writing to John Winthrop that “times are so difficult and it is so hard to distinguish friend from foe” in England.14 In June 1643 Parliament called into session the Westminster Assembly, charged with proposing a reform of the national church.15 Though they did not return to England to add their voices to the effort to establish congregationalism, New England’s leading clergy did make their views heard through books published in England. Their efforts were directed to the support of the Congregationalist spokesmen in the Westminster Assembly identified as the Apologists or Dissenting Brethren, a group that included Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, William Bridge, and Jeremiah Burroughes. Those clergy were frequently joined in their advocacy of the New England Way by William Greenhill, Joseph Caryl, William Carter, and the former colonist John Phillips.16 From the revolt against the king’s attempt to impose English forms on Scotland in 1638 to the end of 1643, the opponents of the established church had much in common and worked to define a church that they could all adhere to. An accord signed by clergy identified with Congregationalism and others identified with Presbyterianism at Edmund Calamy’s home in Aldermanbury pledged the signatories to avoid publicly attacking one another’s positions. The religious situation remained more complicated than a simple division between Congregationalists and Presbyterians. Most of the delegates at Westminster agreed on matters of faith. On some issues regarding church government, the Dissenting Brethren agreed with the Scottish Presbyterian delegates in the Westminster Assembly against the spokesmen for English Presbyterianism, whereas on other issues different alignments emerged. New England’s contributions to the English debate began even as Cotton, Davenport, and Hooker were deciding not to return to England in 1642. John Cotton accompanied his regrets for not being able to return with a tract on The True Constitution of a Particular Visible Church (1642).17 Over the coming years he followed this up with The Keys of the Kingdom (1642) and The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared (1648). The first of these was published with a preface jointly written by Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye. Thomas Hooker completed A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, Wherein the Way of the Churches of New England Is Warranted out of the Word in 1645, but it was lost in transit when the so-called New Haven Great Ship sank. It was eventually published in 1648 through the efforts of Thomas Goodwin, who also wrote a preface for the book. Whereas Survey addressed



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issues of church government, Hooker’s An Exposition of the Principles of Religion (1645) and A Brief Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer (1645) spoke to the Westminster Assembly’s work on compiling a confession of faith.18 John Davenport’s An Apology of the Churches in New England and An Answer of the Elders of the Several Churches in New England unto Nine Positions Sent Over to Them were both written in the late 1630s in response to questions sent to New England by English clergy. Initially circulated in manuscript, they were printed in London in 1643 for “the satisfaction of all who desire resolution in these points.”19 His Profession of the Faith (1642) was published to address the doctrinal issues being debated at Westminster. The original manuscript of what would eventually be published as The Power of Congregational Churches Asserted and Vindicated (1672), in which he returned to the issues of church government he had debated with Paget, was sent as a contribution to the English discussions. It was lost on the Great Ship, along with Hooker’s Survey. Also lost on that ship was a manuscript in which Davenport explained his understanding of the events transpiring in England, which he later described to John Cotton as the “sermons I preached out of the epistle of Christ to the church of Philadelphia, Revelation 3, concerning the hour of temptation, and sundry others about Christ’s shaking heaven and earth to establish his kingdom in Hebrews 12.”20 In addition to a continuing stream of written advice to England, the colonists found other ways to contribute to the reform of their native land. Following the outbreak of fighting in England, the New Haven authorities established a regular monthly day of fast and prayer to mobilize the prayers of the people on behalf of the parliamentary cause. This meant that Davenport regularly addressed his congregation on the meaning of English events, placing them in a millennial framework. Some of these may have been the sermons he wrote about to Cotton. In January 1643, Connecticut, citing this precedent, passed a similar resolution.21 Massachusetts and Plymouth likewise observed days of fast, though called individually and not scheduled on a regular basis. And when the parliamentary forces achieved notable victories, the colonists gathered in their churches to observe days of thanksgiving.22 Some New Englanders did return home to assist more directly in the struggle to transform England. Massachusetts sent Davenport’s friend Hugh Peter, along with the clergyman Thomas Welde and the merchant William Hibbins to both lend their support to the cause of reform and to represent Massachusetts interests before Parliament. Peter and Welde assisted in the publication of colonial defenses of the New England Way, raised funds for

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Harvard, and organized a proposal to ship Irish children orphaned by the fighting on that island to New England. Peter also preached before Parliament and served as an army chaplain. He became a confidant of the rising Oliver Cromwell. All together, thirty-five colonists who had served parishes in England before settling in the colonies returned to their native land in the 1640s and 1650s. Ten younger colonists who had emigrated before completing their studies at Oxford and Cambridge also returned. They were joined by thirty-four Harvard graduates. Another ten colonists who had no formal university training became preachers in England during those decades.23 New Englanders also returned to fight in the parliamentary army. George Fenwick, who had been the only one of the Saybrook proprietors to settle in New England, returned to England and became a colonel. Hezekiah Haynes, son of Connecticut’s governor, commanded an infantry regiment; during the 1650s he was named one of the Protectorate’s administrative major general.24 In all, ten colonists would rise to the rank of major general or above in the parliamentary army.25 Forty-four residents of the New Haven colony returned to England during the decades of the 1640s and 1650s. Among the more notable were Richard Blinman, who became a minister in Bristol; Nathaniel Brewster, who ministered to congregations in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Ireland before returning to New England; Richard Denton of Stamford, who became a minister in Essex; Samuel Desborough of Guilford, who returned to serve as parliamentary commissioner to the army, Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland, and a member of the Protectorate Parliaments of 1656 and 1659; Samuel Eaton, who was an army chaplain and then became the leader of the Congregationalists in Cheshire; Francis Higginson of Guilford, who ministered in Westmorland; Thomas James, who became a schoolmaster and town preacher at Needham Market, Suffolk; Samuel Malbon, who studied at Oxford and then entered the ministry; Davenport’s friend Henry Whitefield, who left his congregation in Guilford and returned to England to minister in Hampshire; and Whitefield’s son Nathaniel, who became clerk to the parliamentary navy commissioners.26 Davenport’s colleague in the New Haven ministry, William Hooke, was a kinsman of the early parliamentary leader John Pym. His wife, Jane Whalley Hooke, was the niece of Lady Joan Barrington and a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. It was Cromwell who had helped see Hooke’s two fast sermons to the press in England. Jane’s brother Edward Whalley and her nephew, William Goffe, were among Cromwell’s trusted officers and each became



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one of the Protectorate’s administrative major generals in the 1650s. William and Jane’s son, John Hooke, graduated from Harvard and went to England, where Cromwell arranged for his institution as vicar of Kingsworthy.27 Eventually, William and Jane would also return to England. After some initial successes for the king’s forces, by 1643 the tide of war had swung in Parliament’s favor. When a significant victory at Marston Moor in July 1644 was not followed up by the parliamentary commanders, Parliament reorganized its military effort. The New Model Army, commanded by Thomas Fairfax, with Oliver Cromwell second in command, achieved a decisive victory at Naseby in 1645. This was followed by other success, and in March 1647 the king surrendered. Negotiations for a final settlement were bogged down, however. Increasingly, the army asserted a role in the attempt to reach a settlement, its leaders and the rank and file unconvinced that Parliament was willing to advance the reforms they had long struggled to achieve. Within the army itself some troops supported a call for greater involvement in the governance of the nation by ordinary Englishmen. Meanwhile, the Scots, who had fought alongside the forces of Parliament, were discontented by Parliament’s failure to effectively impose a Presbyterian settlement on England. Taking advantage of the situation, Charles escaped from confinement and reopened the conflict. But the second civil war came to a rapid end, with the king again captive. The army moved to purge the more conservative elements in Parliament and the remaining members (the Rump) created a tribunal that tried and convicted the king. When Charles was executed in January 1649, Parliament declared England a commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell was sent to Ireland, where he brought the conflict there to an end. He then returned to defeat the Scots, who had proclaimed the eldest son of Charles I as King Charles II. The three kingdoms were at peace, but the continuing inability of the commonwealth government to deal with the demands of the army and to call new elections led Cromwell in 1653 to dissolve the Rump itself. Cromwell and the army officers nominated godly men to form a new Parliament, and Cromwell allowed himself to be installed as lord protector in a new government called the Protectorate. He continued to rule England till his death in 1658. Refusing to accept a crown and become king, Cromwell strived to create new parliamentary institutions but failed to find a legislative system committed to the reforms he saw as necessary. He used his authority

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to impose a puritan-style discipline on English cultural life, largely through the appointment of military major generals to govern the various regions of the country. He pursued a Protestant foreign policy that included attacks on Catholic Spain’s New World empire. While an attack on Hispaniola failed, his forces did bring Jamaica under English control. The state of religion in England posed the greatest challenge to the lord protector. When England had drifted into civil war in the early 1640s, neither king nor Parliament was able to effectively control the spread of extreme religious views in print and by itinerant preachers. While Congregationalists and Presbyterians debated in the Westminster Assembly, a variety of sects popped up in London and the countryside. The assembly recommended a Presbyterian settlement to the Long Parliament and rejected the plea of the Dissenting Brethren’s Apologetical Narration (1644) that they be allowed to maintain their Congregational autonomy within the new national church. But sectarian leaders soon joined the Dissenting Brethren in calling for an independent status, and the importance of such groups in the army made successful implementation of the Presbyterian system impossible. Cromwell surrounded himself with Congregational puritan clergy such as Hugh Peter and Thomas Godwin, and during the 1650s he tried to shape a religious settlement that depended on a union of Congregationalists, moderate Presbyterians, and theologically orthodox Baptists. Cromwell tolerated more extreme groups, such as the emerging Quakers, so long as they did not disturb the social order, though there were those in the Protectorate parliaments who sought harsher measures against radicals. Shortly before his death Cromwell gave his blessing to a gathering of Congregationalists at the Savoy Hospital. Their proposal for a national Congregationalists system, the Savoy Platform, was presented to Cromwell’s son and successor as lord protector, Richard Cromwell, but the collapse of the regime in 1659 precluded any action being taken on it. The connections that Davenport and other New Havenites maintained with old friends who had never left England and with colonial associates who had returned home helped the colonists to sift fact from rumor in the reports of the struggle going on in their native land. Davenport continued to correspond with Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Lady Mary Vere, among others. He offered his hopes for a reorganization of Chelsea College in London as proposed by Hartlib, Dury, and Comenius.28 In a letter to Lady Vere in 1647 Davenport explained how he viewed the events of recent years as part



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of God’s plan for the coming of the millennium. He wrote, “We see that the most high shaketh heaven, earth, and seas, and all hearts.” He believed that “the Lord’s controversy with his people is not yet ended, but his hand is stretched out still, and worse things are yet to come until the slaughter of the witnesses shall be finished, which, I suppose, is not yet past when I seriously compare the description of that time, as it is in Revelation 11 with the providences of God which have passed upon to his people to this day.” “Yet,” he continued, “I believe that the light which is now discovered in England concerning church order and government will never be wholly put out, though I suspect that contrary principles will prevail for a time with the generality and sundry in reputation for godliness till they be renewed in the spirit of their mind to prove what is that good, that acceptable and perfect rule of God. . . . [A] full and exact conformity to heavenly rules and patterns will be hindered by such as plead conformity to this world.29 Because Davenport and his fellow colonists looked with favor upon England’s new leaders, they hoped to benefit from that relationship. In 1643 Parliament appointed a committee to govern England’s colonies, and ten of the eighteen signatories were among those who had signed the invitation to Cotton, Hooker, and Davenport two years earlier. Another member was Sir Henry Vane, whom Davenport was familiar with.30 Early the next year Roger Williams secured a charter recognizing the various settlements around Narragansett Bay as a colony, and New Haven determined to do likewise. Though Davenport and Eaton felt that the Warwick patent justified their settlement in terms of English law, there would be benefits from a charter recognizing their boundaries and the legitimacy of their government. When he sailed on the Great Ship, Thomas Gregson was charged by the colony with seeking a charter from Parliament’s committee. The fact that the committee included individuals who were central figures in the Saybrook colonizing venture—the Earl of Warwick and Lord Saye and Sele, as well as Oliver Cromwell, who had considered emigrating to that colony—made the New Havenites confident that their petition would be granted. But the colonists were secure enough in their existing status that when the sinking of the ship was finally accepted, no other attempt was made to seek a charter.31 The commercial rivalry between England and the Netherlands led to armed conflict between the two Protestant countries in 1652, much to the dismay of many puritans, including Oliver Cromwell. The European conflict inflamed the existing hostility between the southern New England colonies and the Dutch authorities in New Netherland. In 1647 Peter Stuyvesant had

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been named director general of the Dutch colony. Shortly after he assumed that post, he reasserted the Dutch claim by right of first possession to the Connecticut River towns and the New Haven colony, all of which he argued were within the jurisdiction of New Netherland. Stuyvesant then sent a force that removed a Dutch ship from New Haven harbor to collect customs duties, the troops achieving their goal while the puritan colonists were at worship. Shortly thereafter Stuyvesant offered refuge in his colony for all who had been prosecuted in the English colonies.32 A treaty between the Dutch authorities and the New Englanders was signed at Hartford in 1650, settling the boundary dispute but not resolving another contentious issue, New Haven’s claims to lands along Delaware Bay.33 In September 1650 a New Haven town meeting decided that some townsmen should resettle along the Delaware, and the following April fifty men left for that purpose. Stuyvesant stopped them, placed them under arrest, and released them only upon their agreeing to return to New Haven. Theophilus Eaton immediately appealed to the United Colonies (New England Confederation) for their support against the Dutch on this matter. He also asked Massachusetts to allow Edward Winslow, who was acting for the Bay Colony in England, to seek a charter from Parliament for the New Haven claims along the Delaware. The commissioners of the United Colonies wrote to Stuyvesant protesting his actions, but they were not willing to engage in more forceful action.34 The outbreak of war between the English Commonwealth and the Netherlands changed the situation. Rumors began to circulate that Stuyvesant was trying to stir up the Narragansetts and other New England tribes to rise up against the English colonies. A special meeting of the commissioners of the United Colonies early in the spring of 1653 dispatched John Leverett and two other emissaries to travel to New Netherland and investigate the charges. Leverett was a Bay colonist who had already served in the English civil wars as a captain in the regiment of Thomas Rainsborough. The commissioners further agreed that if hostilities did break out, Leverett would command a force of five hundred troops from the various English colonies to attack New Netherland.35 This might have been the time when Davenport and Leverett established a friendship that would be important, particularly for Davenport, over the last decades of his life. Following the report of Leverett and his colleagues, the commissioners debated launching an attack on New Netherland, with Theophilus Eaton making the case for the war party. The Massachusetts delegation took the position that such a conflict would be a war of aggression and thus beyond



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what the commissioners were authorized to act on. Through the summer the reluctance of the Bay Colony to go to war frustrated the New Havenites. At a town meeting in June 1653 it was proposed that “the Parliament in England may be informed how things be carried here.”36 William Hooke, with his contacts, wrote to Oliver Cromwell, who was lord general and a member of the Commonwealth Council of State. On October 6 the Council of State appointed a committee “to consider that part of the letter written from Mr. Hooke which relates to the practice of the Dutch with the natives in New England, and to speak with Mr. Winslow.”37 At about the same time William Leete wrote to Samuel Desborough, requesting that he, too, urge the English authorities to assist the colonists against the Dutch.38 Not knowing that his first letter had been received and was being acted on, Hooke wrote again to Cromwell in early November. In the new letter he set out the “tottering state of things in these ends of the earth.” Hooke explained how the Bay Colony had let New Haven and Connecticut down, “refusing to join us in a military expedition against the Dutch” and the Indians, “from [both] of whom we have received much injury and contempt.” If “the Dutch be not removed, who lie close upon our frontiers westward, . . . we and our posterity . . . are confined and straightened, the sea lying before us and a rocky, rude desert, . . . destitute of commodity behind our backs.” He hoped that Cromwell would be able to “procure two or three frigates to be sent for the clearing of the coast from a nation with which the English cannot either mingle, or sit under their government.”39 In December 1653, Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, and on the following February 8 he commissioned Major Robert Sedgwick (formerly of Massachusetts) and Captain John Leverett to go with the ships Black Raven, Hope, Church, and Augustine to New England, where they were instructed to gain the assistance of the United Colonies in attacking New Netherland.40 Conveying his understanding that “all (or at least some of your colonies) have met with unneighborly and unchristian dealing” from the Dutch, Cromwell instructed the governors to cooperate in raising troops for the enterprise.41 The fleet arrived at Boston on June 1, and the commanders sent messages to the various colonial governments. Within two weeks William Leete and Thomas Jordan appeared at Boston with a commission from the New Haven General Court authorizing them to agree to whatever actions were deemed necessary. Connecticut and the other colonies likewise sent delegates. Meanwhile, the New Haven authorities took steps to fortify

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the meetinghouse to make it a refuge in case of attacks by the Dutch or their Indian allies. Pikes and other weapons were also stored in the building.42 Each of the colonies agreed to raise troops. Massachusetts and Plymouth did so halfheartedly—Massachusetts allowed volunteers rather than impose service and raised only three hundred troops instead of the requested five hundred—but New Haven and Connecticut showed a willingness to go beyond what was requested. New Haven provided 133 men.43 Things moved rapidly, and Leverett reported that the expedition was ready to sail against the Dutch by June 20. At that point, however, word reached Boston of the Treaty of Westminster, which had brought the first Anglo-Dutch War to an end, signed in Europe on April 5. While not everyone believed these reports, the Massachusetts leaders were unwilling to proceed with the expedition. New Haven’s representatives believed that if the reports were true, there might still be time to act before the truce was to take effect, but Sedgwick and Leverett determined that there wasn’t time for such an attack.44 Sedgwick subsequently used the English force at his disposal to raid French fishing and trading posts along the New England coast, and to drive the French from the Penobscot region.45 With the acceptance of peace, New Haven sought to renew its effort to settle the Delaware. Once again the colony sought to gain the support of the United Colonies, but Massachusetts was no more willing to use force to defend New Haven claims than previously. Eaton tried to reach an agreement with the governor of New Sweden that would have allowed cooperation against the Dutch, but the Swedes were not interested in allowing English settlement in the area. When Stuyvesant conquered New Sweden in September 1655, hopes for the Delaware settlement once again were put aside.46 New Haven’s efforts to carve out a settlement on the Delaware was viewed by some as a commentary on the economic failure of New Haven itself. Indeed, many of the friends of New England abroad recognized the hardships faced by colonists throughout the region, which led to a variety of suggestions that the colonists move to places where they could be of greater service to God’s cause, or where they could at least prosper. England continued to be attractive, with opportunities to make a contribution to the erection of a godly kingdom, particularly after the execution of Charles I and the establishment of what was clearly a puritan regime. William Hooke, whose son John had traveled to England to study at Oxford, was looking for ways to return. His wife, Jane, returned to England



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in 1654 along with their two remaining children, and William hoped to do so as well.47 He lingered to give the town a chance to find a replacement, but when that proved difficult, he departed anyway in 1656, becoming one of Cromwell’s household chaplains and an important source of insight into English events for Davenport and others in New Haven. In 1651 it was rumored that both Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport were considering leaving New Haven.48 Ever since her excommunication in 1645, Anne Eaton had been urging her husband to return home, but there is no indication that the governor seriously considered doing so. The rumors of Davenport leaving had more substance to them. Because of his prominence in the puritan movement, he received various invitations to relocate, the first of which had been the invitation to him along with Cotton and Hooker in 1642. In 1649 the growth of Boston had led to the formation of a second church in Boston. Construction of a meetinghouse was begun in 1649 in the north end of the town, and the congregation was officially formed with the adoption of a covenant in June 1650.49 An invitation was extended to Davenport to assume the pastorate of the new church, and it is likely that his friend John Cotton was instrumental in arranging the call. He declined the offer.50 Davenport received a different call in 1654. The Irish Rebellion had been crushed by Cromwell in 1650, and Parliament appointed commissioners to govern the country. In September 1654 those commissioners wrote to Davenport, pointing out that they were “destitute of helpers to carry on the great work of the Lord in holding forth the gospel of Jesus Christ in this poor nation,” and expressing their “desire [that] you come over and help us.” They promised to “make provision for your comfortable subsistence here,” and “to help you in the charge of removing your family.”51 A number of colonists would accept invitations to spread the gospel in Ireland, including Samuel Mather, but Davenport declined. During this period Davenport was troubled by a serious flare-up of a medical condition that he had first experienced in his days in Rotterdam. His situation was serious enough in 1651 that the town of New Haven agreed to offer a French doctor (later identified by Davenport as “Dr. Shoyes,” and in the town records as “Chais”) a home, provisions, and an annual salary to take up residence in the town. Shoyes was seen as likely to provide valuable service to the town as a whole but “particularly in respect to Mr. Davenport.”52 The doctor was a Frenchman who had lived in England and the Netherlands, and had received a degree from the University of Franeker. At the end of 1652 Shoyes sought and received permission to leave the town to

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seek better employment elsewhere, agreeing to take nothing from Mr. Davenport for what he had done for him.53 Before he left New Haven, Shoyes prepared a report on the minister’s condition that Davenport later supplied to John Winthrop Jr., who was a respected physician, who treated the New Haven clergyman during the 1650s. Shoyes began his report by indicating that “twenty years ago, in Rotterdam,” Davenport “suffered from yellow jaundice.” Three years before Shoyes prepared the report, in June of what was likely 1648 or 1649, “after a long ride under a burning sky, his very dear wife seated behind him,” Davenport “discharged bloody puss without irritation, or at least very little, without pain, without thought of coition,” and the symptoms had continued. The following year “he suffered twice from nephritis, from which it is deduced that the cause of the condition is heat of the liver and kidneys.”54 Shoyes made reference to the work of Jean Fernel’s Physiologia (1567). Fernel was one of the first authorities on syphilis, but Shoyes referred to his work for the understanding that the testicles drew “purulent excrements” from the kidneys and discharged them in a thick, white substance.55 On later occasions Davenport reported other symptoms. In July 1660 he wrote to Winthrop that when riding a few months earlier “to stir my body and take the air, . . . though we had been out but an hour or two, my urine grew so highly colored that my wife thought it was bloody, and hath ever since continued very highly colored, and many times she observes a black settlement in it.” At the same time he reported he had been constipated and “straining at stool.”56 Among other symptoms were pain in his lower left belly and pain when walking. His symptoms were worse in warm weather. On a number of occasions he and his friends reported that he was unable to take long journeys, especially in hot weather. After the French doctor left New Haven, Davenport wrote to Winthrop Jr. in August 1653 to solicit his help.57 In July 1654 he confided to Winthrop that while he was “preaching, the feebleness of my spirits caused me to stop and break off in the midst of my intended work.” Both Shoyes and Winthrop recommended a “cessation from study and preaching for a time,” which he was not willing to do. He began to talk of going to England for treatment, and he even sent a servant to Boston to inquire about accommodation on a vessel sailing from that port.58 New Haven was hesitant to allow his departure, but as Theophilus Eaton indicated, “Mr. Davenport’s ground is to preserve his life, which we all know the 6th commandment requires every man by due means to attend.” Eaton confessed, however, that



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he didn’t understand “what his disease is, which . . . should be conceived curable in England and not here” with “necessary physical materials [which] may, . . . some way or other, in their strength and virtue, be brought from thence hither.”59 Dr. Lawrence Wright, a kinsman of the Winthrops and physician in ordinary to Oliver Cromwell, had urged Davenport to come to England for treatment.60 Eaton implored Winthrop to take the case in hand, and Winthrop did become more involved in it. Shoyes, briefly back in New Haven in 1654, also advised Davenport during that year. When Wright died in 1657, Davenport gave up on the idea of seeking treatment abroad, content to rely on Winthrop’s care. At this distance of time it is impossible to diagnose what was afflicting Davenport. There is at least the possibility that the New Haven minister suffered from, or feared he suffered from, gonorrhea or another sexually transmitted disease. This would explain why he kept the details from his friend Theophilus Eaton. The fact that Shoyes turned to the works of Fernel, an expert on those diseases, raises a flag, though the doctor directed attention to a different part of the text. Some of Davenport’s symptoms are consistent with a diagnosis of sexually transmitted disease, and one of the drugs Winthrop prescribed for him was guaiacum, which, along with mercury, were the two most commonly prescribed drugs for venereal disease at this time.61 The inability of John and Elizabeth to have a child after he first began to suffer from his malady is also suggestive.62 Puritans recognized that even the best of men were sinners and needed God’s mercy. Indeed, it was their awareness of their own frailty that made clergy such as Davenport so successful as physicians of the soul. Yet this is not a sin that Davenport would have been eager to have known, and if he feared that he had a venereal disease (even if he did not), it might explain his care in conveying some information in Latin, and considering returning to England for treatment. It would also make sense of an incident where Davenport presents Winthrop with the case of an anonymous “brother,” who had suspicious symptoms but “utterly denies that there is any species gonorrhea” in what troubles him.63 There were other possibilities, however. Shoyes indicated that Davenport had suffered from jaundice in Rotterdam, and he also discussed episodes of nephritis. Outbreaks of adult obstructive jaundice can cause fatigue, a dark urine, and severe abdominal pain. In a letter to Winthrop, Davenport indicated that some of his symptoms were “somewhat like unto that whereof Languis speaks”—evidently a reference to a form of severe colonic spasms.64 Some form of kidney or liver disease might have been what afflicted him

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and could have caused impotence. But whatever the causes of his symptoms, they clearly made the last decades of his life very painful and difficult, and at least briefly made him consider returning to England for medical treatment. During the 1650s there was discussion of a wholesale move of the New Haven colony to other destinations. Following his conquest of Ireland, Oliver Cromwell proposed that the New Haven colonists resettle in the city of Galway.65 At a meeting in 1654 with Milwood’s John Astwood, who had carried one of William Hooke’s letters to the general, Cromwell suggested that the colonists might wish to consider transplanting to “where they might have cities ready builded and land ready tilled, and where staple commodities might be raised” rather than continue to try to drive out the Dutch or settle the Delaware. Astwood told the lord protector that he believed the colonists would prefer to remain in New Haven rather than to risk their spiritual riches for a chance to gain material comforts.66 Cromwell also saw possibilities for New Englanders to settle conquered Spanish settlements in the New World. Late in 1654 Oliver Cromwell sent an English expedition to the Caribbean as part of a “Western Design” to weaken the Catholic foothold in that region. John Cotton had corresponded with Cromwell in 1651 and praised the general for advancing God’s kingdom.67 Roger Williams asserted that it was Cotton’s identification of the Euphrates in Revelation with the West Indies that helped to shape the “Western Design.”68 Davenport noted the news of the expedition in a letter to Winthrop Jr. and was clearly interested in the enterprise.69 The attempt to capture Hispaniola (the island that now is divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) failed, but the forces went on to capture the island of Jamaica. Robert Sedgwick was named the first English governor general there. Following the conquest of Jamaica, Cromwell invited New England colonists to relocate on the island. Every male older than the age of twelve would receive twenty acres of land near a good harbor, and all others would receive ten acres.70 News of this offer reached New Haven in late April 1656. Theophilus Eaton presided over a meeting on May 19 in which he “desired the town to give an answer concerning the business . . . concerning Jamaica.” Lieutenant John Nash expressed what he believed to be the view of most townspeople, “that they conceive it is a work of God, and that it should be encouraged.” He qualified this by indicating that they needed further news of the healthfulness of Jamaica and the further progress of the war. If this was forthcoming, an advanced group should set out “fit to carry on the work



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of Christ in commonwealth and also in church affairs” in the colony, after which others would follow.71 A week later Governor Eaton informed the colony’s General Court “that he had received a letter from the Lord Protector, formally inviting the people of this colony, or part of them . . . to remove to Jamaica.” He also shared a letter that had been received from Major Robert Sedgwick, as well as additional intelligence that had been received from the island. The news would not have been encouraging. There was still some Spanish resistance on the north side of the island. Disease had also struck the English, with five thousand of the seven thousand troops who had initially landed dying within a year.72 Sedgwick himself died in late May 1656. The full extent of the difficulties facing the English in Jamaica would not have been known to the people of New Haven when they debated, but there was enough known to cause concerns. After a good deal of debate, the General Court acknowledged their “great love, care, and tender respect of his highness the Lord Protector to New England in general and to this colony in particular,” yet informed him that “for divers reasons they cannot conclude that God calls them to a present remove thither.”73 While the colonists declined offers to move to Ireland or to Jamaica, they were reassured that their prayers in the 1640s had helped to bring about a puritan regime in England, led by Oliver Cromwell, a regime that was sympathetic to their own situation. With friends of the colony such as William Hooke close to the lord protector, John Davenport and his New Haven neighbors had hopes for an even better future. They were soon to be disillusioned.

Ch a pt e r 1 7

Defending Congregationalism and Baptism

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ven while John Davenport and his fellow colonists presented their New England Way to England as a model for reformation, they were still working to refine that system. Although most agreed that the privileges of church membership should be limited to those deemed worthy, each congregation reached its own decisions as to what the standards of worthiness were and how they were to be applied. While most agreed that a Congregational polity was most in keeping with God’s way, individuals differed over issues such as how congregations should relate to one another and the precise division of authority between laity and clerical elders within a congregation. Over time some individuals began to reconsider the procedures they had first developed. Davenport was deeply involved in the effort to perfect the New England Way and advance the New Jerusalem. Presbyterianism as generally promoted at this time differed from Congregationalism in three key respects. Presbyterians opened membership to all who lived in a town or parish while restricting the Lord’s Supper to those deemed worthy; Congregationalists limited membership to the godly and allowed all members to partake of communion. Presbyterians emphasized the governing role of the clerical and lay elders within an individual congregation, whereas Congregationalists were insistent on the power of the laity in governance. At the heart of this particular debate were the meaning of “the church” and the issue of whom Peter represented when Christ bestowed upon him the power of the keys in Matthew 16:19. Davenport, as he had stated during the church trial of Anne Hutchinson, believed that the power of a congregation was “in the whole church,” and not just its officers.1 This was a position he 254



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would maintain throughout his New England career. Finally, Presbyterians believed that supervisory synods or assemblies had power over individual congregations, whereas Congregationalists were suspicious of any such gatherings and willing to tolerate them only if their role was advisory. The New England colonies were founded upon Congregational principles, but over time there was a drift toward Presbyterian practices. It has been suggested that following the lay challenges to the established clergy by the supporters of Anne Hutchinson, many ministers sought to elevate their role in the governance of their churches.2 Informal conferences of local clergy had been used to maintain unity from the earliest days of the colony, but the same 1637 controversy had led to the calling of the first actual regional synod. Some churches, including the Boston church, were critical of this, but, assured it was advisory only, all eventually sent representatives. Nevertheless, a precedent had been set. Two Massachusetts towns—Newbury and Hingham—adopted Presbyterian-style membership policies. In 1643, inspired perhaps by the possibility of Presbyterian reform of the Church of England, Newbury’s Thomas Parker and James Noyse urged their fellow colonists “to set up some things according to the presbytery.” An assembly of “all of the elders in the country (about 50 in all) [and] such of the ruling elders as would” gathered in Cambridge to discuss these matters.3 While some would later refer to this as a synod, one of those in attendance, Richard Mather, was insistent that “the meeting was not any Synod, as Synods are usually understood.”4 The results of the gathering generally affirmed Congregational ­principles—potential members must demonstrate their fitness, the vote of the lay members was necessary for admitting anyone, and consociation of clergy and assemblies were “comfortable and necessary for the peace and good of the churches” but only as consultative and not governing bodies. Yet the assembly did agree that the exercise of power within a congregation “might be in the eldership in each particular church.”5 The details of Davenport’s participation in the gathering is not described in any source, but his previous writings and later contributions identify him as an advocate for lay authority, a test for membership, and the independence of the individual congregation. While he participated in such clerical gatherings and acknowledged the occasional need for them, he was always suspicious that too-frequent reliance on such meetings would promote a drift toward authoritative synods. Despite these reservations, Davenport was soon gathered again with his fellow clergy.

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The colonial authorities were troubled by Presbyterian works that attacked Congregationalism by blaming the New England Way for the rise of erroneous religious views. To respond to such works, clergy from all of the colonies met in July 1645 in Cambridge, where they “conferred their counsels & examined the writings which some of them had prepared in answer to the said books.” Among the colonial tracts that were “agreed & perfected” were Thomas Hooker’s Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline and Davenport’s The Power of the Congregational Churches. It is possible that Davenport also prepared the defense of baptism he had developed in his effort to dissuade Anne Eaton of her views. Hooker’s Survey and Davenport’s Power were shipped on the Great Ship from New Haven and lost at sea, and other works approved by the colonial clergy may have also been on the vessel. It would be years before those works would be printed.6 Some of the region’s leaders feared that the English Parliament would aggressively promote the Presbyterian system recommended by the Westminster Assembly not only in England but perhaps in the colonies as well. The Bay colonists had tolerated some aspects of Presbyterian polity in the Hingham and Newbury congregations, but Parker and Noyse had continued to complain of the colonial system to their English friends. Adding to that concern was a petition presented to the Massachusetts General Court in 1646. The petitioners, led by their spokesman, Dr. Robert Child, urged the civil magistrates to require the churches to open membership to all godly immigrants who were members of the Church of England. If the colonists recognized the validity of the Church of England, as they claimed, there should be no reason why men and women who were members of that church and came to New England should have to pass special tests to become members of New England churches, have their children baptized, and be eligible for the political franchise. In essence, the petitioners were suggesting a parish-style membership as was typical of episcopal and presbyterian systems, as opposed to the gathered model of congregationalism. The Bay Colony magistrates rejected the petition and took action to prevent the petitioners from appealing to Parliament.7 All of this led some to believe that it was important to produce a clarification of the New England Way as a means of warding off Presbyterian challenges to the church order. In May 1646 the Massachusetts General Court invited the churches of New England to send delegates to a synod or assembly at Cambridge that would produce a definition of orthodox faith and practice in the colonial godly kingdoms. The court was particularly focused on the need to better



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define the qualifications for baptism and membership. The assembly did not meet until September because some churches hesitated to send representatives, fearing that the gathering itself was an infringement on congregational authority. It then met on and off for over two years, eventually accepting as a statement of doctrine the Confession of Faith, which had been crafted by the Westminster Assembly and supported by both English Presbyterians and Congregationalists and its own platforms of church organization.8 Clergy from Connecticut and New Haven were represented at the assembly. It is doubtful that Davenport was there for all the sessions, but he did leave a mark on the proceedings.9 At a meeting of the commissioners of the United Colonies held in New Haven shortly after the assembly was convened, he prompted a resolution that the colonies guard the doors to God’s house by holding to their original rules and practices.10 The General Court’s concern that the assembly address the issue of who was eligible to be baptized reflected a growing concern about the issue. The general practice of the churches in the early years of the colonies seemed to be that children of church members were eligible to be baptized, and that those children were expected to own the covenant by presenting themselves for membership when they reached maturity. This would require them to meet whatever criteria for membership were established by their own congregation. As members, those individuals would then be able to present their own children for baptism. In many churches, however, men and women who had been baptized as infants were not formally joining the church as adults. There were disputes as to whether such individuals were still members of a kind and whether they were entitled to the rights of membership, including that of presenting their children for baptism. As early as 1646 some clergy were arguing that those baptized remained members of the church and had a right to bring their own children to the sacrament whether or not they had formally presented themselves for membership. Davenport’s insistence on restricting baptism to the children of church members had been at the heart of his dispute with John Paget in Amsterdam. The requirements for joining the New Haven church reflected a moderate effort to limit membership to the elect and to restrict baptism to the children of members. Faced with the desire of some members of the Cambridge Assembly to open the sacrament to the children of those baptized whether or not they had themselves been formally admitted as members, Davenport’s opposition to the suggestion, along with that of other purists, led the assembly to defer the issue for the time.11

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The accompanying Platform of Church Discipline was printed by the infant press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1649; commended to the churches of New England by the Massachusetts General Court; and dispatched to England for the consideration of those still debating the reform of the nation’s church. It asserted the Congregational principle that each congregation was an autonomous entity that chose its own ministers and lay elders, and determined its own policies. Assemblies or synods (which were authoritative in a Presbyterian church order) were merely advisory. Yet despite the general approval for the document, many colonists continued to be concerned about what they saw as a move toward establishing an authority (if only advisory) above the individual congregation. In addition to having intervened against a broadening baptism, Davenport also had an influence on the way the Platform addressed the issues of church governance. Years later he reported that he “was present and observed with grief that the tempter was then tempting, . . . and that an hour of temptation was then beginning upon these churches.”12 Davenport maintained a stricter form of Congregationalism than many of his fellow clergy. For him, a clergyman was empowered by a congregation to minister to that particular congregation and to no other. Presbyterians such as John Paget and Newbury’s James Noyse argued that the calling of a minister gave him power to preach and administer sacraments in any church.13 Many of the delegates to the assembly were attracted to such an elevated concept of the power of the ministry. Davenport led the opposition to this and, because of his advocacy, the most that the Platform allowed was that clergy might minister to other congregations if specifically called to do so by that church.14 Davenport consistently maintained that it was the members of the church who received the power of the keys from Christ (and this was one of the reasons he defended a restricted membership), though they had to choose officers through whom they formally exercised that authority.15 During the 1650s, Davenport became involved in a conflict that arose in part from issues of church membership but focused precisely on the authority of a clergyman within a particular congregation and the authority of clerical councils over individual congregations. The dispute erupted in Hartford following the death of Thomas Hooker in July 1647. Hooker’s colleague, Samuel Stone, initially shouldered the burden of the ministry alone. It was not long after Hooker’s death that Stone took steps to introduce the sorts of changes in congregational membership that Davenport had opposed at the



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Cambridge Assembly. Stone had always rejected the need for a narrative of personal spiritual conversion and stood with the practice of demanding a sincere profession of faith as well as evidence of godly living and a willingness to swear to the covenant. These were positions Davenport shared. But now Stone was willing to go further. Writing in 1650 to Richard Mather, the foremost advocate of expanding membership, Stone indicated that unless a new synod dealt with the issue, the Hartford church was prepared to recognize all who had been baptized as members, whether or not they had been considered in their own right.16 Some members of the Hartford congregation were opposed to Stone’s intent, and the division grew greater when the church finally sought to replace Hooker in 1649. Jonathan Mitchell, who had graduated from Harvard in 1647 and was studying with Thomas Shepard, was invited, but he declined the offer to join the Hartford ministry when Shepard died in the summer of 1649 and the Cambridge church invited him to be their new pastor. At some point in the following few years the Hartford congregation invited Michael Wigglesworth to a trial of his preaching. Wigglesworth had been a youngster when his parents had settled in New Haven. He had been raised in the town and educated by Ezekiel Cheever prior to being admitted to Harvard. He received his BA from the college in 1651 and became a fellow. The dates of his preaching in Hartford are uncertain, but in March 1653 he traveled to New Haven to visit his father and seek his advice on entering the ministry. He stayed there for about a month, recording in his diary his attendance on sermons by Davenport and William Hooke. It is possible that it was on this trip that he preached at Hartford. Returning to Harvard, he learned that while the Hartford congregation was in favor of extending him a call to the ministry, their desire to do so had been blocked by Samuel Stone.17 Stone is famous for characterizing New England church practice as “a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy.”18 His unwillingness to allow the congregation to exercise what many believed was their right to call a minister was what triggered the Hartford church controversy.19 When he refused to allow the congregation to vote on Wigglesworth’s qualification, members of the congregation, led by the ruling elder, William Goodwin, were no longer willing to be silent.20 In two “stormy” meetings the church debated the charge that Stone had infringed on the rights of the members. Although Stone acknowledged that “it is a liberty of the church to declare their apprehensions by vote about the fitness of a person for office upon his trial,” he also insisted that “it is a

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received truth that an officer may in some cases lawfully hinder the church from putting forth at this or that time an act of her liberty.” In this particular case he “acknowledge[d] that I hindered the church from declaring their apprehensions . . . concerning Mr. Wigglesworth’s fitness for office in the church of Hartford.”21 At some point in the proceedings Stone either stepped down of threatened to do so.22 The prospect of losing his services rallied many of the congregation to his support. But others, unwilling to surrender what they felt was their congregational rights, on March 12, 1656, informed the majority that they could not “without sin, till we receive other light, join with you in any office acts put forth by Mr. Stone,” thus signifying their withdrawal from the congregation.23 The withdrawers, a significant group that could not easily be coerced, included not only Goodwin but also Connecticut’s Governor John Webster, Deputy-Governor Thomas Wells, and the magistrates John Cullick and John Talbot. In May 1656, the Connecticut General Court, concerned about the division in the Hartford church, but even more about the “difficulties which were generally arising in the colony” with respect to issues of membership and baptism, appointed Webster, Wells, Cullick, and Talbot to meet with elders of the various churches in the colony and to draw up a list of the matters in dispute that could be presented to the general courts of the United Colonies for their advice.24 The impetus for the action was a petition that resembled the Child Petition that had been presented in the previous decade to the Massachusetts authorities seeking a broader, Presbyterian-style church membership. In the meantime, the Hartford church majority proposed that a council of Massachusetts clergy be entrusted with mediating the dispute. The withdrawers preferred ministers from “within the compass of these two neighboring colonies, viz: New Haven and our own, and that out of them each party might have the choice of the elders of four or five churches.”25 This was agreed to by the majority. The minority further requested that if the council could reach no decision, they be dismissed from the Hartford congregation to join another church.26 The council of Connecticut and New Haven elders met in Hartford on June 11, 1656, and heard both sides of the dispute. Though he was likely invited, and must have been keenly interested in the proceedings, Davenport did not attend. He might well have considered himself too close to some of the parties, or the Stone faction may have rejected him because of his known views on lay authority. Of course, the dispute posed a challenge for



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Davenport in this regard, because Stone’s view of clerical authority over the church was actually supported by a majority of the Hartford congregation. Davenport followed the dispute closely. Stone’s desire to consider baptized youths as members without a separate admission process when they reached maturity was the sort of innovation Davenport regarded as the “work of the tempter.” The Hartford’s minister’s assertion of clerical authority also went beyond what Davenport believed proper, and, indeed, the situation must have brought to mind the efforts of Paget to override the Amsterdam congregation in blocking Davenport’s call. The New Haven colony was represented at the council by Peter Prudden of Milford and John Higginson of Guilford. As Higginson later remembered the deliberations, both sides in the Hartford church had agreed to “submit to the definitive sentence of the council.” That body heard both sides and decided that both sides had acted inappropriately and needed to give satisfaction to the other. It was “their duty to yield and give place to that sentence, without any further disputation.” But if this reconciliation proved impossible, then “the dissenting brethren were to crave and the church of Hartford were to give a dismission as the last remedy for peace.” The dissenters accepted the decision of the council, but, according to Higginson, “Mr. Stone hath risen up in way of opposition to the council, setting up his own judgment in his own case against the judgment of the council.”27 Expressing his unwillingness to accept the council decision, Stone left his ministerial post and journeyed to Boston, leaving the church majority to “lament their sad condition, that they should be left as sheep without a shepherd.”28 Shortly after Stone’s arrival in Boston, five of that area’s clergy wrote to the Hartford dissenters. Bemoaning “the wound of so famous a sister church and mother in Israel, still bleeding, if not ulcerating,” they urged that representatives of the withdrawers journey to Boston to discuss the issues. If that was not practical, the Bay Colony elders expressed a willingness for some of them to travel to Connecticut to mediate.29 Shortly thereafter the Bay clergy addressed the Hartford church. Affirming that Hartford had been “a city whose fame hath set you upon a hill,” they pointed out that “the ill savor of such a breach cannot be suppressed within the limits of these colonies.” They urged that the church stay united till a new council, with new members added, could be held.30 The dissenters, for their part, asked why they should “send to the Massachusetts for their elders, who perhaps may not, at least some of them, be so fitted every way for our work,” and implored the

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­ ajority “in the fear of the Lord and for the sake of Christ to yield to that m council that is already given.”31 The church majority, however, chose to invite elders from Massachusetts to meet with them in Hartford. In February 1657 the Connecticut General Court tried to further this new effort by expressing its desire that the delegates to the previous council meet with “the reverend elders that have tendered themselves voluntarily to come up hither and consult.” The court also instructed Stone and the church majority to put in writing what they didn’t like about the findings of the earlier council.32 In April 1657 John Norton and representatives of six other Massachusetts churches left Boston for Hartford “to endeavor (if the Lord please to bless) a reconciliation and renewal of the bond of love and unity” in the Hartford Church.33 The Connecticut and New Haven clergy who had comprised the earlier council were not made part of the discussions, but their findings were among the papers examined and debated. The dissenters later insisted that the meeting “had [n]ever been called or owned by us as a council,” but that they had nevertheless presented their case to Norton.34 While this was going on, having received the broader list of ecclesiastical issues on which Connecticut authorities had sought advice, in October 1656 the Massachusetts General Court called for a synod of the elders of the churches belonging to the New England Confederation. A list of twenty questions to be addressed was forwarded to the other colony governments, together with a request that the synod meet on June 5, 1657, in Boston. New Haven refused to participate. In a statement to the Massachusetts authorities, undoubtedly prepared by Davenport, the New Haven magistrates stated their thanks for the Bay’s “readiness to afford help when the case requires it” but expressed their belief that a synod was not called for since the “elders of Connecticut colony, with due assistance from their court, had been fully sufficient to clear and maintain the truth and to suppress the boldness of such petitions.” They referred to the earlier Child Petition and cited the “precedent you [Massachusetts] gave the colonies some years since, in a case not much differing.” The New Havenites feared “a synod or any such meeting, which in such times may prove dangerous to the purity and peace of these churches and colonies.” Because the meeting was likely to occur without them represented, they beseeched God to bless it, as without such “special blessing, according to the present state and frame of things in Connecticut colony, . . . it . . . may produce sad effects.”35



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Though New Haven chose not to be represented, an answer to the specific questions that were to form the synod’s agenda was prepared by Davenport, approved by the New Haven General Court, and forwarded to the Bay. In regard to the central question of the membership status of baptized children who reach adulthood, it affirmed the belief that such individuals only become actual members “by their personal . . . faith visibly held forth.” They were not to be admitted till “they are grown up to such understanding that the church may look at them as capable of being admitted . . . by their personal faith and covenanting for themselves and their seed as their parents did for themselves and them.” Should they seek to present their children for baptism before they themselves are admitted, they were to be “deemed not to be members” and the privilege of baptizing their children denied. The covenant did not extend to grandchildren. Davenport and the New Haven authorities asserted that when a church member moved from one congregation to another he or she must recovenant with the church in the new home.36 The 1657 Boston synod rejected these positions and proposed the liberalization of church membership that Davenport opposed and that would become known as the Half-Way Covenant. Davenport traveled to Boston in the aftermath of the synod, and on September 10 he preached to the First Church of Boston on the text Luke 13:7–9: “Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none. Cut it down, why cumber the ground. And he, answering, said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it. And if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.” From this he drew the doctrine that “the faithful ministers of the gospel, when they apprehend the [wrath] of God ready to break forth against unfruitful Christians, . . . join with fervent prayer & use of all means to make them fruitful.” The minister’s entire “work and charge” should be “how he may promote the good of the people.” Speaking to a church whose new teacher, John Norton, was a strong proponent of the Half-Way Covenant, Davenport argued that it was the task of the clergy to provide the means whereby God would bring one to take up the covenant, not to open the doors of the church to the unworthy. “Though it be a very difficult thing to make an unfruitful professor become fruitful,” he wrote, “yet because it is possible that by the blessing of God in the use of means,” such as evangelical preaching, that the individual “may become fruitful, this should encourage to fruitful endeavor.” This was why God gave the ministers the gifts they possessed. And if it was the task of the clergy to call them, it was the

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r­ esponsibility of the elect to use the means and by such “improvement by them to be led to the absolute covenant wherein he [God] promises what he calls for.”37 The findings of the Boston synod seem to have reinforced the positions taken earlier by Samuel Stone that had been partially responsible for the Hartford dispute. Stone had participated in the synod, and perhaps saw its recommendations as a vindication of his stand. In August 1657 he wrote a letter to the Hartford church from Boston. He wrote of being old and infirm, and his concern about the lack of a suitable physician to care for him at Hartford. He felt unable to handle all the labor of the ministry and suggested to the church that it might be best if he left to minister in a place where the work would be less burdensome. Having again raised the congregation’s anxiety about being without any minister, he attached a series of propositions that, if agreed to, would bring him back to Hartford. The first of these required the church members to “bind themselves in the presence of God to Samuel Stone their teacher, to submit to every doctrine which he shall propound to them, grounded upon the sacred scriptures.” He asserted that “the members of a church are bound to obey their leaders” and that he needed “proof of you, whether you be obedient in all things.” He wrote that “a church is bound to submit to a convincing argument,” and “if they are not bound to submit to their teacher when they cannot answer his reasons, they degrade him beneath the lowest member of the church.” His second proposition demanded that “the church do bind themselves not to offer, to induce, or bring in any officer to join with Samuel Stone against his will and right reason, and without his consent and approbation.” The third proposition would bind the church to approve of any officer for whom “Samuel Stone can give in sufficient testimony and evidence of his godliness, learning, ability, and fitness for that employment.” Finally, he wanted assurances that the church would procure a physician to settle in Hartford whom he could be confident in.38 Stone’s requirements outraged the dissenters and reopened the division in the Hartford congregation. The majority evidently accepted Stone’s demands, and he returned to Hartford, where he further alienated the dissenters, who viewed his position as a “breach of the pacification.” Goodwin and his allies withdrew from the church and sought to join the nearby congregation at Wethersfield. In yet another attempt to force reunion, in August the Connecticut General Assembly voted “that there be from henceforth an utter cessation of all further persecution . . . on the church’s part at Hartford



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towards the withdrawers from them,” and that the dissenters “shall make a cessation in prosecuting their former propositions to the church at Wethersfield or any other church in reference to their joining there in church relation.”39 The dissenters, however, issued a statement of their position and sent it to the churches in Connecticut and New Haven.40 When John Russell read the statement to his Wethersfield congregation, he was cited by the Hartford Quarter Court on December 3 for “reading a paper . . . which tended to the defamation of Mr. Stone and the Church at Hartford.”41 The next day a group representing the majority of the Hartford church formally complained to the General Court about the dissenters’ characterization of the dispute.42 It was at this point that John Davenport became involved in the controversy. Together with Theophilus Eaton (representing the New Haven magistrates), Davenport responded to the letter of the dissidents, offering sympathy and requesting clarification of the situation. Stone, the majority of the Hartford church, and the Boston synod of 1657 were advancing views of church membership, ministerial authority within congregations, and the authority of church councils that flew in the face of much that Davenport defined as essential to the New England Way. When the Wethersfield church solicited Davenport’s views on whether they were justified in admitting the dissidents, the New Haven clergyman responded in a letter that reflected his views on various aspects of the controversy. Davenport began by stating that the “contentions in the church at Hartford, so long continued and with such distance of spirit, and sharp opposition and bitterness, . . . [were] highly dishonorable to God and Jesus Christ.” Consistent with his lifelong commitment to Christian peace, he reminded everyone that it was their duty to follow “that perfect rule of walking in brotherly love with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the book of peace.” This having been said, he pointed out that both sides had agreed to the original church council in Hartford and “put the whole power of judging one another” in the hands of that council. This was a key point. Councils did not have authority over individual congregations as a matter of course. This particular council was perceived as having authority because the two parties had agreed to accept its determination. Davenport had recently met with the surviving members of the council (Prudden had died) to better understand their proceedings. He stated that that council had produced a “final determination . . . in writing, subscribed by them all as the result of the

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debates they had with both parties.” The council had determined that both sides “should give satisfaction to remove offences on their part,” and that if this proved impossible the dissenters should be dismissed to join another church. Davenport indicated that in their recent meeting with him, “the elders of the said council do further testify that Mr. Stone and the Church at Hartford have violated the determination of that council in both parts of their advice, by their never giving the satisfaction prescribed for the healing of offences, and now by not giving the offended brethren their dismission.”43 Having placed the blame on Stone and the church majority, Davenport justified the admission of the dissidents into the Wethersfield church. The individuals were, he wrote, “known to you and to all the people of God that have acquaintance with them, to be Godly.” Their situation was due to the intransigence of the Hartford church in refusing to dismiss them as the council and the colony’s new governor, John Winthrop Jr., had urged them to. “If all churches should refuse to accept them because the church of Hartford will not dismiss them,” they would “be wholly deprived of church fellowship.” He wrote that he wished from his heart that Stone would relent, but short of that it was appropriate and in keeping with the original council’s findings for Wethersfield to accept them. Interestingly, in light of the argument that had divided Hartford, Davenport made it clear that he did not pretend to speak for or dictate to the New Haven church. His opinion was his alone. He did “believe that this church will be of the same mind, . . . yet I cannot engage therein without their consent.”44 Meanwhile, the Connecticut magistrates had continued to seek their own resolution of the affair. The court in August 1658 ordered each side in the dispute to select three elders before whom the issues were to be debated. The withdrawers chose Davenport, John Norton of Boston and James Fitch of Norwich. The church itself refused to name anyone, and so the court chose for them, naming Thomas Cobbet of Lynn, Jonathan Mitchell of Cambridge, and Samuel Danforth of Roxbury.45 Nothing came of this either, and preparations for the withdrawers to remove to Massachusetts continued. Frustrated, in March 1659 the Connecticut General Court “ordered and appointed” a council to “be helpful in issuing the questions in controversy.”46 The fact was, however, that the court could not order delegates to attend, and this effort also failed. Yet another intervention by the Connecticut General Court produced a council in Boston in September 1659 at which nine churches were represented. Both sides had their case heard and the decision of the council found



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fault with both sides. The dissenters were found to be still members of the Hartford Church, but that body was instructed to dismiss them should they wish. Most did wish to depart and soon left to settle the Massachusetts town of Hadley. John Russell’s support for the group had caused divisions within his Wethersfield congregation. In this case it was the majority that supported Russell. In April 1659 he and some of his supporters left Wethersfield and relocated in Hadley, where he was soon chosen pastor of that town’s congregation.47 Disputes over doctrine as well as polity troubled Davenport in the 1650s and early 1660s. Closely related to the debates over the rights of baptized children that divided the Hartford Church and produced the Half-Way Covenant was the issue of whether any children should be baptized. Following his departure from Massachusetts in 1635, Roger Williams, in his quest for purity, had come to reject the practice of infant baptism, believing that because some who were baptized were not of the elect, the practice contributed to the impurity of the churches. In 1639, Williams and Ezekiel Holliman rebaptized each other and then ten others in Providence. The association of Anabaptist views with such Rhode Island radicals heightened the concerns of the orthodox about the implications of the doctrine. During the 1640s the situation became more complicated as Anabaptist views were adopted by some English puritans, many of whom were orthodox Calvinists and earnest proponents of a New England Congregationalist style church polity. Working together against Presbyterian initiatives in the 1640s brought these “Particular Baptists” and Congregationalists closer together. In 1644 Henry Jessey, a strong supporter of New England, had engaged Thomas Goodwin and Jeremiah Burroughes in a debate over infant baptism within his congregation, and he ended up allowing both infant and adult believer baptism. The Congregationalists approved, stating that “the position taken was held not out of obstinacy but tender conscience and holiness.” In that same year Goodwin, Nye, and other Congregationalist leaders agreed to maintain communion with orthodox Baptist churches such as that ministered to by William Kiffin, who as a youth who had been strongly influenced by John Davenport’s preaching. Hugh Peter was involved in some of the conferences leading to such cooperation. In line with this, Particular Baptists were included with Congregationalists and moderate Presbyterians in the ecclesiastical institutions established by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s.48

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In New England there were few clergy who opposed infant baptism as such. Henry Dunster, president of Harvard, demonstrated his rejection of the practice when he refused to present his newborn son for baptism in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, church in 1654. A delegation of nine ministers and two lay elders sought to dissuade him, but two days of debate failed to budge him. He challenged his colleagues to show him any specific reference to infant baptism in the Scriptures and argued that “John the Baptist, Christ himself, & [the] Apostles did none of them baptize children.”49 Dunster resigned from the college presidency, but no further steps were taken against him, and after a brief stay in Charlestown, he became pastor of the Scituate congregation in Plymouth.50 Some Baptists in the colonies, however, were laymen who preached to one another and came to reject, implicitly at least, the standard puritan insistence on an educated ministry. Some also espoused the belief that man helped to shape his salvation, comparable to the Arminian views of England’s General Baptists. Most New Englanders perceived such individuals as troublesome or disreputable. A number of incidents in 1643 and 1644 drove this home. William Witter, a member of the church in Lynn, Massachusetts, was presented to the County Court in Salem in 1643 for saying that Thomas Cobbett, the pastor, “taught things against his own conscience” in defending infant baptism. Corrected by John Endecott and his fellow magistrates, Witter was soon back in the county court for contending that infant baptism not merely was sinful but also was “a badge of the whore” of Rome.51 Incidents such as these led to a colonial crackdown against Baptists in the mid-1640s. In November 1644 the Massachusetts General Court asserted that “experience hath plentifully and often proved that, since the first arising of the Anabaptists, about a hundred years since, they have been the incendiaries of commonwealths, and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion, and the troublers of churches in all places where they have been.” Furthermore, “they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful have usually held other errors or heresies,” and in New England some of those who have “appeared amongst ourselves . . . have denied the ordinance of magistracy and the lawfulness of making war.” The General Court decreed that any who advanced such views were to be banished.52 Numerous English correspondents criticized the colony’s action, including John Winthrop’s son Stephen, who wrote from England that there “is great complaint against us for our severity against Anabaptists. It doth discourage any people from coming to us for fear they should be banished if



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they dissent from us in opinion.”53 In October 1645 a number of Bay residents, including many merchants and John Winthrop’s brother-in-law Emmanuel Downing, petitioned the General Court for repeal of the act, citing as reasons the complaints of “many godly in England, & that some churches there did thereupon profess to deny to hold communion with such of our churches as should resort thither.”54 According to Winthrop, members of the General Court were in favor of suspending the law, but many of the clergy approached the deputies and then the magistrates to argue that any such suspension would encourage the growth of Anabaptism both in the colonies and in England. The court deferred to the judgment of the clergy and upheld the act.55 The leaders of the Bay continued to take action against disruptive Baptists. Christopher Goodwin of Charlestown expressed his opposition to infant baptism by “throwing down the basin of water in the meeting house.” When the constable tried to interfere, Goodwin struck and kicked him. He was sentenced to pay a fine or be whipped. William Witter had continued to offend the authorities. Two years after having been ordered to apologize for calling baptism the “badge of the whore,” he offended again by saying that they “who stayed while a child was baptized do worship the devil.” He was ordered to appear before the General Court but failed to do so. Because of his advanced age, increasing blindness, and evident respectability in all other regards, the magistrates passed over his noncompliance.56 During the 1640s and 1650s four Bay Colony clergy—George Phillips, John Cotton, Thomas Cobbett, and Thomas Shepard—wrote defenses of infant baptism. Davenport’s position was more in keeping with that of his English friends. He believed in infant baptism, but he did not believe that the contrary view was one that could not be tolerated. When Anne Eaton espoused Baptist views, he labored to persuade her that she was in error, seeking to refute the points presented in the book that Eaton had received from Lady Deborah Moody. The actions the congregation eventually took against her were for her personal conduct, not her Baptist views, and while the church (against Davenport’s inclination) excommunicated her, there was no effort to force her to leave the colony. Unlike Massachusetts, New Haven passed no laws against Baptists. Davenport’s willingness to deal leniently with Baptists would continue to be evident in the 1660s. Another challenge to New England orthodoxy was posed by the arrival of Quakers in the 1650s. Quakerism was a movement that had evolved from the religious agitations of England’s civil wars and their aftermath.

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Troubled as a young man by depression and religious uncertainty, George Fox, who emerged as a leader of the movement, had left his apprenticeship to a shoemaker in 1643 and journeyed to London, seeking what others would call God’s caress. He listened to the preachers attached to the army units he encountered, but that experience did nothing to answer his questions or provide assurance. Returning to his home in the Midlands, he continued to engage local clergy in his search for God. Finally, sometime around 1647, the answer he was seeking came to him, not from an ordained clergyman, but as a voice from within. Over the following years he developed his belief that the Christ who came into the world was indeed in each and every person, providing an inner light that was to be relied on to guide the individual in how to live.57 Fox’s insight proved appealing to many who had been seeking guidance among the cacophony of conflicting religious views. Because it prioritized the message of the inner light over that of all other authority—including the Bible, which remained important but not the last word on faith and conduct—it was a faith that could actively engage the large number of English men and women whose inability to read denied them participation in the spiritual life prescribed by orthodox Protestant leaders. The beliefs that emerged were distinctive. Relying on the inner light within each individual meant that Quakers rejected the need for a formal ministry to guide them. They needed no external sacraments to confirm the connection with God that they found within. They focused on what God wished them to do rather than on obsessing about doctrinal definitions. Among the convictions that they testified to were the beliefs that God wished them to live simply and that all men and women were equal in the eyes of God. The peace testimony was not originally a part of the Quaker testimony, and their enthusiastic expression of their beliefs was anything but quiescent. It was common for Quaker enthusiasts to disrupt the meetings of other religious groups to spread their own message, entering the steeplehouses and excoriating the preachers for their deceit in leading men away from God. They rejected hat service (the practice of doffing one’s hat in the presence of one’s betters) as a violation of the intrinsic equality of all of God’s children, and they similarly refused to address those in authority with the more formal forms of speech used in England at that time to show respect to superiors, preferring more familiar forms such as thee and thou. One of the most charismatic early Quakers was James Naylor, who in 1656 entered the city of Bristol mounted on a horse while his followers cast their garments in his path.



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It was a clear imitation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Whether or not Naylor had confused the presence of Christ within him with he being Christ returned to earth, his performance was enough for him to be denounced for blasphemy. He was sent to London, where the Protectorate Parliament debated his fate, ultimately sentencing him to be whipped brutally, his tongue bored, and B for blasphemer branded on his forehead—a fate many in Parliament considered too mild.58 New Englanders had received reports about the Quakers from English correspondents in the early 1650s. Some of the earliest critics to publish attacks on the sect were former New Englanders. Samuel Eaton, Theophilus’s brother, who had lived briefly in New Haven, published The Quakers Confuted in 1653, branding them “apostates from the true God, from the true Christ, from the true faith in the great fundamentals of it, and to the true worship in the substance of it.” In the same year Thomas Welde and fellow ministers in the area of Newcastle published another attack on the Quakers, The Perfect Pharisee. They particularly focused on the teachings of James Naylor. Welde expressed revulsion at the “trembling of all the parts of their body, groveling upon the ground, foaming at the mouth, horrible noise, running naked into the streets and markets, with other like passions.” He reported their “railing against the ministers, calling them priests, conjurors, thieves, robbers, antichrists, witches, devils, . . . scarlet colored beasts, . . . wolves, dogs, sodomites, etc.” and related how one Quaker had entered a local church claiming “his commission from God to pull down the hour glass.”59 Quaker reliance on the guidance of the inner light evoked memories in New England of the private revelations attributed to Anne Hutchinson and some of her followers. The group’s attack on formal worship and a professional ministry threatened some of the foundations on which the godly kingdom of the colonies rested. In May 1656 the Massachusetts General Court appointed a day of fast and humiliation to “seek the face of God in behalf of our native country in reference to the abounding of errors, especially those of the Ranters and Quakers.”60 Shortly after that fast day, the first Quakers to appear in Massachusetts arrived from Barbados. John Hull believed that they had come “intending to oppose the ministry, and also to breed in people contempt of magistracy.”61 John Endecott, who was governor, was out of town, and so Richard Bellingham presided over the small group of magistrates who met and ordered that Mary Fisher and Anne Austin be jailed, the books they had brought burned, and the ship captain who had brought them required to post a bond

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to guarantee that he would carry them back to Barbados. No sooner had the ship left than another vessel carried four Quaker men and four women into Boston harbor. They, too, were arrested, and the shipmaster obliged to take them away. In response to the mounting threat the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, with John Winthrop Jr. alone showing some hesitation, proposed to the member colonies that they take steps to prohibit the presence of members of the sect in New England. The Massachusetts General Court passed a law in October 1656 requiring that shipmasters who brought Quakers to the colony be fined £100 and give security for taking them away. Quakers were to be committed to the prison, whipped, put to work there, and kept isolated from other prisoners until they were transported. Quaker writings were to be burned, and anyone who defended them was to be fined. New Haven did not respond until the following year, ordering that “no Quaker, Ranter, or other Heretic of that nature be suffered to come into nor abide in this jurisdiction, and if any such rise up among ourselves that they be speedily suppressed and secured, for the better prevention of such dangerous errors.”62 In 1657 the Quakers Anne Burden and Mary Dyer arrived in Boston. Dyer had been a supporter of Anne Hutchinson and followed her to the Rhode Island region in 1638. The Dyers had returned briefly to England in the early 1650s, and there Mary encountered and was convinced by Quaker teachings. She would not be the only supporter of Hutchinson who was drawn to the teachings of the inner light, a fact that confirmed the orthodox in the connection they drew between the early crisis and the assault of the Quakers. When she returned to Massachusetts with Anne Burden, the Massachusetts authorities committed the two women to prison. After a few months, Anne Burden was sent back to England. Dyer, who claimed ignorance of the 1656 statute, was released to her husband and returned to Rhode Island. It soon became clear that the effort to keep the sect out of New England actually stimulated renewed efforts to pierce the walls of the kingdom. John Hull made a perceptive observation when he wrote that “in those parts of the country where they might with freedom converse (as in Rhode Island . . .), they take no pleasure to be.” Instead, they came to Massachusetts, where “they seemed to suffer patiently, and take a kind of pleasure in it.”63 Over the following years Quaker men and women threw themselves into the assault, many returning after having been banished. One of these was Humphrey Norton, an English Quaker who had offered to take George Fox’s place in prison if the latter was freed to continue his preaching.



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Early in 1658 Norton arrived in Southold, one of the Long Island towns that were part of the New Haven colony. He entered the church during services and shouted down the preacher, John Youngs. Norton “slandered and reproached” Youngs, “together with his ministry and all our ministers and ordinances.” The Quaker was apprehended and sent to the town of New Haven, where according to his later account, he was placed in irons “in a cold, open prison,” without “either fire or candle, or any to come to him but such as did abuse him.”64 On March 10 he was brought before the court and charged with having violated the law against Quakers, as well as having disturbed the public peace. The trial proceeded in a crowded town meetinghouse. According to the account contained in the official town records, Norton proceeded to deny most of the central beliefs of the colonists, claiming that “there was no scripture that speaks of a sacrament, nor of infants baptism, nor of a catholic church nor a catholic faith, nor of inherent righteousness, nor of original sin, nor of Christ’s merits, . . . nor the light of scripture, nor a written word of God, nor a visible worship of God, nor a visible covenant, nor a visible faith, nor of visible ordinances.” He further asserted that “men may be brought to perfection in this life, and those ministers which tell people they cannot be made perfect upon earth . . . tell an untruth.” He urged those who heard him to “follow [such ministers] no longer, lest partaking of their sins you partake of their plagues.” In a statement about “magistrates and rulers” the New Haven court found “his drift and scope seems to be to overthrow civil government.”65 While awaiting trial, Norton had prepared a list of eighteen questions for John Davenport, which Davenport answered in court. According to the town records, as Davenport responded, Norton “was so unruly in his tongue, making [a] disturbance as it was much hindrance to Mr. Davenport in speaking.” Though warned to be silent, the Quaker went on “in a boisterous, bold manner of speaking, uttering many words full of error and reproach.” Norton himself claimed that when he tried to answer Davenport, “they caused a great iron key to be tied across his mouth,” to prevent him speaking till Davenport was done.66 After a brief adjournment, the court allowed Davenport and some elders who had traveled from Connecticut to debate further with Norton, but at this point Norton refused to engage with them. When the court reconvened on the next day, he railed against the magistrates and elders, uttering “abominable, erroneous, reproachful [and] wicked speeches.” The court “proceeded to sentence, wherein they are willing to go in the lowest way the case will bear, so as they may but discharge a good conscience

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towards God, with reference to such an offender.” This consisted in ordering that he “be severely whipped and branded on the hand with the letter ‘H,’ for spreading his heretical opinions,” fined, and banished out of the jurisdiction with threats of more severe punishment should he return. Journeying to the Plymouth colony, Norton was arrested and whipped, once for having written to Governor Prince that “the anguish and pain that will enter thy veins will be like gnawing worms lodging betwixt thy heart and liver. When these things come upon thee, and thy back bowed down with pain, in that day and hour thou shalt know to thy grief that prophets of the Lord we are, and the God of vengeance is our God.”67 He next traveled to Boston. He appeared in the Boston Church and interrupted a sermon in which John Norton was preaching against Quakers. Forcibly removed from the meetinghouse, he was brought before the magistrates and sentenced to prison and a whipping. From his cell he wrote a letter to John Endecott in which he warned the governor that when “thou begins with that bloody work of dismembering [the cutting off of ears], the cry of blood will enter into thy house, and the curse of God will be more grievous to thy heart for so doing, than all the earth can add thee comfort.”68 Humphrey Norton’s trial in the New Haven Town Court had been reported to the colony General Court, which approved the proceedings.69 That body then passed new legislation against Quakers, identified as individuals “who take upon themselves that they are immediately sent of God and infallibly assisted by the Spirit, who yet speak and write blasphemous opinions, despise government and the order of God in church and commonwealth, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turn the people from the faith.” Anyone who could be proven to have knowingly brought Quakers to the colony was to be fined £50. Quakers who came into the colony on business or other lawful occasions were to report to the authorities and to have someone accompany them lest they seek to spread their ideas. Efforts to proselytize would lead to imprisonment, whipping, and being sent out of the jurisdiction. Those guilty of returning would be branded with an H for heretic on the hand and sent out of the colony as soon possible. A third offense would be punished with branding on the other hand and imprisonment until sent away. A four-time offender would have his tongue bored. Colonists who succumbed to Quaker preaching would be banished.70 At this time the commissioners of the United Colonies recommended that the various authorities consider imposing the death penalty on those Quakers who refused to stay away.71 Twenty-five Bostonians, including the



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Boston clergymen John Wilson and John Norton, petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to implement the commissioners’ suggestion, and the General Court did so. But the threat of death was not a deterrent. In the summer of 1659 Marmaduke Stevenson, hearing of the Bay Colony’s latest legislation, felt the call of God to travel to the Bay. He was joined there by William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and Nicholas Davis. The four were arrested and banished. Within weeks of their departure, Robinson, Stevenson, and Dyer were back and were arraigned before the General Court. They were quickly sentenced to death, “and well they deserved it” according to John Hull.72 The fact that the court placed an armed guard around the prison and brought them back and forth under guard indicated that the magistrates recognized that their decision was not universally popular, though at this point Hull believed that “most of the godly have cause to rejoice, and bless the Lord that strengthens our magistrates and deputies to bear witness against such blasphemers.”73 On October 27 the three were brought to the Boston Common, Mary Dyer holding the hands of her two friends. Stevenson and Robinson were hung and buried beneath the gallows. Dyer, whose husband had interceded on her behalf, was reprieved, being dismissed into the custody of her son, who brought her back to Rhode Island. So great was the crowd that had gathered to witness the executions that the drawbridge over Boston’s Mill Creek collapsed under the weight of those returning home, with some killed and others injured in the accident.74 Observing these developments from afar, Davenport believed that the Bay authorities had gone too far. New Haven had declined to pass a death sentence bill, and in 1660 they modified their laws to allow local magistrates to use their discretion in imposing fines rather than brandings and imprisonment for first and second offenses.75 Davenport learned that Thomas Temple, Lord Saye and Sele’s kinsman, had offered to carry the Quakers away from Massachusetts at his own expense. Davenport wrote to John Winthrop Jr. that he was “very sorry that the General Court at Boston did not accept Colonel Temple’s motion.” Davenport was strongly opposed to the Quakers, whom he believed had “sinned out of their light” and “stumble and fall at every event of his providence,” denying the trinity, and rejecting the authority of scripture. But he believed that the Quakers saw martyrdom as a means of furthering their cause and that Temple’s offer would have been “a clear way, and incomparably the best expedient for freeing all the colonies from the Quakers, who would have feared that kind of banishment more than hanging, it being a real cutting themselves off from all opportunities and

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liberty of doing hurt in the colonies by gaining proselytes, which would have been more bitter than death to them.”76 Davenport’s analysis proved accurate, as sympathy for the Quakers grew in Massachusetts and more missionaries appeared to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Mary Dyer was hung in 1660 when she returned yet again from banishment, and George Ledra was executed in 1661. It was only after Quakers petitioned Charles II following the Restoration that Massachusetts halted the policy of execution. Meanwhile the colonies that had eschewed inflicting the ultimate penalty on the sect, such as New Haven, were relatively untroubled by Quaker missionaries. Contemporaries often referred to the New England Way, and historians have likewise employed the label to generalize about the church practices and beliefs of the region’s puritan settlers in the seventeenth century. But recent scholarship has pointed out that under the broad tent of orthodox belief and practice lay considerable differences over how churches were run, how they were associated, what opinions were outside the perimeter fence that defined acceptable belief, and how such beliefs should be dealt with. The story of the seventeenth century was one of constant discussion, definition, and redefinition. During the 1640s and 1650s John Davenport was heavily engaged in this process. In terms of church governance he was a zealous defender of the rights of the individual congregation and a believer in the authority of lay members within a particular church. Perhaps because of his emphasis on the power of lay members, he was more insistent than some in guarding entrance to church membership, demanding that applicants be examined as to their lives and their faith. On matters of belief he continued to demonstrate a concern for dialogue with those who advanced questionable doctrines in an attempt to advance Christian unity. In the last decade of his life he would continue to wage those battles in a New England that continued to change.

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J

ohn Davenport had spent much of his life working to reform England and to bring it into a closer union with international Protestantism. Hope for success had perhaps never been as high as in the summer of 1658. Under the Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell had brought Congregationalists, moderate Presbyterians, and Calvinist Baptists together to form a loose form of state church. Commissions had been established to try the qualifications of candidates for church livings, and separate commissions had been established to eject unworthy clergy. Both groups gauged those whom they examined by a rough Calvinist orthodoxy. The Protectorate Parliaments had made efforts to define religious orthodoxy, and though they failed, it appeared that there was a chance for success in the future. For proponents of the New England Way such as Davenport there was an additional reason to be hopeful. Cromwell had surrounded himself with Congregationalist advisers. Davenport’s friends Hugh Peter, Thomas Goodwin, and William Hooke had direct access to the protector. During the summer of 1658 representatives of the nation’s Congregational churches were invited to a meeting to be held at the Savoy Palace in late September. Responses were to be sent to Henry Scobell, a clerk to Cromwell’s Council. William Hooke, appointed by Cromwell to be master of the Savoy, hosted the meeting. Among the delegates were Goodwin, Owen, Philip Nye, William Bridge, William Greenhill, and Joseph Caryl. The former New Englanders Hooke, Comfort Starr, and John Knowles, and probably Increase and Nathaniel Mather, were in attendance as well. After a few weeks of deliberations the assembly agreed to the Declaration of Faith and Order. They endorsed the Westminster Assembly Confession of Faith. On matters of polity they adopted a Congregational system 277

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that owed much to the New England Way, and specifically to the Cambridge Platform of church order that the colonists had adopted in 1648. The delegates were prepared to present their findings to the lord protector, and it is possible that they anticipated their work as forming the basis for a new national church settlement.1 William Hooke proudly sent Davenport a copy of the declaration. Hopes were also high for the type of unitive efforts that Davenport had long advocated. The authors of the Savoy Declaration had minimized what separated them from Presbyterians as “differences between fellow servants.” Equally promising was the revival of some of John Dury’s efforts to bring English Protestants to the aid of their continental brethren. From 1654 to 1657 Dury had traveled through Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland promoting Christian unity with Cromwell’s support. In 1658 Dury published The Earnest Breathings of Foreign Protestants . . . for a Complete Body of Practical Divinity. This was a renewal of the effort to publish translations of puritan works of practical divinity that Davenport had contributed to in the 1630s. The tract contained a copy of the original letter by foreign divines praising English contributions to practical divinity and seeking translations that would aid them in their own ministerial efforts. Dury explained how the original effort to produce such works had failed but how he hoped the new leaders of England’s church and state would support the project. Dury sent information about this project and his other unitive efforts to Davenport and to the leading clergy in Boston. The cover letter was dated March 1, but it didn’t reach Boston until mid-September. The ministers there immediately prepared a response to be signed by those in the Boston area, promising to get a broader subscription as soon as possible.2 Thirtynine clergy, led by John Wilson and John Norton, together with Harvard president Charles Chauncey and four of the college fellows, endorsed Dury’s efforts, though asserting that while they did not “strive for truth without making reckoning of peace, neither do we pursue peace with loss of truth.”3 Davenport responded separately, beginning his letter by recalling how in earlier days “while the fire of schism had been raging, the hateful fury had miserably torn to pieces the churches that should have been held together in the strictest bonds of love and unity . . . and wounded one another to death,” with many clergy taking “the part rather of bad wranglers than of good preachers.” Fortunately, however, “the keeper of Israel, the God of Peace, hath put it into the hearts of many churches and rulers to apprehend it necessary that a cure should be sought for those wounds,” and “Behold!



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The minds of good men do with a raised hope expect a happy close of these mischiefs, and with all hearty prayers do beseech the father of mercies that he would . . . please to direct the counsels and actions of his servants for the glory of his holy name.” Davenport praised Dury for his efforts and insisted that while “the toleration of our erroneous brethren should not be without rebuking, . . . it should be without rejecting of such brethren.”4 In a separate letter, Davenport commended Dury, Hartlib, and Comenius as “three witnesses against this unthankful age,” and he deplored the inadequacy of support they had received in England. He reported that he would “proceed in my ministry according to the project for a Body of Practical Divinity, which I do highly approve,” and indicated that he would “be ready to publish my pastoral labors in preaching suitably to that good and necessary design.”5 An important setback for the cause of reform in New Haven at this time was the death of Theophilus Eaton. On the evening of January 7, 1658, he supervised his household’s evening worship as he was accustomed to. Anne Eaton was ill and he asked the members of the household to be considerate of her condition. After eating and taking a walk, he stopped in Anne’s room to bid her goodnight. He confided to her that he was saddened by the disputes in the Hartford church. When she suggested that they return to England—something she had urged on him previously—he indicated that while she might, he would die in New Haven. Retiring to his room, he was heard to be groaning around midnight. A servant went to check on him, and he said he felt very ill. Shortly thereafter he passed away.6 He was mourned, according to Cotton Mather, as “the guide of the blind, the staff of the lame, the help of the widow and orphan, and all the distressed; none that had a good cause was afraid of coming before him,” although “he was a terror to evil doers.”7 Davenport had known Eaton from his youth in Coventry. The two had become fast friends when Eaton moved into the London parish of St. Stephen’s in the late 1620s. They had served as the Moses and Aaron of the New Haven Jerusalem since the founding of the colony. In the years to come Davenport would fail to find the same sense of partnership with the colony’s new civil leaders. The high hopes for reform in the summer of 1658 gave way to an autumn of despair. In the late summer of that year Oliver Cromwell’s health began to deteriorate, and his spirits were burdened by the slow and painful death of his

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beloved daughter Elizabeth from cancer. He developed a chest infection and pneumonia and died on September 3. In describing the death of the protector to his New England friends, William Hooke observed that September 3 was “the day that the great victory was obtained at Dunbar, and likewise at Worcester,” two of Cromwell’s great successes. “There was,” he continued, a “terrible wind on that week wherein he died, which did rend many great trees, and tore up some by the roots.” As he lay on his deathbed, “many prayers were put up solemnly for his life,” and “he had the help of five or six very able physicians, but no help was effectual to save his life.” Hooke noted that many of those who were close to the protector were confident that God would spare him and that Cromwell himself “had thoughts that he should have outlived this sickness.”8 Cromwell’s death was a devastating blow to the puritan cause, and one of those who attended him at the end wailed that God had spit in their faces.9 “The Humble Petition and Advice” was the instrument of government that England was operating on, and it gave to the protector the sole power to name an heir. On his deathbed Oliver had named his son Richard, whom Hooke described as “of another frame, more soft and tender” than his father, “of a sweet countenance, vivacious and candid.” All of this might have made him a good companion but not necessarily the ruler England needed. Hooke continued to serve in the Protectorate household, as did other Congregational clergy. The Congregational churches delivered a supportive address to Richard. Thomas Goodwin preached at the opening of his first Parliament in January 1659, and John Owen preached to the assembly a week later. The results of the Savoy Assembly were submitted to the new protector, possibly with the thought that he would seek to enact them into law.10 In the months that followed Richard’s accession to the post of lord protector, what might be called the puritan coalition began to fragment. Hooke observed that “God’s people” were “divided in Council, Parliament, Militia, [and] are slow to combine, and to endeavor speedy union, though it be the only outward means visible of our safety.” Conservative forces in Parliament clashed with leaders of the army, whereas royalist forces took hope. The fact was, Hooke wrote, that despite the efforts of puritans to reshape the nation, “the old ways and customs of England as to worship are in the hearts of most, who long to see the days again which once they saw.”11 In May the old Rump Parliament was recalled. A few weeks later Richard resigned his position. In October a faction of the army dissolved the Rump. Then, General George Monck led the parliamentary forces stationed in Scotland south.



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Monck recalled the Long Parliament as it had existed before Pride’s Purge. That body called for new parliamentary elections and dissolved itself. The new “Convention Parliament,” reassured by promises secured by Charles Stuart (the son of Charles I) in the Declaration of Breda, invited the heir to return to England, and in May 1660 he entered London. The puritan regime had come to an end. New Englanders followed the news with growing concern. Years earlier the elder John Winthrop had commented that “it was so usual to have false news brought from all parts, that we were very doubtful of the most probable reports.”12 Davenport was fortunate in that he had regular correspondents whose accounts he trusted, and he freely shared the intelligence he received with other colonists. But he, too, was often in the dark. As he struggled to follow the events in England, Davenport tried to place them in terms of his understanding of the approach of the millennium, seeking to “see how things work towards the accomplishment of the prophecies that concern these times, and to know how to pray suitably to changes of providence.”13 It was August 1659 when he heard of Richard Cromwell having been “reduced unto the state of a private person” and of the recall of the Long Parliament. He noted that “the people seem to be well pleased with this change, and to promise themselves great good thereby,” but he quoted from Virgil’s Aeneid to warn of what might seem to be gifts. In fact, he was suspicious that “the Jesuits have a hand in turning the wheel to introduce the King of Scots,” and how foreign powers might be conspiring in this effort “with hopes of reducing England . . . to become, as in former times, the pope’s ass.” Such developments, he believed, “may make way for the slaying of the witnesses, which is the first thing to be done before their rising, and the burning of Rome, and the calling of the Jews.”14 Demonstrating the uncertainty of news, in March 1660 Davenport passed on to John Winthrop Jr. news, received via Boston, which he believed to be “a true narrative of the state of things in England”—a report that claimed that “a Parliament is assembled for the establishment of that great Commonwealth upon sure foundations of truth and righteousness by the blessing of the most high.”15 The following month he was less sure but continued to “hope that things in England are in a hopeful way.”16 By August the situation in England was clear, and Davenport expressed his hope that “sundry of our relations and friends were well settled in these ends of the earth.” He was nevertheless confident that “the Lord reigns and his counsels shall stand.”17 A trickle of arrivals from England brought news of events

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there and of the situation of friends, and William Hooke, who had been ill, recovered and was able to once more supply trustworthy accounts of events.18 Davenport’s concern for friends was certainly justified as the Cavalier Parliament deliberated on whom to exempt from the pardon promised by Charles II. In September Davenport reported that he had learned that concerning “those who were of the High Court of Justice and condemned the former king, their estates are confiscate, 20 of them imprisoned, three of them like to die, viz. Jones, Harrison, and Saye (if I do not misread) and that Dr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, and Mr. Peters are in prison and likely to lose their lives.”19 Demonstrating the uncertainty of the news reaching the colonies, the elderly Lord Saye and Sele was not in danger of losing his life but instead was appointed a privy councilor in June 1660 as Charles II tried to reach out to the opposition; and neither Goodwin nor Nye was imprisoned, though they lost their livings. In August 1660, however, John Jones, Thomas Harrison, and Hugh Peter were among the 104 men omitted from the act of indemnity that granted pardon to those responsible for the execution of Charles I. All three were subsequently tried and executed. The Restoration saw a new spurt of puritans crossing the Atlantic to seek shelter in the godly kingdoms, and among the arrivals in July 1660 were two men who had been exempted from royal pardon and were fleeing the king’s justice, Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe. Both had been members of the court that tried and condemned Charles I. Whalley was the brother of Jane Whalley Hooke and a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. It is possible that he was a kinsman of John Davenport’s wife, Elizabeth. He had received his BA from Emmanuel College, moved to London, and become a member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1627. He took up arms at the start of the conflict with the king and by 1643 was a major in his cousin Cromwell’s regiment of horse. When the New Model Army was formed, he was given command of one of the two regiments of horse. Whalley fought at Naseby and after the defeat of the king the regiment was charged with guarding Charles for a time. In January 1649 he was named one of the commissioners for the trial of the king, attended all but one session, and signed the king’s death warrant. In 1650 he accompanied Cromwell to Scotland and was wounded at the Battle of Dunbar. He represented Nottinghamshire in the first Protectorate Parliament and was named one of Cromwell’s major generals, being assigned responsibility for securing the peace of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Warwickshire. In that capacity he



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demonstrated a commitment to moral reformation but a conciliatory approach to those who differed from him.20 William Goffe was the son of Stephen Goffe, who had been rector of Bramber, Sussex, until removed from his living for organizing a puritan petition against the policies of James I. While his father was an advocate of religious reform, William’s older brother Stephen was a dedicated supporter of the bishops and an agent of Archbishop Laud in the crackdown against puritan congregations in the Netherlands in the 1630s. He had particularly exerted himself to block Davenport’s call to the English Church in Amsterdam. Stephen later became a Roman Catholic priest and ally of Sancta Clara (Christopher Davenport) in trying to extend Catholic interests in postRestoration England. William Goffe became a freeman of the Grocers’ Company in London on the eve of the Civil War, at which time he joined the army. In 1645 he was a captain in a regiment of foot. He played a prominent role in the army debates at Putney, showing strong political and religious views and a belief in the rapid approach of the millennium. Goffe’s interpretations of the book of Revelation swayed many to the necessity of putting the king on trial. He was named one of the commissioners for the trial and signed the king’s warrant. At some point he married Frances, daughter of Edward Whalley. Goffe served in the first Protectorate Parliament in 1654. In 1655 he participated in suppressing an uprising in the west country and then was named one of the major generals, charged with the counties of Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire. In the parliamentary debates concerning how to punish the Quaker James Naylor, he showed himself a zealous opponent of that sect. He was a dedicated supporter of Oliver Cromwell, was present at the protector’s deathbed, and readily transferred his support to Richard Cromwell. Both Whalley and Goffe had little reason to expect lenient treatment from Charles II and left England before the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion exempted them from pardon. Their decision to flee to New England was a logical one. Both were Congregationalists. Whalley had welcomed his sister Jane and her husband, William Hooke, when they returned to England. These connections probably helped to determine him to seek refuge in the colonies, and Goffe decided to accompany him. The two may also have been urged to seek refuge in New England by their friend Daniel Gookin, a resident of Massachusetts who during the 1650s had spent time in England, where he earned the trust of Oliver Cromwell.21 Accompanying them

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on their journey was William Jones, who had married Theophilus Eaton’s youngest daughter and was coming to settle in New Haven. If the two regicides had determined that flight was the better part of valor, New Englanders must have realized that befriending them would earn royal disfavor. And yet that is exactly what happened. Informed of Whalley and Goffe’s arrival in the colonies by William Jones, Davenport welcomed the news, referring to them as “both godly men.”22 Massachusetts Governor Endecott embraced them and welcomed them warmly as heroes who had fought on the side of God in the conflicts of the previous decades. Endecott dismissed the complaints of Thomas Breedon, a Boston royalist who objected to the reception given to “declared traitors and murderers.”23 Whalley and Goffe attended lectures and Sabbath services and were admitted to the Lord’s Supper because they had testaments of their membership in English congregations. One contemporary reported that “they preached and prayed, and gained universal applause and admiration, and were looked upon as men dropped down from heaven.”24 A short time after their arrival, news of the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion reached New England. Harboring the regicides would likely bring down the wrath of King Charles, but the Bay Colony’s leaders couldn’t agree to send them back to the type of judgment that would await them in England. In February 1661 Endecott convened some of the magistrates to discuss the situation, and a few days later Whalley and Goffe slipped out of Cambridge, making their way toward New Haven. A few days after their departure, official word of their being wanted in England was received in Massachusetts, and the Court of Assistants issued a warrant for their apprehension. This was intended to demonstrate compliance with the king’s wishes, but no real effort was made to track and secure them. When a specific royal mandate for their arrest was received, Endecott commissioned Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, two newly arrived merchants who were known to be ardent royalists, to capture Whalley and Goffe. This was another case of merely appearing to respond to the king’s wishes because, being new to the colonies and failing to receive cooperation from the settlers, Kellond and Kirk were doomed to fail. In the aftermath of the Restoration, Davenport had preached a sermon sequence in which he tried to make sense of the turn of events in England. Because he had not anticipated the completion of New Jerusalem and the inauguration of the thousand-year rule of the saints during his lifetime, but rather a Middle Advent in which the inspiration of the Spirit would bring

Title page from John Davenport, The Saints Anchor-Hold.

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men closer to the biblical ideal, Davenport was not as disillusioned as many other puritans who dreamed that the millennium was imminent. Published in England through the assistance of William Hooke and Joseph Caryl, The Saints Anchor-Hold in All Storms and Tempests (1661) began by acknowledging the “frustration and disappointment” of many colonists, who, “when they have given up their names unto Christ, looked for peace, prosperity, and good days, but find troubles, crosses, and afflictions of various kinds.” He counseled them that “God’s deferring of the rule of the saints is no empty space but a time of fitting his church and people for the good things promised.” The trials the colonists faced were like a physic, and “when the sick humor is purged out, then comes health.” In words that could easily be seen as applying to the regicides, Davenport told his congregation to “withhold not countenance, entertainment, and protection from such [persecuted people], if they come to us from France, Germany, England, or any other place.” In the course of the sermons he also cited the text of Isaiah 16:3–4: “Hide the outcasts, betray not him that wandereth; let mine outcasts dwell with thee Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.” While the application to the regicides seems clear enough in the printed sermon, it may well have been even more direct when Davenport preached to his congregation.25 Davenport’s insight into the meaning of the times was based not only on his understanding of the Scriptures but also on an examination of unusual natural phenomena for their providential message. In the late 1650s the commissioners of the United Colonies had desired “Mr. Davenport, Mr. Higginson, and Mr. Pierson to gather up the most remarkable passages of God’s providence which hath been observable in these parts from their first beginnings, which may be a help towards the compiling of a history of the gracious providences of God to New England.”26 He began collecting a record of such “illustrious providences,” including thunder and lightning, comets, destructive storms, rainbows, epidemics, and catastrophic fires considered divine warnings or judgments. After his death, his collection of such events was discovered among his papers by Increase Mather, who shared the manuscript with other ministers, added to it, and published the results as An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684).27 Following a seven-week journey through the winter landscape of New England, Whalley and Goffe arrived at New Haven on March 7, 1661, and took up lodging in the Davenport home. A few weeks later they learned of Kellond and Kirk’s pursuit, and they briefly traveled to Milford, making their



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presence there widely known so that the pursuers would believe that they were en route to New Netherland, where they would be able to take ship for a foreign refuge. Having laid that false scent, they returned to New Haven, spending some time with the Davenports and some with the Jones family. Meanwhile, Kellond and Kirke had traveled to Hartford, where Governor John Winthrop Jr. moved them on to the New Haven colony. The agents journeyed to Guilford and presented their credentials to William Leete, who had become acting governor of New Haven on the death of Francis Newman in the previous November. The two arrived on a Saturday and Leete stalled the agents by refusing to aid them because the sun had set and the Sabbath was being observed. A dissident colonist informed Kellond and Kirke that the regicides were at Davenport’s home in New Haven, that the clergyman had laid in £10 for provisions to feed them, and that Whalley and Goffe had addressed the town militia on a training day. While their pursuers cooled their heels in Guilford, the two regicides moved first to a mill a few miles from town, and then into the neighboring woods.28 When Kellond and Kirke reached New Haven, they were unable to find their prey. They demanded that Leete authorize them to search homes in the colony, but the governor declined, claiming that he needed the approval of the magistrates to approve such an action. Pressed by the agents, he wavered, but the intervention of the magistrates Matthew Gilbert of New Haven and Robert Treat of Milford prevented the issuance of a warrant. When the General Court finally met and a warrant was granted, it was too late. Frustrated, Kellond and Kirke followed the false trail to New Netherland, from where they returned by sea to Boston. There Governor Endecott commended them on their efforts, and the Bay Colony rewarded them with land grants for their service. The two regicides were harbored in New Haven. A cave on top of West Rock was prepared for them, though they were offered homes to spend very bad weather in, and on at least one occasion they were seen in the town, even attending services in the church. In August they took up residence with Michael Tomkins in Milford, where they stayed for two years. They then moved to Hadley, a town north of Hartford where Davenport’s friend John Russell was pastor of a congregation that included many of the Hartford dissidents. Whalley and Goffe were still fugitives and harboring them was a serious crime. Davenport was well aware that someone with a grudge against him or the colony might report those sheltering the fugitives to royal authorities. At a September 1661 meeting of the commissioners of the United

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Judges’ Cave, where Whalley and Goffe hid. Photo by the author.

Colonies, the representatives passed a resolution admonishing “all persons within the said colonies not to receive, harbor, conceal, or succor the said persons so attainted,” with one of the New Haven commissioners being the only one to dissent.29 Davenport was concerned enough about the consequences of sheltering the regicides that he sought to deflect blame from himself and the colony. In August 1661 he wrote to Thomas Temple, a nephew of Lord Saye and Sele whom Cromwell had appointed governor of Nova Scotia following the capture of that French territory by the forces of Robert Sedgwick and John Leverett. Saye and Sele had intervened to have Temple confirmed in the post by Charles II. In fact, Temple spent little time in Nova Scotia, preferring to exercise his authority from Boston, where he engaged in trade and real estate speculations.30 Davenport wrote to him on a number occasions at this time, introducing himself as a friend of Temple’s kinsman, “Viscount Saye and Sele, unto whom I have been continually, nearly 40 years past, exceedingly obliged for sundry testimonies.” He cited favors Saye and Sele had done for him, “when I lived in London, and when I was in Holland, and after my return thence to London, and since my abode in this wilderness.” He presented Temple with a copy of an account of the regicides’ stay in New



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Haven, which he stated that he had previously sent to the Massachusetts authorities. It was an account designed to deflect blame from the colonists. Davenport asked Temple, whom he believed was preparing to journey to England, to present the statement to the royal authorities and to solicit the help of Lord Saye and Sele in defending Davenport and his colony.31 Although he might have deplored “possible misrepresentations of mine actions and intentions,” and maintained his “innocency,” the fact is that Davenport had sheltered Whalley and Goffe and continued to have contact with them. While they were at Milford he served as the conduit for letters directed to them, particularly those from their English kin, and on at least one occasion he visited them. He was instrumental in their move to Hadley. Charles II knew that the New England colonies had supported what he viewed as the rebellion against and murder of his father. Many colonists had returned to England to assist in the struggle, and many had served prominently in the Cromwellian church and state. Two of the men executed for the regicide—Henry Vane and Hugh Peter—were closely associated with New England. Rhode Island, which existed as a result of a charter granted by Parliament, recognized Charles II in October 1660 and took steps to have its legitimacy confirmed by a royal charter. The other puritan colonies did nothing to improve their reputation in Restoration England when they were slow to recognize the new monarch. Plymouth waited until June 1661 before petitioning the king for the “confirmation of their religious and civil liberties and privileges conferred by patent by his royal grandfather (who well knew the ends his servants aimed at in their transplantation).”32 Only after English correspondents confirmed that the new regime was likely to be permanent and that enemies of the Bay Colony were flocking to bring their complaints to the king did Massachusetts implicitly acknowledge Charles by petitioning him to uphold their charter rights. That letter was considered insufficient, and it was not until August 1661 that a special session of the Massachusetts General Court approved a new address to the king that was sufficiently “congratulatory and lowly.”33 At about the same time Governor Endecott wrote explaining the steps taken by the Massachusetts authorities to apprehend Whalley and Goffe.34 The king was, finally, publicly proclaimed in Massachusetts on August 8, “in the best form we were capable of, to the great rejoicing of the people, expressed in their loud acclamations, God save the king!” followed by salutes from the trained bands, the fort, and the ships in the harbor.35

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Connecticut did nothing to recognize the king when its General Assembly met in October 1660, but in the following February a special session of the legislature decided to petition the king for his favor, a decision ratified a month later. John Winthrop Jr., the colony’s governor, had by then determined to journey to England himself to protect the colony’s interests. In May 1661 the colony’s General Assembly approved a fulsome petition to the king, explaining that “since inhabiting the more westerly parts of that wilderness,” they had not “had any opportunities, by reason of the late sad times,” to seek a royal charter. They pointed to all their labors in extending the king’s dominions and to the heavy expense of having bought out the claims of the Saybrook proprietors. They shrewdly stated that they had declined to approach “any of the late rebellious powers for further privileges,” but now, upon the restoration of the monarchy, and having proclaimed Charles II as their king, they wished to have their situation regularized.36 New Haven was quite possibly the most resistant of all the commonwealths to the new royal regime, and its situation was hardly helped when Kellond and Kirke filed a report with the English Privy Council documenting the efforts of that colony to obstruct their apprehension of the regicides. At the May 1661 court of elections, three of the men selected as magistrates refused to take the oath of office, Benjamin Fenn stating specifically that he feared that this might oblige him to carry out orders to the colony from “without,” meaning England.37 Warned by the Bay authorities and by English correspondents that the king was offended by the colonists’ reluctance to accept the Restoration, the New Haven General Court finally took action. On August 21, 1661, the court ordered that the king should be proclaimed the following morning, “and the military company was desired to come to the solemnizing of it.” The statement that was sent to England excused the tardiness on the ground that they had received no order to do so and explained their final decision as a desire to concur with what the other colonies had done. Indeed, New Haven was the last colony to proclaim the new king.38 Rather than accept the rule of Charles II, some of the New Haven settlers began negotiations with Peter Stuyvesant, the director general of New Netherland, for permission to settle in the region of that colony that would later become New Jersey. As the talks progressed, the New Netherland authorities demonstrated a willingness to grant the colonists permission to settle, to have full freedom to organize their churches and practice their faith as they wished, and to have free trade with the English as well as the Dutch. They were not willing to grant the New Havenites full political and legal



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autonomy, insisting that the Dutch authorities choose magistrates (though from names nominated by the English), have the right to ratify any laws proposed, and hear appeals from the courts held by the English. In the spring of 1662 these talks were placed on hold as Stuyvesant awaited approval of the terms from his superiors in the Netherlands, and the colonists drew back while exploring what seemed to be Charles II’s willingness to accept the New England status quo with only minor modifications.39 Seeking to take advantage of the difficulties New Haven was likely to encounter with the king, some Connecticut officials began to assert their territorial rights to land claimed by their sister colony. Challenging an effort by the town of New Haven to set some of its bounds in April 1660, the Connecticut authorities dispatched a letter in which they claimed that the land in question belonged to their colony. They asserted their “real and true right to those parts of the country where you are seated, both by conquest, purchase, and possession.” While acknowledging that New Haven was a separate colony (something that had been conceded in the formation of the United Colonies), the Connecticut officials demanded that New Haven produce “anything extant on record” that would substantiate their territorial claims.40 Both colonies had been settled within the jurisdiction of the Warwick patent granted to the Saybrook proprietors, but whereas Connecticut had purchased the right to their land from George Fenwick, the sole proprietor settled in New England, New Haven’s claim on the basis of that grant was less substantial.41 Having learned early in 1661 of Connecticut’s intent to seek recognition and a royal charter, New Haven’s William Leete visited Winthrop Jr. and discussed with him the possibility of the river colony seeking a single patent that would include New Haven geographically while allowing it full political and religious autonomy—something like the situation the colonists originally proposed for themselves if they were to move into the Dutch jurisdiction. Leete was to play a key part in the events leading to the end of the New Haven colony. One of the original proprietors of Guilford, he had been affiliated with a faction of younger men that had challenged the leadership of Eaton and Davenport.42 Upon Eaton’s death Leete had been elected deputy governor, much to the surprise of Davenport, who had anticipated that Stephen Goodyear would replace his old friend as the chief magistrate, with Francis Newman as deputy. In the event, perhaps because Goodyear was temporarily away in England, Newman was chosen for the top post with Leete as deputy.43 Following Newman’s death in November 1660, Leete

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assumed the governorship and was subsequently reelected every year until the colony’s dissolution. It had taken the intervention of his fellow magistrates to stiffen Leete’s resolve not to grant a warrant to Kirke and Kellond, which further divided him from Davenport.44 Leete had soon regretted his role in sheltering the regicides. When the Massachusetts authorities sent a pro forma complaint about New Haven’s actions, Leete apologized.45 Fearful of how the king would regard his actions, he asked Boston’s John Norton to request the English Presbyterian Richard Baxter (who was playing a role at court in seeking accommodation for dissenters) to intercede with the royal authorities on Leete’s behalf.46 Having previously visited with the Connecticut authorities, in August 1661 Leete wrote to John Winthrop Jr. as the latter was preparing to leave for England. Writing, as he acknowledged, “without the consent or knowledge of any” in New Haven, Leete proposed that Winthrop seek a single charter that would incorporate all of the original Saybrook patent, New Haven, and Connecticut, as well as the New Haven claims to land along the Delaware.47 He suggested that while such a charter would incorporate New Haven, there “would be no control to our jurisdiction, until we accorded with mutual satisfaction.”48 John Winthrop Jr. was on good terms with Leete, and he may have known that there were some opponents of the New Haven establishment who saw merger with Connecticut as to their advantage. But Winthrop Jr. was particularly close to John Davenport. Davenport had helped to facilitate Winthrop’s entry into the Hartlib circle and had shared with Winthrop letters and tracts he received from Hartlib, Dury, and other English correspondents. Davenport had been a strong supporter of Winthrop’s efforts to establish an iron works in the New Haven colony and an advocate for drawing Winthrop to New Haven by providing him a house in the town. Winthrop had advised Davenport on the clergyman’s physical troubles and had provided Elizabeth Davenport with medical advice and supplies to help her minister to New Haven’s ill. He had to have recognized that Davenport and many other colonists would be firmly opposed to any form of merger with Connecticut. Some critical letters that are alluded to in the surviving sources have been lost, but Davenport certainly believed that his friend would respect the interests of New Haven in his dealings with the crown.49 During Winthrop’s stay in London (where for a time at least he dwelled in the parish of St. Stephen’s Coleman Street) he continued to correspond with Davenport.50



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Whatever Winthrop’s intentions were, other Connecticut magistrates clearly wished to absorb New Haven and to extend their colony’s eastern border at the expense of Rhode Island. Winthrop’s instructions from Connecticut’s General Assembly instructed him to do exactly that. On arriving in England the Connecticut governor called on various English friends to assist him in advancing his cause. He sought the help of the elderly Lord Saye and Sele and other puritan grandees who had been accepted into the new regime, some of whom he had met and worked with before. Through correspondence about scientific and educational matters he had cemented a strong relationship with Samuel Hartlib, who then introduced him to leading English scientists such as Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir Robert Boyle. Another old friend, Sir William Brereton, proposed Winthrop for membership in the newly formed Royal Society. These contacts with leading intellectuals of the day were significant because the government was drawing on the expertise of these men. Winthrop also came to London with financial resources to provide gifts to men of influence who were not inclined by ideology or friendship to help the Connecticut cause. At first, Winthrop’s application for a charter moved quickly toward approval. His request was granted within weeks, and the document drawn up; dated April 23, 1662; and enrolled and sealed a few weeks later. Under its terms, Connecticut was incorporated as a self-governing body, with its existing political structure allowed to continue. The colony’s bounds were stipulated as everything south of the Massachusetts line to Long Island, with an eastern border on Narragansett Bay and a western domain extending to the Pacific Ocean. On May 8, 1662, Winthrop was seeking information on passage to America, planning to return triumphantly to the colony. In June one of Davenport’s correspondents wrote that he did not, in his “small judgment, perceive any great fear of alteration of our government and old patent, & the rather because Mr. John Winthrop, agent for Connecticut and New Haven, hath gotten a new patent for those parts, with enlargement of their jurisdiction.”51 This individual assumed that New Haven would continue in its own ways, though part of Connecticut. Another correspondent, Henry Rutherford, a New Haven colonist then in England, was less sanguine, indicating that “Mr. Winthrop hath almost finished concerning their patent,” and he suggested a possible reason for concern when he wrote that “whether it doth not take in New Haven a little time will declare it.”52 But the breathtaking scope of Connecticut’s ambitions soon called the charter into question. Having gained sight of the document, Rhode Island’s

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John Clarke, in England representing his own colony’s interests, appealed to the king on the grounds that the grant to Connecticut swallowed up half of his colony. The dispute dragged on for more than a year, till in April 1663 Winthrop and Clarke agreed to a complicated boundary settlement proposed by a panel of five arbitrators. Time would prove the compromise unworkable, but in the short term it allowed Winthrop to support Clarke’s request for a Rhode Island charter, which was awarded in July 1663.53 One of the consequences of this dispute was that Winthrop was still in England when news of the original Connecticut charter, and the incorporation of the New Haven settlements into the colony, reached New England. It is possible that Winthrop had planned to broker a process that would have allowed New Haven’s settlements to remain autonomous within the larger colony until such time as they willingly desired to amalgamate. It is certain that he did not expect his fellow magistrates in Connecticut to act on the incorporation of New Haven before he returned to take part in the process. Soon after a copy of the new charter was received in Hartford in October 1662, it was read out at the General Assembly. Elections were held, and the new officers of the colony were installed. The Connecticut authorities took quick steps to assert their authority over the New Haven towns, appointing officers and admitting citizens as freemen of Connecticut. At least some of the residents of towns such as Southold, Stamford, Guilford, and Greenwich were more than happy to consider themselves part of Connecticut.54 The Connecticut authorities sent a committee that included Samuel Stone, the teacher of the Hartford congregation, to declare the new order to the New Haven authorities. Stone was likely more than happy to announce the new order to those who had sided with the dissidents in the Hartford church. The declaration he proclaimed asserted that “through the providence of the most high, a large and ample patent” had been granted to Connecticut, whereby the king had “united us in one body politic.” While the Connecticut magistrates expressed the hope that “inconveniences and dangers” might be avoided, it was clear that they expected New Haven to comply.55 John Davenport and New Haven’s civil leaders immediately protested, and Davenport helped to draft and himself signed a response to the Connecticut commissioners. They stated that they did not find anything in the Connecticut charter that “expressly included” New Haven in its sister colony; indicated an intention to consult the freemen of their colony; and asked that nothing be done by the Connecticut authorities until they had met and consulted with the freemen and until “we may receive fuller information



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from the honorable Mr. Winthrop,” from whom they clearly expected a clarification that would protect their jurisdiction.56 At a town meeting held a few days earlier, Davenport had “declared unto the town that he wrote to Mr. Winthrop (before he went to England) not to have any hand in such an unrighteous act as to involve us in their patent.” He told the townspeople that Winthrop had responded and “expressed his contrary purpose” to incorporating New Haven while acknowledging “the expressions of some other of their magistrates” to do so.57 Hearing rumors about the broad expanse of the new Connecticut in the summer of 1662, Davenport had written again to Winthrop, asking, “If we misunderstood the things which we wanted means to understand from yourself, who, neither in your letter to me from London, dated May 13, 1662 [not found] which I received from Mr. Ling, nor in your next, dated March 7, this year [also not found], signified to me any other thing than that New Haven is still a distinct colony, notwithstanding the Connecticut patent?”58 Davenport urged the colonists not to yield, and Nicholas Street, Davenport’s colleague in the town ministry at the time, seconded that advice, urging them that if they wished “to keep the ends and rules of Christ in their eye, then God would stand by them,” and recommending that their answer to Connecticut should be “influenced with faith and not of fear.”59 On October 29, 1662, a solemn day of fast and prayer was held in the towns of the New Haven colony to seek God’s guidance, with Davenport preaching in the town of New Haven. On November 4 a meeting of the colony’s freemen voted to postpone any action on the union until Winthrop Jr. had been heard from. Davenport expressed his belief that New Haven should “not voluntarily join with them.” Governor Leete avoided taking a position, indicating that he would refrain from taking a lead lest people accuse him of simply wanting to retain his office as governor of a separate New Haven!60 Davenport’s view prevailed, and he took the lead in drafting the colony response. Addressing the General Assembly of Connecticut, the freemen of New Haven stated that while they didn’t begrudge Connecticut what it had obtained, they did not “find in the patent any command given to you, nor prohibition to us to dissolve covenants or alter the orderly settlements of New England, nor any sufficient reason why we may not so remain to be as formerly.” They were referring here to the covenant which had been entered into by the members of the United Colonies when that confederation was formed, whereby each recognized the other colonies’ legitimacy. They requested that the status quo be maintained until they heard

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something from either Winthrop or from the king that would lead them to change their mind.61 Separately, the same meeting decided to appeal to the king and chose agents to make their case. Winthrop, still in England negotiating with those who had raised objections to the charter he had been granted, then had to deal with the complaints brought by New Haven’s representatives. Having hoped to devise an agreement—whether a full union or a federation under the single charter is unclear—he was annoyed by his Connecticut colleagues’ rush to impose their authority on the smaller colony. On March 2 Winthrop went to the first of a series of meetings with three spokesmen for the New Haven colony—Nathaniel Whitefield, Robert Thompson, and John Scott—at the home where William Hooke was secretly living. Davenport had urged the New Haven agents to consult with Winthrop before they presented their formal appeal or delivered a letter from Davenport to Edward Montagu, Charles II’s Lord Chamberlain, who had listened to Davenport preach at St. Stephen’s.62 Hooke, who was hesitant to become involved, had reluctantly agreed to moderate a discussion over New Haven’s fate within Connecticut. Winthrop told them that what he had heard from Connecticut’s deputy governor John Mason was that his colony had merely sought to open negotiations with New Haven about the nature of a possible union. He persuaded the New Haven supporters that, given the circumstances (presumably royal hostility to the colony that had sheltered the regicides and been the last to recognize the new regime), the best that could be hoped for was a form of union with Connecticut, but that clearly the terms of the union were to be negotiated by both sides. He reached agreement with the New Haven representatives on the parameters of such a treaty (which is what he called it), and copies of those papers were sent both to the New Haven and Connecticut authorities.63 The papers concluded with the statement that the New Haven agents “do not doubt but upon further consideration there may be such a right understanding between both governments that a union & friendly joining may be established to the satisfaction of all.64 Winthrop asked Mason that if he or any of his colleagues in Connecticut had problems with the proposal he had worked out, they should wait until he returned to the colony to explain it in person, and meanwhile he asked them to desist any further actions against New Haven. He also suggested that Connecticut authorities should leave it to New Haven to suggest negotiations on the terms he suggested and that they should also make sure to involve the commissioners of the United Colonies. He reported that he



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was having a hard time staving off those who were challenging the charter at court, and that reports of conflict from New Haven were not helpful. Critically, he pointed out that because of the agreement he had reached with the New Haven representatives, those individuals would desist from making an appeal to the king. The Connecticut authorities ignored Winthrop, and in March 1663 they appointed a new committee to deal with New Haven. That group presented its proposals on March 20. The New Haven committee that had been entrusted to deal with Connecticut responded quickly. They claimed they could not discuss the matter because they had appealed to the king and would not dishonor him or prejudice their own position by discussing things in the meanwhile. They also asserted that in any case they could not dissolve their colony without the “express consent of the other colonies” with whom they were united. And finally, they stated that they had been instructed by the freemen of the colony to do nothing “for altering our distinct colonystate and government without their consent.”65 Meanwhile, the New Haven colony was facing problems because some of its towns, such as Southold, had welcomed the embrace of Connecticut and were refusing to obey New Haven orders or to pay New Haven taxes. New Haven sent a remonstrance to Connecticut, reiterating its reasons of opposing the union and complaining about that colony’s willingness to admit individual New Haven towns and individuals under their jurisdiction without the fundamental issues of the union having been resolved. They concluded by asserting that “whatever we suffer by your means, we pray the Lord would help us to choose it rather than to sin against our consciences.”66 On August 19 the Connecticut Assembly empowered its committee on union to proceed and authorized them to declare that the assembly did “resent their [New Haven] proceeding in civil government as a distinct jurisdiction” because they had been “included within the charter granted to Connecticut,” and that the committee was to publicly announce to the inhabitants of the various New Haven towns that they were to “yield subjection to the government here established [in Hartford], according to the tenor of our charter.”67 Leete and the other New Haven magistrates were recognized as Connecticut magistrates. Davenport and New Haven continued to resist. In September they appealed to the commissioners of the United Colonies meeting in Boston. After hearing both sides, the commissioners of the other colonies agreed that New Haven, recognized as an independent colony in the articles of the

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confederation, “may not, by any acts of violence, have their liberty of jurisdiction infringed by any other of the united colonies.” Further decisions were postponed till the next scheduled meeting of the colonies, in Hartford. Connecticut, which had disregarded its own governor’s advice to move slowly, ignored the finding of the commissioners of the United Colonies. On October 8, 1663, the Connecticut General Assembly passed orders for the governance of some of the former New Haven towns and expressed “dissatisfaction with the proceedings of the plantations of New Haven, Milford, Branford, etc.” Citing the fact that the “aforesaid people of New Haven, etc., pretend they have power distinct from us,” they once again asserted their authority.68 Responding later that month, the New Haven freemen voted to have no further dealings with Connecticut. John Winthrop Jr. had returned to New England by the summer of 1663. Davenport had hopes that he might resolve the dispute, but the other Connecticut magistrates saw no reason to relent. Mason claimed that he had never received Winthrop’s letter urging restraint. It is possible that Winthrop had always seen the full incorporation of New Haven into his own colony as in the best interest of New England, though he clearly did not approve of the strong-armed tactics that had been used. Davenport hoped that Winthrop came “with an olive branch in your mouth” on the basis of what he had learned of the London meetings moderated by William Hooke. Suspicious that Leete had worked to sell out the colony, Davenport stressed to Winthrop that anything that “Mr. Leete write to yourself, it was his private doing, without the consent or knowledge of any of us in this colony. It was not done by him according to his public trust as Governor, but contrary to it.” He still hoped that an equitable settlement might be reached that would protect New Haven’s autonomy, but it was not to be.69 New Haven’s negotiators wanted assurance that they would be able to maintain the church membership requirement for the franchise, but Connecticut would not budge from its traditional policy of not requiring any such requirement. New Haven’s earlier attempt to appeal to the king had been blunted when the agents thought they had reached an understanding with Winthrop, but in October 1662 the New Haven General Court voted to appropriate £300 to fund an agency to seek a separate patent from Charles II. An effort to raise the funds by collecting arrears from those towns in which residents had accepted Connecticut’s jurisdiction led to a riot in Guilford and a failure to obtain the needed funds.70



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The two colonies continued to exchange complaints about each other’s conduct, culminating in an extremely lengthy statement of New Haven’s position in March 1664. The statement, drawn up by Davenport with the assistance of Nicholas Street, spelled out the history of the New Haven colony and how its legitimacy had been accepted by the other New England colonies, by the House of Lords 1643 commission to regulate the colonies (which included some of the Saybrook proprietors), by Connecticut when it requested that the agent New Haven sent to seek a charter in 1645 request a single “patent for common privileges to both in their distinct jurisdictions,” and even by Winthrop as he had prepared to go to England in 1661. Connecticut had based its claim for a charter on the Warwick patent, and according to Davenport, the Connecticut magistrates had “agreed and expressed in the presence of some ministers” that if the bounds of the Warwick patent were found to encompass New Haven, the “New Haven colony should be at full liberty to join with them or not.”71 Davenport was personally disappointed in his friend John Winthrop, complaining to him about how Connecticut continued to interject itself into the affairs of New Haven and expressing his “fear [that] you will not do yourself right unless you protest against these irregular, illegal, I had almost said, unchristian actings, and enter it upon record.”72 Of course, Winthrop did no such thing. As hopes dwindled for the preservation of an independent New Haven, plans for a migration to Dutch New Netherland were revived. Director General Stuyvesant finally received instructions from the Dutch West India Company on how the New Haven group could be treated. The company urged Stuyvesant to encourage the migration and authorized him to allow the colonists to use the 1656 New Haven law code. The colonists were to have considerable autonomy, with the Dutch authorities reserving only the right to confirm officers and new laws and to hear appeals in witchcraft cases and large civil suits. During the summer of 1663 settlers from various New Haven towns were prepared to migrate, and Davenport provided them with a copy of his Discourse About Civil Government.73 New developments delayed those plans and brought the dispute between New Haven and Connecticut to an end. The king and his advisers still wished to reduce New England to their subjection, but reports that the colonists might resist any overt action against what they perceived as their rights had continued to give the English authorities pause. In September 1662 the Earl of Clarendon informed the Committee for Plantations that

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the king planned to send a commission to New England “to settle the respective interests of the several colonies.”74 The dispatch of a commission may have been delayed by the ongoing discussions in Whitehall regarding the boundaries of Connecticut, but the king reiterated his intent to do so in the following April. Another year passed, but then Colonel Richard Nicolls, Samuel Maverick, Sir Robert Carr, and George Cartwright were appointed to the task.75 In addition to their investigation of the colonies, the commissioners were to supervise a planned effort to capture the Dutch colony of New Netherlands on behalf of the Duke of York, James Stuart, the king’s Catholic brother and heir.76 On the evening of Saturday, July 23, 1664, as the observation of the Sabbath was beginning, two English naval vessels anchored off Boston’s Long Wharf. Aboard were two of the commissioners, Nicolls and Cartwright, who indicated a desire to meet with the Bay Colony’s magistrates as soon as possible. On July 26 the Massachusetts Council assembled to receive from the commissioners a copy of their public instructions, and thus began the New England interaction with the royal commissioners. After a brief and chilly reception from the Bay authorities, Nicolls and Carr rejoined their forces and prepared for the attack on the Dutch. The Massachusetts authorities had granted them the right to raise local volunteers, but as John Hull recorded it, “few volunteers presented themselves, though the drums beat up and proclamation made in the several towns.”77 Having taken the measure of the royal commissioners, the Massachusetts magistrates advised the Connecticut and New Haven colonies that it was essential for the region as a whole that they settle their grievances. Connecticut yet again sent emissaries to press New Haven to yield. John Winthrop Jr. saw the advantage in cooperating with the royal commissioners and joined Colonel Nicolls in raising troops among the English settlers on Long Island. Winthrop became a key adviser to Nicolls as the English applied pressure on New Netherland’s director general Peter Stuyvesant to surrender the colony and was with Nicolls to witness the surrender on August 29.78 The Dutch had always claimed much of what is now western Connecticut as part of their domain, and following the English conquest there was a strong chance that the king’s commissioners deem that region part of the new colony of New York. Winthrop’s cooperation with Colonel Nicolls helped to preclude that outcome, but the mere possibility of being incorporated into a colony headed by a Catholic member of the Stuart family would have been distressing to New Haven’s citizens.



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New Haven’s situation was becoming increasingly precarious. Support for the merger was steadily growing. More colonists pledged their allegiance to Connecticut and refused to pay New Haven taxes. One result was that the colony was almost bankrupt, with magistrates forced to accept a reduced salary. Some elected officials were reluctant to accept the responsibilities of office given the colony’s questionable legal status. At the September 1664 meeting of the commissioners of the United Colonies at Hartford, the delegates, though recognizing the justice of New Haven’s complaints, urged the colony to surrender to its neighbor, lest further dispute lead to worse consequences. When the royal commissioners set the boundary between New York and Connecticut in such a way that made it clear that they considered New Haven part of Connecticut, it was evident that further resistance would be futile. A December 13 meeting of the New Haven General Court voted to submit to Connecticut, and on January 7, 1665, the town of New Haven surrendered.79 His colony brought to an end, Davenport had to be concerned with his own fate. Royal authorities, recognizing his past support of the puritan revolution and of the regicides, were more than willing to believe any rumors they heard of his disaffection to the crown and church. In 1667 Richard Nicolls, one of the former royal commissioners, then serving as governor of New York, asked John Winthrop Jr. to investigate charges about the New Haven clergyman’s preaching. Winthrop talked with his friend and was able to assure Nicolls that Davenport was innocent of the charges laid against him, dismissing the reports as “imaginary inferences” from someone who had heard of the minister’s preaching second or sixth hand. At most, the complainant might have misinterpreted something when Davenport “assert[ed] the true way of worship, or Christ’s government in the church against the popish, Antichristian, Roman hierarchy.”80 Nothing came of the charges, but they were a sign that he was being watched. The end of the New Haven colony also brought an end to Davenport’s dream of a Comenian-style New England college. Creating such a center of learning had been an objective of Davenport’s since the first days of the colony. After earlier efforts had been thwarted, largely by the town’s continuing economic woes, in 1655 the town of New Haven had appointed a committee to raise funds for the creation of a college in the colony. The colony General Court shortly thereafter approved the plan, and a house was purchased for the new school.81 Davenport wrote to Edward Hopkins, who had returned

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to England, for support. John Haynes and John Winthrop Jr. both planned to send sons to study there. William Leveridge of Oyster Bay, Long Island, agreed to be the president of the college, and Dr. Thomas Browne of Bermuda, known to be “besides his ministerial function and his knowledge in . . . law and physic . . . skillful in the Hebrew, Chaldic, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian and French tongues,” volunteered to be an instructor.82 Theophilus Eaton donated books that his brother Samuel had left behind. But Leveridge changed his mind under the influence of his wife, and a suitable replacement could not be found at the time. Nevertheless, when Hopkins died in 1657, he left his estate in New England and £500 from his English estate “to give some encouragement in those foreign plantations for the breeding up of hopeful youths in a way of learning, both at the grammar school and college, for the public service of the country in future times.”83 Theophilus Eaton, John Davenport, and Hartford’s John Cullick and William Goodwin were named executors. Davenport shifted his efforts to opening a college preparatory school that might eventually evolve into a college. In 1659 the New Haven colony’s court approved £40 a year to support a grammar school and an additional £8 for book purchases to be approved by Davenport and Abraham Pierson.84 In June 1660 Davenport indicated to the court the intention of the surviving three trustees (Eaton had died) to pay out of the bequest £100 for Harvard, with the remainder split between supporting Davenport’s effort to promote education in New Haven and efforts of Cullick and Goodwin to promote education in Hadley, to which they had moved following the Hartford church controversy. The New Haven colony agreed to fund a schoolhouse and a home for the schoolmaster, and the grammar school opened in October 1660, with Jeremiah Peck as schoolmaster. The effort proved unsuccessful. The political uncertainty of the times and the financial struggles of the colony led to the court’s abandoning of the project in November 1662. The following month funds were provided for an elementary schoolteacher, but it would not be until 1701 that Davenport’s dream was realized in the foundation of Yale College with Abraham Pierson, the son of Davenport’s friend and ally, as the first rector. The New Haven Jerusalem had come to an end. Many of the policies that had made it distinctive were no longer tenable after the merger with Connecticut. Some of its members had willingly abandoned their mission and embraced that union. Some of those who had held strongly to their distinct



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culture abandoned their former homes. In 1666 some inhabitants of Milford, New Haven, Guilford, and Branford completed negotiations with Philip Carteret, the governor of East Jersey (an English colony carved out of the former New Netherland), to settle in the area they had previously discussed with the Dutch. Abraham Pierson, the pastor at Branford, led the migration to the new settlement on the Passaic River, which was named New Ark.85 Pierson had been a strong ally of Davenport. His daughter Abigail married Davenport’s son John in 1662. Pierson’s son later became the first president of Yale, carrying out one of Davenport’s dreams. From the spiritual leader of a model puritan society, John Davenport had been relegated to being the pastor of a church in a town of marginal importance that was suffering from the defection of some of his supporters and an ongoing economic crisis.

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ew England changed in significant ways during the middle of the seventeenth century. Increasingly, the population consisted of men and women who had been born and raised in the puritan laboratory that was New England. These individuals had not experienced the temptations and challenges that their fathers and mothers had faced in England. They were not as likely to have as deep a sense of their sinfulness as men like John Winthrop and Thomas Shepard, both of whom confided to their diaries occasions on which they had succumbed to the temptations that surrounded youth in their native land. They were not torn by the question of compromising with an imperfect church that had troubled John Cotton and John Davenport in their English ministries. Growing up in New England, where they had not had to suffer and fight for their faith, they perhaps took it more for granted. At the same time, New England was attracting more individuals who did not share the orthodox puritan vision but who were drawn to the region by burgeoning economic opportunities and other factors—though this was less so with New Haven. This included Baptists and Quakers, but also entrepreneurs who were opposed to puritanism and resentful of how the various colonies excluded them from political influence. As the colonies dealt with these changes, they did so without many of the leaders who had defined the puritan experiment. Thomas Hooker had died in 1647; John Winthrop, in 1649; Thomas Shepard also died in 1649; John Cotton died in 1652; Thomas Dudley, in 1653; Connecticut’s Governor John Haynes, in 1654; Plymouth’s Edward Winslow, in 1655; Nathaniel Rogers died in 1655 as well; Edward Hopkins, another Connecticut governor, in 1657; Plymouth’s William Bradford, also in 1657; Theophilus Eaton, in 1658; 304



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Peter Bulkeley died in England in 1659; Eaton’s successor Francis Newman, in 1660. Hugh Peter, who had returned to England in 1643, was executed as a regicide in 1661. Many of these were men who were close to John Davenport. While there were still stalwarts of the early years alive—in addition to Davenport there were clergymen such as Richard Mather, John Eliot, and John Wilson, and magistrates such as John Winthrop Jr. and Simon Bradstreet—many of the leaders of the post-Restoration period were young, untested, and unfamiliar with the English experiences that had shaped the colonial religious and political culture. During the 1660s John Davenport was driven by a desire to maintain the purity of the New England Way in the face of what he perceived as developments that would undermine the faith and practices established by the founders. He continued to advocate unity on fundamentals, but in opposing what he saw as the intolerance of others, he often appeared divisive and highly partisan. The recommendations of the 1657 synod on the matter of baptism had not settled the issue of how church membership should be decided. The report was sent to the general courts of the various colonies, but it was not officially recommended by any of them. Some churches, including that of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1658, chose to accept the Half-Way Covenant, but others did not, fueling the general dispute.1 In December 1661 the Massachusetts General Court called yet another synod to meet in March 1662 “for settling the peace” of the churches.2 Only Massachusetts churches responded to this call, with most of the more than eighty delegates being laymen. Once again, Richard Mather led the push for change, ably supported by Boston’s John Norton (chosen as the synod’s moderator) and Cambridge’s Jonathan Mitchell. The quarrel over baptism divided families as well as congregations, a point made clear by the fact that the opposition in the synod was led by Increase Mather and his brother Eleazar. Increase had returned from England in 1661 and was chosen along with his father as one of the two delegates to the synod from the Dorchester congregation. His brother, Eleazar, represented the Northampton congregation in the Connecticut River Valley.3 At the synod, Charles Chauncy joined Increase and Eleazar Mather in opposition to the proposed changes. Once again, John Davenport felt unable to attend, in this case because of the crisis posed by the effort of Connecticut to absorb New Haven. The first session of the synod approved

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seven propositions that effectively reiterated the recommendations of the 1657 gathering. When the synod reconvened after a three-month recess, all but ten delegates voted in favor of the draft propositions. In a letter to Davenport, Eleazar Mather complained that the majority had attacked those who were standing up for the traditional practices as “breakers of the peace of the churches.”4 The synod again adjourned, with September 9 set for the third session, when a final draft of the propositions would be debated and consideration also given to a call for a regular consociation of churches. The leaders of the synod minority kept Davenport apprised of the events and solicited his aid. Responding to this, the New Haven clergyman supplied Chauncy and the Mather brothers an attack on the proposed changes, personally delivering them on a visit to Boston late in the summer. Davenport’s colleague at New Haven, Nicholas Street, also prepared a short critique of the proposals.5 Davenport actually attended the first day of the third session before having to take sail for New Haven. As that session progressed, Increase Mather asked to read the papers Davenport had left to the gathering, but John Norton persuaded the assembled delegates to refuse the request. Although most would have been familiar with the arguments contained in the papers, refusing to provide a hearing for the views of one of the region’s foremost clergymen signified the majority’s intolerance of opposition which must have troubled Davenport. The synod proceeded to adopt the Half-Way Covenant and sent its report to the Massachusetts General Court, which this time recommended that the churches of the Bay Colony accept the proposal.6 Increase Mather had presented the essays by Davenport and Street to the General Court, along with supporting papers by his brother Eleazar, Charles Chauncey, and John Mayo in the hope that the legislature might withhold its endorsement. Though the Court rejected the appeal of the dissenters, it did allow for the publication of the arguments against the reform. This was critical, because in the end the decision to accept or reject the Half-Way Covenant had to be made by each individual congregation. The opponents took to referring to themselves as the Dissenting Brethren, likely to evoke memories of Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, William Bridge, and Sidrach Simpson (all friends of Davenport) and the other English apologists who in the early 1640s had stood out against the plans to impose a Presbyterian system on England. In his preface to Davenport’s Another Essay, Increase Mather made the comparison explicit, saying that the charges leveled against the opponents of the reforms was “the very same thing [as] hath been



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said of those worthy champions who stood up for the Congregational Way in opposition to the Assembly at Westminster.”7 The materials written by Davenport and his allies and presented to the Massachusetts General Court were published in England as Anti-Synodalia Scripta Americana. In addition to that work, which contained an essay against the reform, Davenport wrote Another Essay for the Investigation of the Truth, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1663. Both of those works were answered by John Allin in Animadversions upon the Anti-Synodalia Americana, published at Cambridge in 1664. Davenport then prepared “A Vindication of the Treatise Entitled Another Essay,” which circulated widely in manuscript, and a “Third Essay Containing Replies to the Answer unto the Other Essay.”8 In opposing the Half-Way Covenant, Davenport justified his positions by reference to the Scriptures, as well as by references to history and the practices of other Christian churches. While he was strongly opposed to the proposed membership changes, he appeared willing to concede that different churches would follow different practices. In fact, his primary concern was to prevent efforts to impose what he saw as ill-conceived changes on all the churches of the region. He focused on the need for unity in the fundamentals in faith and was opposed to demands for absolute uniformity. The synod’s call for a consociation of churches that would have the power to excommunicate an offending congregation troubled him more than the debate over baptism. He was disappointed that the churches were divided over who should be baptized, but he expressed the hope “that none would infer from this printing on both sides, pro & con, that here are divisions among the churches in New England, but only that we are searching to find out the truth with different apprehensions till it shall please God to reveal it to us all.”9 This comment was reminiscent of the efforts made by John Cotton and John Wilson to reassure foreign observers who were troubled to hear of the divisions engendered by the Free Grace controversy. Cotton on that occasion had stated that “all the strife amongst us was about magnifying the grace of God, one party seeking to advance the grace of God within us, and the other to advance the grace of God towards us.”10 Davenport regretted that “differences in apprehension cause such distance and animosities among those who agree in fundamentals,” as such “needless contradictions and causeless oppositions . . . but weaken the hearts and hands of saints in the work of the Lord, and strengthen adversaries in their malicious and subtle designs and enterprises against the truth.”11 It was “no new thing for ministers and churches to fall asleep in times of outward

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peace, such as the churches of New England have enjoyed for many years past.”12 As his ally, Increase Mather pointed out in his preface to Davenport’s Another Essay, “even in the churches planted by the apostles themselves there arose no small dissension.”13 At the heart of his writings on the Half-Way Covenant was Davenport’s discussion of the nature of church membership and how it was to be achieved. He believed that the church was to consist immediately of “adult, approved believers” who were “visibly confederating with the Lord Christ, as the head of the church, and one with another mutually to walk together according to his rules for the attainment of church communion.” Infants and children of such individuals, when baptized, were mediate members who, “being grown up, must be admitted into immediate fellowship and full communion with the church by their personal faith held forth to satisfaction of the church’s charitable discretion, and by taking hold of the covenant for themselves and their seed, as their parents did for them.”14 Only those who were believed to be the recipients of saving grace were to be admitted to the sacraments, but Davenport was quick to remind his readers that “when all this is done, neither can the parents nor the church give grace unto the children.” Grace came from God and God alone.15 Davenport and his supporters made the argument that it had always been the policy of New Englanders to insist that individuals who were baptized as infants had to step forward on their own when they reached maturity if they were to have membership in their own right. Davenport cited Cotton and Hooker in this regard. As befit his concern for international Protestantism, Davenport also argued that the policy he was defending was that of the church in Bohemia as described by Comenius, that practiced in Martin Bucer’s Strasbourg, and elsewhere.16 In his preface to Another Essay, Increase Mather identified their position with the Savoy Declaration that had recently been approved by England’s Congregationalists, marshaled the writings of the English puritan John Beverly in his support, and quoted from a letter written him by an English clergyman who raised concerns about the Half-Way Covenant.17 The notion of halfway membership, described by Davenport as “mere membership,” gave more efficacy to baptism than Davenport was willing to grant. There was, he argued, “no such ordinance under the gospel, whereby the grown children of Christian churches are members in full communion, or, as mere members, brought under church-discipline and government in congregational churches.”18 Elaborating on this in his “Third Essay,” he wrote



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that “such a membership, I find not in Scripture, neither in the Old nor in the New Testament, nor established by the decrees of any council, or synod, whether general, national, provincial, or topical, nor practices in any church, whether ancient or modern.”19 In the course of their arguments, Davenport and some of the other dissenters denied that the practice of circumcision in the Old Testament provided a precedent for the covenant continuing over multiple generations. This argument, however, could be interpreted as calling into question the justification for the baptism of any infants, and defenders of the Half-Way Covenant, such as John Allin, suggested that the dissenters were providing encouragement for Baptists. If infant baptism did not offer a meaningful membership in the church, then why baptize any infants?20 Baptized children were recognized as under the care of their parents but were not subject to the authority of the church itself. One of the arguments for the Half-Way Covenant was that it would bring youths who needed discipline under the supervisory powers of the church. Davenport acknowledged that “the young people of this country, yea, the children of church members generally, as well as others . . . [are] commonly known to be profane, vain, licentious, vicious, disobedient to parents, unfaithful to masters, stubborn, proud, [and] self-willed.”21 He argued that baptized children during their youth were “under the watch, instruction, and government of the church in their parents, and included in the prayers and blessings of the church by virtue of their parent’s covenant,” but he insisted that “when they are grown up they are capable of faith by hearing, and of making it visible, and of covenanting with the Lord and his church, personally for themselves and their seed.”22 If these efforts failed, did it make sense to assume “that they who submit themselves not to the yoke of family government, will orderly submit themselves to Christ’s yoke in church censures?” “The church,” he argued, “will have trouble enough with them, and dishonor, and infection, and disturbance by them,” and “God . . . will say[,] ‘Who hath required these things?’”23 Davenport had long held that the rising generation needed to be spurred to accept God rather than have the requirements for admission lowered on their behalf. The task of the ministry was to instruct about God’s word and provide the means for the Spirit to act upon the elect. It was, as he had preached as early as his Hilton Castle days, the responsibility of men to seize the opportunities God gave them. And it was “the duty of the ministers and members of Christian churches to see, so far as they can according to rule, that all which they receive into church fellowship” be “true believers in Christ, . . . profess their faith and holiness in good conversation, [and] . . .

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make public confession of their faith before the church.”24 Preaching in New Haven in the 1650s, Davenport had emphasized that young men and women must be converted to join the church. He had repeated the same message in Boston in 1657. The synod proposals called for admitting to mere membership young men and women who did not qualify for membership under the traditional standards. Such mere members would simply have to attest to their understanding of the faith and agree to take the covenant. They would not be eligible to receive the Lord’s Supper but would be able to present their own children for baptism. The supporters of the Half-Way Covenant justified their position by arguing that baptism had brought these individuals into the covenant, bestowing a mere membership on them which the new proposals simply recognized. Davenport challenged this justification, arguing that on reaching adulthood such individuals were actually “discovenanted by their violating their parents’ covenant for them, through not performing that whereunto they were engaged thereby, in that, when they became adult, they did not regularly enter into covenant with the Lord and his church.”25 Davenport and his allies believed that the proposals of the synod would move congregations toward Presbyterianism. Broadening membership would bring the churches closer to a geographically inclusive system that New Englanders had previously rejected. As Increase Mather explained, “One practical difference between Congregational men and Presbyterians (whom the Lord unite in truth) is that the Congregational men would baptize children of none but such whose parents were fit for the Lord’s Supper, whereas the Presbyterians would baptize the children of such whose parents were not fit for the Lord’s Supper.”26 Writing from England, Nathaniel Mather warned that he saw on both sides of the Atlantic “a departure . . . of late in congregational men from old principles and practices,” and that Philip “Nye not long before his death saw & much laid to heart what he saw of that kind.”27 A staunch Congregationalist, Nathaniel saw the extension of baptism as a movement toward a more inclusive, geographical-style parish. He wrote that “your making children members of the catholic visible church . . . I confess I do much wonder at. But I see Congregational principles are lost in New England, & all to open a door for a larger administration of baptism.”28 Nathaniel Mather’s point highlighted a concern that Davenport, more than any of the other critics of the synod, focused on. This was the synod’s call for a consociation of churches, something that he believed would



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i­mpinge on the independence of individual congregations. Davenport accepted the legitimacy of congregations refusing the right hand of fellowship to a neighboring church that persisted in error, but he rejected the proposal that a synod or council could pronounce a judgment of noncommunion on an erring congregation, thus in effect excommunicating it.29 This was “to establish a new form of church [in New England], having power of church government, and exercising it over particular churches in classical or synodical assemblies—[in short,] a Presbyterian church.”30 Davenport asserted that “particular churches are sisters to one another . . . and there is a brotherhood of visible saints throughout the world.” But “the manner of their communion must be social, as between equals, none exercising jurisdiction and authority over another.”31 He reminded his readers that the quest for uniformity such as was reflected in the proposed innovation had “brought great persecution under the prelacy upon the godly part in our native country, whereby sundry of us were driven into this wilderness.”32 Davenport had expressed concerns about the exercise of synodical authority over individual churches as far back as when he had questioned the practices of the Dutch classis in denying his call to the Amsterdam church. In his Reply to Paget he had written that “the combination of particular churches in classes and synods is either such a combination of them as is between equals, or such subordination of them as between unequals. The first is by way of counsel, or brotherly direction. The second is by way of command, or masterly subjection. This we condemn as being the first step whereby the Pope ascended into the chair of pestilence, and a mere inlet for tyranny to invade and usurp the church’s right. The other is approved by the practice of the most ancient churches and by good reason.”33 Davenport may have been particularly alert to this danger because the churches of Connecticut were moving toward the type of consociationalism or presbyterialism that blended Presbyterian elements with Congregational traditions—a movement that would later be formalized in the Saybrook Platform of 1708.34 This involved a more inclusive form of church membership and a shift in the balance of power within a congregation from the laity to the clergy, both of which trends Davenport opposed.35 The idea of regular clerical associations would also be popular in western Massachusetts, particularly after the death of Northampton’s Eleazar Mather in 1669. In eastern Massachusetts suspicions of any such consociation remained strong, and as a result efforts to create such a system failed. Because of this failure there was no church body capable of enforcing the Half-Way Covenant, so

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that the decision as to whether to adopt the change in baptismal practice was one that had to be made by each congregation. Clergyman on each side of the issue not only sought to persuade their own congregants but also reached out through formal publications and circulated manuscripts to persuade members of other churches. Thus, in effect, the members of Richard Mather’s own Dorchester congregation were being urged by clergy such as Increase Mather and John Davenport to reject their pastor’s efforts to implement the Half-Way Covenant. In previous religious controversies, the clergy had been virtually united, and that gave their recommendations the authority that carried lay opinion with it. The highly public divisions among the clergy over the results of the Synod of 1662 undermined any sense that the clergy were inerrant, for clearly some of them had to be wrong in identifying what God wished the colonists to do. And at the same time clergy were encouraging laymen to oppose the views of their clerical elders if those views didn’t agree with that of the individual appealing to those laymen. The result was an enhanced willingness of the laity to assert the authority that in theory congregationalism had always given them. It was a telling fact that Richard Mather’s own Dorchester church consistently refused to accept the Half-Way Covenant during his lifetime.36 Those who placed their trust on hierarchical authority also emphasized the power of the clergy within congregations, a position embraced fervently by those ministers (such as Richard Mather) whose congregations opposed what they were recommending regarding an expansion of membership. They asserted the importance of the laity deferring to their ministers because of the superior education and training of the clergy. Clergymen who sought to assert their power within their congregations were also likely to advocate expanding the authority of ecclesiastical councils. They saw such steps as necessary to avoid the type of lay excess and radicalism that had led to the rise of sects such as the Quakers in England during the previous decades. They feared what one scholar has called “the self-willed saint who had learned his lessons so well that he was able to dismiss his teachers.”37 John Norton emphasized the importance of deferring to authority in an election sermon preached to the General Court—“Israel must stand to this: if it be in matters of religion, there is the priest; if in matters civil, the magistrate. And he that stands not, or submits not to the sentence of these, let him be cut off from Israel, so requisite a thing is order.” He added that “it is not a Gospel-spirit to be against Kings.”38



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Davenport and others opposed to this agenda saw it as an effort to move the churches away from a Congregationalism rooted in the empowerment of the lay elect toward a parish-style Presbyterianism. Ardent Congregationalists were opposed to what they perceived as the loosening of the standards of membership called for by the Half-Way Covenant. They had no hesitancy in challenging clerical initiatives that they disapproved of. While they also believed in an educated ministry, they viewed the clergy as first among equals and wished to continue the tradition of lay prophesying. They believed that church councils should rarely be called, though more often than not they grudgingly agreed to send delegates to ensure that their view be represented. John Oxenbridge expressed the sentiments of this faction when he warned the Massachusetts General Court that if its members forgot “your errand of planting this wilderness, and if you have a mind to turn your churches into parishes, and your ministers into priests and prelates, I cannot think the Lord will ever endure it.”39 Such individuals were more likely to sympathize with the Baptists because they saw in them fellow believers in Congregational autonomy. And they were ready to fight the king if necessary to protect their godly kingdom. John Davenport saw a connection between the efforts to “obtain great alterations, both in civil government and church discipline,” and he labored against both. As the decade of the 1660s came to a close, Davenport found the early promise of his New World Jerusalem crumbling to dust. The most critical blow, of course, was the incorporation of his colony into neighboring Connecticut, a colony in which church membership was not required for voting and where there was growing pressure from magistrates and ministers to alter the New England Way in a Presbyterian direction. He was aware of the fact that the struggle against such innovations would be a continuing one. It was against this background that he decided to consider an invitation he received in September 1667 to assume the pastorate of the most famous church in New England, the First Church of Boston.

Ch a pt e r 2 0

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he Boston Church had been formed in July 1630 at Charlestown when John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, Isaac Johnson, and John Wilson subscribed to a covenant pledging themselves to “walk in all our ways according to the rule of the gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect to each other so near as God shall give us grace.”1 On August 27, additional members having joined and taken the covenant, John Wilson was chosen to minister to the congregation. That fall most of the members of the church relocated to the Shawmut Peninsula, calling their new town Boston.2 In 1633 Wilson was designated pastor and the newly arrived John Cotton was named teacher. Boston was the region’s most important political and cultural center, which made the church the most visible in the colonies. It was the Boston Church that members of the colony’s General Court attended to hear sermons when that body was in session. When John Cotton died in 1652, Wilson labored on alone until 1656, when the church called John Norton, previously the minister at Ipswich, to join him in the ministry. The Synod of 1662 met in the meetinghouse of the First Church, and Norton was one of the principal proponents of the Half-Way Covenant during its final session. Despite this, the church did not embrace the changes recommended by the synod. Norton died in 1663, once again leaving Wilson as the sole clergyman. The congregation clearly hoped for a star to fill the post. There had been hopes that Thomas Goodwin would come to Massachusetts at this time, but, as Increase Mather reported to Davenport, his wife would not agree to leave England.3 The church then voted to invite the distinguished English Congregationalist John Owen to become pastor, and John Endicott wrote on behalf of 314



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the General Court to further the call.4 Following the Restoration, Owen had devoted himself to writing in defense of Reformed doctrine and lobbying for toleration of dissenters. When invited to join the Boston Church he was living in London, but not ministering to any congregation. Having been recently subjected to government harassment, he was evidently willing to consider the call. Edward Hutchinson and other members of the congregation preferred James Allen, a disciple of Davenport’s friend Thomas Goodwin, who had emigrated the previous year and whom they believed was opposed to the Half-Way Covenant. Hutchinson was the son of Anne Hutchinson, whom Davenport had engaged during Anne’s church trial. He would soon become one of the key advocates for calling Davenport to the ministry of First Church. John Hull and others who supported the call to Owen likely believed that the stature of that divine in the transatlantic puritan community would enable him to heal divisions that had recently opened in the church, and they supplemented their call with letters to other prominent English divines such as Thomas Goodwin and Joseph Caryl, asking them to urge Owen to accept.5 Owen was willing, but events in England—including the plague of 1664 and the London fire of 1665—appear to have frustrated his plans.6 Yet hope continued, and as late as 1666 John Hull recorded in his diary his belief that “Dr. Owen is likely coming hither.”7 When John Wilson died on August 7, 1667, the church was left without any minister. On September 24, after debate, the congregation “nominated and voted for Mr. John Davenport of New Haven to be called to be a teaching officer amongst us and agreed on by the majority vote.”8 The decision was not unanimous, and in fact, this was a church deeply divided over a variety of issues. One was the Half-Way Covenant. In 1655, when the Dorchester, Massachusetts, congregation had considered extending baptism to the children of baptized individuals who merely accepted the covenant, that congregation solicited the views of neighboring churches. Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham were opposed to the action and Dorchester desisted.9 Yet in January 1657, before the synod held in that year, the First Church Boston voted that “the relation of immediate children of church members be such as giveth the church a church-power over them,” and that “it is the duty of the church to exercise that power regularly upon them, that their knowledge and life may be answerable to the engagement of their relation.”10 Having extended discipline, the members voted in 1661 to survey all adult children “to see whether they would own and take hold of the covenant of their fathers (which had been thus long, for the most part, neglected.” Affirming

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the covenant sworn by their fathers would not entail subjecting themselves personally to the judgment of the congregation. According to John Hull, “a great willingness appeared, both in youth, maids, men and women.” On two separate Sabbaths “being called by their names in the face of the whole congregation, [they] did openly manifest their desire to acknowledge their relation to the church according to the covenant of God which they pledged in their parents.”11 It appeared that the Boston Church would accept the Half-Way Covenant. Two prominent members of the church—Edward Hutchinson and Anthony Stoddard—disapproved of the idea, and Hutchinson pointedly turned his back to the church when the individuals were polled. Furthermore, Hutchinson asked that he be dismissed to join Boston’s Second Church, which he believed more faithful to true Congregational principles. His request was denied, but his stand evidently garnered considerable support because nothing came out of this exploratory measure, which was not even included in the official church records.12 Though both Norton and Wilson approved of the Half-Way Covenant, they were not able to get a majority of the church to join them. On his deathbed, Wilson railed against what he saw as the sins of the time which were provoking God. He touched on three contentious issues: the Half-Way Covenant, the role of synods, and the authority of clergy within a congregation. He spoke of “our neglect of baptizing the children of the church, those that some call grand-children,” and the “not subjecting to the authority of synods, without which churches cannot long subsist.” He also complained of the people rising up against their ministers, saying it had become “nothing for a brother to stand up and oppose, without scripture or reason, the word of an elder.” Such men, he said, perhaps thinking of Edward Hutchinson, “if he do not like the administration (be it baptism or the like) will turn his back upon God and his ordinances, and go away.”13 Wilson’s dying lament pointed to a long-standing division in the congregation over the power of synods or comparable clerical assemblies. From its earliest days the Boston Church had been suspicious of threats to congregational autonomy. It had chafed at the calling of the 1637 synod that condemned the errors thought to be circulating in the colony at the time of the Free Grace controversy. It initially refused to respond to the call for the synod that drafted the Cambridge Platform and only reluctantly dropped its opposition.14 Suspicion of authority beyond the congregation persisted into the 1660s. Despite this, the congregation had called John Norton to its



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ministry, though he was a strong proponent of clerical and synodical authority. In a 1661 election sermon to the Massachusetts General Court, Norton asserted the necessity of synods and complained of what he saw as a ministry that was overly compliant to the people.15 Yet Norton had been unable to move the congregation as a whole to this position. Members of the Boston First Church seem also to have been divided over the issue of toleration, which was widely debated because of the activities of Baptists and Quakers. In 1658 more than two dozen Bostonians petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to pass legislation that banished Quakers on pain of death. John Wilson, the teacher of First Church, was one of the signatories along with other members of the congregation, including Edward Rainsford, Robert Walker, Theodore Atkinson, John Hull, Hezekiah Usher, and William Salter—all men who supported the expansion of church membership advocated by Wilson and Norton. The General Court responded by passing the desired law and requested that John Norton, the First Church pastor, write what was published as The Heart of New England Rent, in which he denounced Quaker beliefs and justified the death penalty for Quakers who defied banishment to return to the colony. Two of the deputies in the General Court recorded their dissent from these actions. They were Edward Hutchinson and Thomas Clark, both members of First Church, who were opponents of the expansion of baptism and upholders of traditional membership standards.16 While some other members of what might be called the traditionalist party in the Boston Church did sign the anti-Quaker petition, the majority of those who signed the petition were identified with the reformist group that would seek to implement the HalfWay Covenant. The division between those who supported proposals moving the church toward Presbyterian positions while expressing intolerance to other sects on the one hand, and those who shared a spirit of toleration and opposition to the recommendations of the 1662 synod on the other hand, was notable on the issue of how Baptists were to be treated. In 1668, shortly after Davenport had been called to the Boston pulpit, many Bostonians petitioned the General Court to release a number of Baptists who had recently been imprisoned. The petitioners included Edward Hutchinson, James Oliver, and Thomas Grubb. All three were members of First Church who were actively promoting Davenport’s call. Oliver, in fact, was one of the group that journeyed to New Haven to carry the invitation. Another member of the congregation who would be identified as a friend and supporter of Daven-

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port and sympathetic to toleration of the Baptists was John Leverett, later to become governor of Massachusetts. Leverett and Davenport had exchanged views on various issues facing the colonies since the mid-1650s. One of the magistrates in 1668, Leverett had refused to sign the arrest warrant to apprehend the Baptists.17 Davenport was pleased when the Baptists were released from prison. His only hope was that they would try to cause less trouble so that they might be peaceably accepted.18 While Davenport’s opposition to the Half-Way Covenant no doubt was the main reason the traditionalist majority in First Church wished to bring him to Boston, the fact that he had expressed his disapproval of execution as a means of dealing with Quakers and had shown a willingness to tolerate Baptists may well have contributed to his appeal for men like Hutchinson and Leverett. Another division in the Boston Church and the Massachusetts Bay Colony may have influenced the choice of Davenport. In the aftermath of the Restoration, Massachusetts had been divided over what attitude the colony should take toward the new royal regime. Some individuals favored a firm defense of the colony’s traditions, whereas others urged the adoption of a conciliatory stance. According to John Hull, in a fast-day sermon likely preached in the Boston Church in February 1661, John Wilson emphasized that “our religion doth not teach us to be disloyal to our native land, the parliament, or our sovereign.” Yet Wilson also asserted that it was equally important to ensure that religion continue to prosper.19 While Wilson may have been unsure as to what position the colony should take, John Norton was a prominent spokesman for conciliation. In the same 1661 election sermon in which he argued for the authority of synods, Norton urged reconciliation with the crown. He advocated “an address to the supreme authority [the king] and a just apology” for the colony’s past offenses. He also asserted that it was “not a Gospel spirit to be used against kings: ’tis neither Gospel nor English spirit for any of us to be against the government by Kings, Lords, and Commons.”20 Humphrey Davie, an observer who was opposed to Norton’s stance, wrote to John Davenport that “truly the eyes of most begin to be opened and to see plainly the design to extirpate the profession and professors of the pure and right ways of the Lord out of this colony, if not out of the country, and to make all to receive the mark of the beast and his image.” Norton advised the General Court that “if they complied not with the king’s letter, the blood that should be spilt would lie at their doors, or upon their heads.” Davie commented that Norton “little thought where the guilt of souls would lie by that means.” Davie was



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thankful that there was still “a remnant that have not (would not) defile their garments, nor bow down to the image of Baal, and it may be the Lord may hear prayer and stand by them for preventing the evil.”21 In 1662 the Massachusetts General Court selected Norton and Simon Bradstreet as agents to the crown. Faced with royal demands that included changes to the franchise and strict adherence to the Navigation Acts, the agents conceded more than many colonists believed they had to or should have. It was evident when he returned from England that Norton had lost the esteem of many, including some of the lay leaders of the Boston First Church. This was perhaps a reason, when Thomas Goodwin’s former student James Allen arrived in the colony, that members of the church would approach the elders to ask that Allen be added to the preaching ministry. That request was denied at the time, but when Davenport was called to the First Church ministry, so, too, was Allen. The same faction in the church that wanted to resist royal encroachments would have been impressed with Davenport’s willingness to shelter the regicides and his insistence on standing up for New England traditions. His publication Discourse about Civil Government, asserting the need for a franchise limited to church members, was intended for those planning the town of Newark, but it came at the time when Charles II was demanding that Massachusetts reject such restrictions on the vote.22 Following First Church Boston’s vote to extend a call to Davenport, Edward Tyng, James Oliver, and Richard Cooke were delegated to carry the invitation to New Haven.23 The emissaries also carried a letter to the New Haven congregation explaining their call and asking for their cooperation. Written by James Penn, the ruling elder, the letter explained the dire straits the Boston Church found itself in with the loss of both of its ministers. They hoped “to find that Christian sympathy and fellow feeling with us, that your pure minds will be ready to contribute to our assistance, thereby forwarding the work of the Lord amongst us by your willing resigning to the will of the Lord your sometimes settled pastor, the Reverend John Davenport.” The letter praised Davenport as one “who is so richly furnished, that wherever he is . . . he may be as a polished shaft in the hand of Christ.” “We believe,” Penn wrote, “the Lord hath need of Mr. John Davenport at Boston” and prayed that God would lead the New Haven congregation to agree.24 In the 1650s, Davenport had been invited to minister to the struggling puritan churches in Ireland and to become the first pastor of the newly formed Boston Second Church. He had refused those calls because of his

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commitment to New Haven. But that colony was no more, and some of its leading citizens were migrating to New Jersey. It is estimated that more than 250 of the founders of 1638–1641 had died or moved from New Haven between 1638 and 1668.25 Those moving to New Jersey had urged him to join them, but he had declined. The traditions of the New England Way were under attack, and the New Haven pulpit was no longer a meaningful place from which to conduct the defense. In a letter to a friend in Massachusetts, he wrote of “Christ’s interest in New Haven Colony as miserably lost.”26 His authority within the congregation had begun to be challenged and his moral authority undermined by the behavior of members of his household. Given the circumstances he found himself in, Davenport was more than eager to accept the chance to follow what he called “those eminent lights which have formerly shined in that golden candlestick” that was Boston.27 The pulpit of Boston’s First Church would offer him an unparalleled opportunity to reestablish his reputation and roll back the innovations that threatened the godly kingdom. Davenport’s struggle to defend the original New England Way and his decision to carry the struggle to the heart of New England came at a time when he was suffering new setbacks in his health. He was still bothered by the spells of pain and weakness that had afflicted him since his days in Rotterdam, but he began to shows signs of other health problems. In the spring of 1658 he experienced bouts of what he described as “swimming dizziness.” John Winthrop Jr. sent him powders that included “magisterium of coral,” evidently a mercury preparation.28 On more than one occasion in the early 1660s his health prevented him from traveling. Medical crises would periodically arise through the last years of his life. In September 1665, there must have been some kind of serious health crisis, for Davenport’s son John wrote to Winthrop Jr. indicating that the family had hoped he would travel to New Haven to minister to his father rather than attend a scheduled meeting of the commissioners of the United Colonies, stating that the elder Davenport’s “recovery would be a greater benefit to the country than anything the commissioners can do.” In that same letter, the younger Davenport explained that his mother’s health was suffering. When John had become ill that summer, Elizabeth had taken to sleeping in the same room with him, and over the course of the week she got little sleep since she was up ministering to John at night and then couldn’t catch up on her rest during the day.29



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The following day, the younger Davenport wrote again to Winthrop Jr., this time recounting what he called his father’s “6th fit, which began the last night about 10 of the clock.” The fit started with “great shaking for above one hour, his hands and feet very cold,” leading those assisting him to apply hot cloths. Then Davenport’s fever rose dramatically. “Violent burning” for about an hour led to at least two hours of “great sweating, especially in his upper parts.” He fell into sleep till about two in the afternoon, when he got up and sat in a chair. He was “very feeble, heavy, and drowsy,” but not very thirsty. The younger Davenport pleaded with Winthrop to “lay aside all lesser matters to attend the dangerous sick case of my dear father, so precious a servant of God and instrument of public good, yea, and your cordial friend.”30 On the following January 3, John Davenport Jr. wrote to John Winthrop Jr. that the previous morning, recovering from what had been thought to be a cold, his father had been “taken with a giddiness in his head” and had vomited. He recalled that “above a month ago he had a faint sweat on him, and he thinks some dizziness.” The Davenports were planning on moving to Boston in March, and Davenport Jr. urged Winthrop to visit his father in New Haven before then.31 Evidently, Winthrop did visit and subsequently sent a diagnosis of at least one of Davenport’s maladies, as the younger Davenport then wrote, “We desire you would please to conceal what was your writing from anybody, for some reasons.”32 Presumably, the Davenports feared that knowledge of the clergyman’s health issues might impede the call to First Church Boston. Following his move to Boston, Davenport continued to have what his son referred to as “fits,” suffering “dullness in his head” afterward.33 On another occasion, the younger Davenport reported that his father “when he walks is troubled with a straitness and some pain in his stomach.”34 Undeterred by health issues, Davenport was inclined to accept the call from Boston First Church. But for him to take up that call required more than his willingness. Congregational polity, which he had long championed, required an individual moving from one church to another to be formally dismissed from his or her existing congregation before being admitted to the new church. Explaining the New England Way to English critics in 1637, Davenport had written that no “particular member should depart at his own pleasure,” but only with the approval of his congregation.35 A clergyman who had been called to his position by a particular church also needed the approval of that church to leave and accept a new call elsewhere. Thus,

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John Norton had required the approval of the Ipswich church to accept his call from First Church Boston. Davenport had acknowledged the right of a church to deny a clergyman permission to leave as far back as the 1630s, when he asked permission to resign from the vestry of St. Stephen’s. He acknowledged that that “church might have required me to stay with them by virtue of that rule [Colossians 4:17] ‘Say to Archippus, take heed to the ministry thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfill it.’” He recognized that had the vestry wished him to continue his ministry, he would have held himself “bound to have returned thereunto.”36 Complicating matters when the Boston Church extended its call to Davenport were two issues. In the early decades of New England, the practice of the churches was that no decision—including those involving selection and dismissal of church officers, as well as admission of members—should be taken unless the congregation was unanimous or nearly so. John Wheelwright was denied a call to First Church Boston in 1637 because of the opposition of some of its members, most notably John Winthrop. Unanimity was still upheld as an ideal in 1667, though various disputes, particularly that over the Half-Way Covenant, had moved many churches to settle for majority rule.37 But the old ideal would be argued by the minority in First Church Boston that opposed Davenport’s call, and by some in New Haven who doubted the efficacy of the call to Boston or were themselves unwilling to let their pastor leave. The other complication was that Davenport consistently asserted that when the New Haven church was first organized, he had been given permission to leave the pastorate if ever he felt that God called him to do so, that, in essence, he had been granted a free pass that he could use at any time without the congregation’s specific approval. Given the fluid nature of colonial settlement at the time, this may have been the case. But if there was such an agreement, it was not committed to writing, and no member of the original congregation still living in 1667 was willing to state that it had been so, though his colleague Nicholas Street asserted that Davenport had been consistent in claiming that such an agreement existed. The history of the earlier efforts to induce Davenport to leave shed little light on the issue, partially because the church records do not take notice of such discussions. When Davenport was invited to sit in the Westminster Assembly in 1642, the New Haven church, according to John Winthrop, “set aside a day to seek the Lord in it” but concluded that “seeing the church had no other officer but himself, they might not spare him.”38 When he decided not to



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accept a call to Ireland from the parliamentary commissioners in the 1650s, the decision was evidently his alone, though that doesn’t address the question of whether he would have felt compelled to seek the approval of the church if he wanted to accept. As to his declining the call to Second Church Boston at about the same time, there is evidence that this was discussed in the general New Haven community, but there is no evidence that the church was consulted. When he considered returning to England for health reasons in the late 1650s, Theophilus Eaton’s comment that the Sixth Commandment compelled individuals to preserve their health seemed to imply that no church approval was needed. Called to First Church Boston in 1667, Davenport chose to seek the approval of the New Haven church, whether he believed he needed their permission or not. On October 8, 1667, Davenport penned a letter for the agents of First Church Boston to bring back with them. “The haste of your honored messengers to return unto you compelleth me to be more brief than otherwise I should have been,” he wrote. Recognizing the difficulties facing the Boston Church, and hoping that Christ would assist him, he expressed his “strong inclination to obey this call.” He told the Bostonians that at a meeting of the New Haven church on the previous day, he had “read your letters, one directed to them and the other sent to me.” He gave the congregation his reasons for believing it was God’s call that he leave New Haven, presenting “some arguments which were of force with me (and it appears) that one of them was confessed by the ablest among themselves to be unanswerable.” As for the call to Boston, “the letters read before them were in my apprehensions sufficient.” It was decided that after further time for debate and a special day of fast the following week to seek of God’s guidance, the congregation “would consult and conclude with God’s help. After that you will receive from them their full answer.” Davenport had little doubt that he would be released, “and accordingly,” he concluded, “I hope to be with you this winter.”39 A few weeks later, Davenport wrote again to the Boston Church to confess that his expectation of a speedy dismissal had been overly optimistic. He reiterated that he looked “at your call as the act of the church, it being consented thereto by the major by far, for otherwise nothing shall pass as a church act if the minor part dissent, which is contrary to the scripture, and to reason, and constantly approved practices of all public societies.” In fact, it was a sizable minority of First Church Boston that had been against the call. The dissenters, as many as forty individuals, believed that proceeding on a

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course which so many members opposed flew in the face of Congregational practice and the history of the Boston Church itself. Those individuals had complained of their treatment by the majority and had urged the majority to seek “the advice of a council of elders and messengers” of churches in the Boston area.40 The majority, which opposed the growing use of such church councils, refused. The views of the dissenters were soon communicated to members of the New Haven church.41 Davenport wrote that such “reports of, not only the dissent, but of the strong opposition of about 40 brethren of your church against my coming to you, some of them saying that if I should come thither, it would be breaking of that church,” led some members of the New Haven congregation to reconsider their initial inclination to approve the move. To this concern was added “grief of the whole church and town, and of many godly people in sundry towns about us, upon their fear of my departure hence, . . . fearing that it would be the breaking of this church if I should remove hence.”42 While declining, as he expressed it, to give a positive answer, the New Haven congregation had not refused Davenport’s request. Davenport asserted that when the New Haven church had been founded, its members made an “agreement with me in our first beginning for my being at liberty to follow the call of God, either in any other place or to continue here, . . . [though] while I stay here I am their pastor, and do accordingly officiate, with them” which had “passed without opposition.” That agreement, he believed “is of the same force” as it had been when he deferred a few years earlier from “my going to Delaware [sic: New Jersey].”43 In the September 1667 letter that James Penn, the ruling elder of the Boston Church, wrote to the New Haven congregation, Penn was perhaps alluding to this when he stated his understanding that Davenport, “we understand[, is] providentially loosened from those engagements he sometimes were under to and with you.”44 At about the same time the Boston dissenters who opposed the call acknowledged that Davenport “looketh at himself as free from the [New Haven] church,” though the dissenters questioned whether that was the case.45 In the subsequent exchange of views the New Haven church referred to Davenport’s “apprehension concerning his liberty for to lay down his office upon the change of civil government.” The church further acknowledged that “this hath been his firm apprehension, and he hath formerly expressed so much.”46 This is not quite what Davenport seemed to be saying in his own letter, but it might have been related, seeing as how the New Haven church covenant was founded subsequent to and dependent on the social



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compact that had first shaped the community. It may have been Davenport’s belief that his church obligation was dependent on the existence of the social covenant. What is clear is that Davenport believed himself free of a binding obligation to the New Haven church, which would mean he might not have to be formally dismissed as pastor, though he still would have to be dismissed by them in his capacity of an individual member. The congregation itself had a different understanding of the relationship. Though he may have felt that the specific approval of the New Haven church was not necessary, Davenport certainly wished to leave on good terms. Indicating to the congregation that he wished to “more clearly discern the holy will and hand of God appearing in the whole business,” he proposed “making a journey to Boston for this winter and part of the spring for a further trial to find out the mind of God to my full satisfaction, promising . . . to return to them again in case of my dissatisfaction.” If he was satisfied that the move was God’s will, he agreed “yet not to engage myself for office until I had given them [the New Haven church] account of the event (and shall receive their answer).” Having received what he regarded as unanimous approval of the congregation for this plan, he decided, “consider[ing] the difficulty and hazard of winter voyage and journey, and in hope for to see the church better settled by that time, I consent to stay with them this winter, yet telling them I must make a journey to Boston by the will of God before the hot months of next summer.”47 In writing to the Boston Church he also sought to “add a word or two for your peace. The prophet said,” he reminded them, “love the truth and peace [Zechariah 8:19]. Truth and peace are sisters and will not be separated. Let the truth be first regarded and minded, and your hearts be united to the truth of the gospel and—yourselves for the truth’s sake.” Referring to the observation in Scripture that the Lord was with Jehoshaphat “because he walked in the first ways of his father,” he told the divided congregation, “So will the Lord be with you, honored and beloved in the Lord, if you walk in the first ways wherein you walked according to his rule under that faithful and blessed servant of Christ, Mr. John Cotton.” He believed that those first ways included membership of visible saints only, lay authority within the church, and congregational autonomy—all of which were being challenged by the dissidents. “If,” Davenport warned them, “you fall into divisions amongst yourselves, by different principles, some striving for one way, some for another, I fear, I fear and forewarn, that the issue will be a rent amongst you, for God’s great dishonor, to the corrupting of the church

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from the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus, which God in mercy avert.” Directly addressing “the brethren that have declared themselves opposite to my coming to you,” he urged that they “let nothing be done through strife and vainglory, and that there be no schism amongst you for my sake, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment, striving together for the faith of the Gospel and for the holy order wherein Christ hath appointed his church for to walk.”48 On this occasion, his irenic efforts would fail, and his own actions at least contributed to that failure. Davenport spent the winter in New Haven, devoting some time to handing over various responsibilities to trusted friends, which should have been understood as a sign that he was unlikely to return. He showed particular interest in the town school established by the Hopkins trust, which in February 1668 was reported as having eight current students, with five more expected in the coming months.49 In April he transferred his management of the school to a committee of trustees. Committing to them the tasks of carrying on the management of the “Grammar or Collegiate School,” he charged them with seeing to it that “learning may be duly encouraged and furthered therein in the training up of such hopeful youth as in time, by the blessing of God, . . . may be fitted for public service in Church and Commonwealth.” He stipulated that the grammar school must teach “the three learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.” While he reserved for himself a veto over the disposition of the estate while he lived in “this country,” he clearly was anticipating that he might very well not return to New Haven.50 Davenport finally arrived in Boston on May 2, 1668. John Hull, who was one of the members of First Church Boston who had been opposed to the call, recorded in his journal, “At three or four in the afternoon, came Mr. John Davenport to town, with his wife, son, and son’s family, and was met by many of the town. A great shower of extraordinary drops of rain fell as they entered the town; but Mr. Davenport and his wife were sheltered in a coach of Mr. Searle’s who went to meet them.”51 Hull, who, like most puritans, was quick to see the hand of providence in everyday events, perhaps saw the heavy rains as a sign of storms to come. If so, he was to prove accurate. Boston had changed much since John and Elizabeth had lodged there with John Cotton in 1637. The population had tripled, from around one thousand to more than three thousand. A good deal of that increase was to be found in the North End, where the Second Church had been established. Reflecting concerns for defense, a battery had been built at Merry’s Point in



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the North End in 1646 to protect the harbor and the entrance to the Charles River. In 1666 John Leverett had erected the South Battery near Fort Hill. Many of the streets had been paved with pebble stones. The most notable addition was the town house. Robert Keayne, who had taken notes of Davenport’s sermons in London and who had been the center of much controversy in Boston, had willed the town funds to erect a substantial building that symbolized the fusing of commerce, government, and religion. It was built on stilts on the site of the town market. The large open area underneath the structure was the new marketplace. A meeting place for merchants to conduct their business and for the townspeople to hold meetings was on the first floor. The top floor housed a library, two court rooms, a council chamber, and a gathering place for area clergy. Keayne also left £40 to feed the clergy when they came together. Boston had become a major commercial center, and wharves had been extended into the harbor to accommodate the ships that arrived from and sailed to ports throughout the Atlantic world. Prominent merchants lived in fine homes and played a growing role in the life of the town. Some, like John Hull, adhered to puritan values. Others, like Thomas Breedon (who had complained of the welcome given Goffe and Whalley) and Richard Wharton, had no interest in the type of society envisioned by the town’s founders. There were concerns that with the social and economic changes, the moral character of the town was in decline. Sexual offenses were more prevalent, and there was evidence of prostitutes plying their trade—all of which would pose a challenge to Davenport. Shortly after his arrival, the First Church majority, again rejecting the appeal of the dissenters to do nothing without the advice of a church council, sent John Leverett to “go in the church’s name to give Mr. Davenport a fresh invitation.” Davenport told Leverett that he could not give the church an immediate answer, “but waitheth to see the mind of God.”52 While the Boston Church was wrestling with its call to Davenport, and the clergyman sought the mind of God, he preached on at least three occasions to the church in Cambridge, across the Charles River. On May 7 he preached on the text of Psalms 90:12: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” The Cambridge pastor, Jonathan Mitchell, was a strong advocate of the Half-Way Covenant, and Davenport implicitly challenged the basis for that reform. The thrust of his message was to urge individuals to seek true wisdom, a wisdom enlightened by God’s grace, and not merely the wisdom available in one’s natural state. On May 21 Davenport continued

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to explore the message of the same text. He told his listeners that “there are seasons of receiving special mercy as when God calls upon the heart of a man by the ministry of the word,” and he announced to them, “Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” As he had from his earliest days at Hilton Castle, he was urging individuals to take up their responsibilities to God and themselves, and he castigated “lazy professors” who were guilty of “the superficial, slight, and formal performance of duties of religion.” On June 4 he completed the sequence of sermons on Psalms 90:12, chastising “younger men and maids” to attend their duties so that God might “let forth such a light into the[ir] hearts.”53 On July 2 Davenport once again stood in the pulpit of the Cambridge church. This time his text was Acts 24:16: “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men.” What is striking is that this was the same text that he had used to explain to the parish of St. Stephen’s Coleman Street the reasons he felt compelled to leave them. Once again he was wrestling with his conscience as he made an important decision. He identified many reasons it was difficult to keep a good conscience, among them temptations from “the flesh,” from “the world,” and from “satan . . . working upon the [conviction] in men’s hearts.” Citing various Scripture texts, he said, “Men should not set their wills above the way of their own understanding,” and he cautioned that, like others, he should not “exercise myself in things too high for [me]. [Sobriety] requires moderation in man’s will & affections.” No man was to seek his own pleasure, for that would be displeasing to God. There was a danger in paying too much attention to “the pleasing of your neighbor,” but he acknowledged the importance of a call to help and edify one’s neighbor. Addressing the congregation, but clearly speaking of his own situation, he urged those who heard him to “from day to day commit your soul, [life], & way to God that so you may live in all good conscience.” It is likely that by this time he had decided that it was God’s will that he minister to First Church Boston.54 Accompanying Davenport to Boston were his wife, Elizabeth; his son John; John’s wife, Abigail; and that couple’s infant daughter, Elizabeth. By that time John Jr. was handling much of the family business and writing many of the letters that Davenport himself would have written earlier. Surprisingly, John Jr. had not been sent to Harvard to complete his education and perhaps prepare for a career in the ministry. The one glimpse we have of him during the years in New Haven is when he was seriously ill in December 1660. His



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mother was with him constantly, provided him with medicines that John Winthrop Jr. had sent her, and cooked special foods to encourage him to take nourishment.55 He had remained at home and presumably been taught by his father. Admitted to the New Haven church, he became a colony freeman in 1657 and began to play a role in town and colony affairs during the last years of the colony. In November 1663 he married Abigail Pierson, the daughter of Abraham Pierson. They had a son, named John, who was born in June 1665 but died eleven weeks later. In October 1666, Abigail gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. In February 1669 Abigail gave birth to another son, named John, who was baptized by his grandfather at Boston First Church. The family purchased a home and lot on what is now Tremont Street from Richard Bellingham, a member of Boston First Church and the colony’s governor. The lot was opposite the burial ground where John Cotton was interred (now King’s Chapel Burial Ground) and a short distance from where the new meetinghouse for First Church had been erected in 1640.56 In the face of the renewed invitation conveyed to Davenport by John Leverett, the First Church minority was pushing the issue of whether a candidate opposed by a sizable minority could be effectively called to the ministry and how a “sizable minority” was to be understood. Related to this was the further question of what sort of relationship could exist between such a minority and the minister whose call they objected to. One of the difficulties in assessing what followed is that the most detailed contemporary account of the events was written by Joshua Scottow, a Boston merchant who was one of the leaders of the minority who opposed Davenport. Although his transcription of the various letters exchanged is generally considered accurate, his account of the course of events and his interpretation of the positions taken by the various participants is less easy to verify.57 In addition to this account, Scottow published a number of works, all of which show a tendency to exaggeration and an intolerance for other views, which should make us cautious in accepting his manuscript account of the First Church controversy. In an attempt to heal the breach, Davenport agreed to meet privately with the dissenters. About twenty individuals came to see him. Having heard their arguments, he agreed to prayerfully consider them, but he made no immediate response. About a week later, two of the dissenters, William Davis and John Hull, met with Davenport to discuss “the whole matter with loving acceptance and respect,” and they parted on good terms.58 On a lecture day on July 16, Davenport offered a prayer to the church, in which, according to Scottow, he bemoaned the fact that in a church “famous

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for unity as a city compact within itself,” there had arisen “a company in opposition to the rest, even to the multitude of the church, about the choice of their officers, and will not consent but upon such a condition as neither Christ himself, nor his apostles gave any warrant for, or the highest council in the world can impose upon any minister of the gospel.” The dissenters were “persisting therein peremptorily, whether it be from error in judgment, or whether it be a design, it is not yet manifest, but it is evident that Satan hath a great hand in it.”59 It was following this sermon that the dissenters, claiming that they had been “engaged against by Mr. Davenport before the whole country, without any cause to them known,” determined on an effort to secede from First Church and form a new congregation. Some of Davenport’s supporters evidently demanded of elder Penn that he bring the dissenters before the church to censure them. Penn decided (perhaps on his own) that a church council should be consulted on the limited question of whether the dissenters should be censured. The council met on August 6 and issued its report two days later. It consisted of representatives from the churches of Dorchester, Dedham, Roxbury, and Cambridge. The delegates were clergy and laity who had supported the Half-Way Covenant and took a larger view of ministerial authority and the importance of councils than Davenport believed in. Representation from Boston’s Second Church, ministered to since 1664 by Davenport’s ally Increase Mather, was conspicuously absent from the council. The group acknowledged a “good measure of moderation and grace appearing in the agitations about the case” and “affectionate desires and endeavors that have been used to attain . . . unity.” Nevertheless, the council recommended that if the dissenters could not be reconciled, they should be dismissed to form another church, pointing out that a new church in Boston was probably needed anyway, because the town’s “two places of their public assembling to worship God cannot entertain” all the residents.60 This was not unreasonable, since when the Hartford church had been split by similar issues, all the outside advice had called for the dissenters to be allowed to leave to join with another church or form their own. What followed is difficult to disentangle. Twenty-nine members of the Boston Church wrote to elder Penn requesting that they and their families be dismissed. When Penn informed the congregation of this on August 10, members of the church evidently asked that those who sought to sever their ties with the congregation absent themselves from the meetinghouse while their request was discussed. According to Scottow, when they had left the



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building, the remnant “gave Mr. Davenport a call to office” and appointed August 19 as a fast day. With the dissenters absent, the votes were unanimous. Messengers were also sent to New Haven to seek verification that that church had dismissed Davenport.61 On August 25 Nicholas Street responded to the Boston request on behalf of the New Haven church. It was a somewhat tortured response. He reported that the New Haven church had originally decided that they “could not resign him up to you by any immediate act of ours” and that this was still their position. Street did, however, acknowledge that “the last clause in their previous letter, . . . is capable of a strained interpretation of a virtual dismission.”62 He was referring to the fact that in their initial response to the Boston Church in August 1667, New Haven had indicated that because of their “tender respect” to Davenport they had “satisfied his desire to go to Boston for a time.” They had also prayed that God would give Davenport “light for to guide him in his way” and that “the Father of mercy supply both his and your need,” the last referring to First Church Boston.63 When Street’s new letter was received by elder Penn, he shared it with Davenport but not with the congregation, as various parts of the letter were deemed “full of mistakes and nonsense.”64 If he had not done so before, Davenport now wrote to his former congregation setting forth his determination to accept the call and asking for a clearer statement of his dismissal. On October 12, Street sent another long and somewhat confusing letter. He wrote that the congregation continued to insist that they saw “no cause or call of God to resign our reverend pastor to yourselves of the church of Boston by an immediate act of ours [emphasis added],” but that because of their “tender respect to himself,” they had declared their feelings to him in such a way “that he is able to give you a more full answer.” Unfortunately, the communications between the New Haven congregation and Davenport himself does not survive and are not described in contemporary sources. While the New Haven church would not issue a formal dismissal, they informed First Church Boston that such was their “respect to him, our love of peace, our desire of your supply,” that they would “go as far as we safely can in order to your and his satisfaction in this matter.” Street wrote that when Davenport “would not be persuaded [to stay], we ceased, saying the will of the Lord be done.” They were content to waive their arguments and “leave both yourselves [the Boston Church], and him to make what improvement you see cause, without any clog or impediment from us upon that account, of the liberty” he had claimed to join the Boston Church.65

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There was enough confusion in Street’s letter to have provided the First Church minority with fodder for their opposition, and so it was an edited form of the letter (written out by John Davenport Jr.) that was read to the Boston Church. The key passages alluded to Davenport’s liberty to join the Boston Church and the concluding statement that “as himself and his son have desired, we do dismiss unto your holy fellowship Mr. John Davenport Jr., Mrs. Davenport, both elder and younger, desiring you to receive them in the Lord as becometh saints.”66 On November 1 Davenport, his wife, his son, and his son’s wife were formally admitted as members of the Boston Church.67 New Haven’s action was thus deemed sufficient to allow First Church to admit Davenport and his family as members. Eight days later First Church listened again to the request of the dissenters that they be dismissed from the church but declined to grant it, expressing their “desire [for] them to become one with them and return again.” The church majority stated that they “saw not light to concur with the council” that had recommended the dissenters be dismissed. At the same meeting the congregation proceeded to give Davenport “a full and authoritative call.” The dissenters expressed their opposition, and Davenport, accepting the call, “said that which was the dissenters’ chief reason of non-compliance therein [i.e., their support of the Half-Way Covenant] was his crown.”68 The dissenters wrote to the churches of Roxbury, Dorchester, Cambridge, and Dedham for assistance. Delegates from those congregations met on the November 23 with Davenport, Allen, and elder Penn. According to Scottow, Davenport and his colleagues promised that if the dissenters were present at Davenport’s ordination, their silence was not to be interpreted as concurrence with the step. The agreement, read in the presence of Davenport, Allen, and Penn, but not signed by them, further stipulated that “mutual love and amity should be maintained [by both factions] in walking together until the mind of Christ may further appear for direction.”69 The door was still open for the congregation to heal its divisions. At the same time, the Reverend John Allin of Dedham wrote to the dissenters and asked them to state their position. Asked if they could bring themselves “for peace and edification to submit to the election of the Reverend Mr. Davenport” should the church agree to continue the children of baptized adults under its discipline (the position Wilson and Norton had brought them to), they responded that that would not be sufficient. When asked if they were given the right to form their own church, they would admit only those “suitable to the purity, peace, safety, and good of the church



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and Commonwealth,” they responded that they would, and they committed themselves to follow the recommendations of the Synod of 1662, which, of course, was the core issue that divided them from Davenport and the church majority.70 It is clear that the dissenters were no longer willing to consider reconciliation with Davenport and the First Church majority. Despite what had been agreed to regarding Davenport’s ordination, they attempted to block the event. On December 4 the dissenters appealed to elders of some of the area churches, asking them to meet and address the issues. The elders met in Boston on the December 7, two days before the scheduled ordination, but offered no advice at that time.71 On December 9, elder Penn asked those who had voted to call Davenport if they were still agreed on doing so, which they affirmed. Asked if he would accept, Davenport addressed the congregation. He told those gathered that “an outward call could not satisfy me, if I had not an inward call.” He told them how he had searched his soul to determine whether he was entitled to leave New Haven and accept the invitation. He was fully satisfied that the “call from the church [was] an authoritative call,” which he accepted.72 With six neighboring churches in attendance, both he and Allen were ordained. The younger John Davenport sent his own account of the day to John Winthrop Jr. a week later. He stated that “it was hoped by some that those called dissenters will return to the church again” now that Davenport and Allen had been ordained. He said that the church had been full for the occasion and that his father’s “serious and weighty speech . . . tended to general satisfaction.” Sir Thomas Temple, Lord Saye and Sele’s kinsman, had been present and “was so moved that he wept.” Dining that evening with John Leverett, Temple “said he had been [to] many solemn meetings but never saw the like solemnity,” and he “added if the king had been present he should have turned Congregational man.” It was Davenport Jr.’s judgment that “all issued peaceably and comfortably and thereof glory rebounded to the name of God and comfort to his people here and elsewhere.” Yet he also claimed that Roxbury’s John Eliot had told elder Penn that “there was a plot to break this church and so the rest of the churches by consequence.”73 Shortly after writing to Winthrop that there was a hope the schism in the church was healed, the younger Davenport had to confess in a subsequent letter that “we are still tossed in a troublesome sea of contention here,” something he blamed the dissenters for, writing that “the Apostle saith truly, only by pride cometh contention.”74 At a church meeting on January 1, the

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dissenters indicated that they did regard the church and officers as true and “desired to walk in communion with them according to the advice of the council”—in essence affirming that First Church was a true church but not theirs. On January 6 elder Penn called another church meeting to “remove all offenses, and that with unity of Spirit we might sit down at the Lord’s table.” But the meeting proved divisive, with dissenters complaining about the behavior and statements of John Leverett and other members of the majority. Particular offense was taken at James Everill’s statement that “if the dissenters were suffered to go on, it would open a door to all licentiousness.” On January 17, Davenport preached a sermon to prepare the congregation for the administration of the Lord’s Supper the following Sunday. Davenport and the other elders took the position that the dissenters might not both join with the majority in communion and yet persist in their effort to leave the church. Such persistence was evidence that the majority was not joined in peace with the church. Consequently, when the time came for the sacrament to be administered, the dissenters stood up and left the church.75 On February 26 the dissenters again petitioned the church elders to be dismissed. They asked that the entire church be convened to vote on their request, which was denied.76 In the meantime, the dissenters had also petitioned the colony’s governor and council, asking the magistrates to intervene “to provoke the churches unto that duty and help that our condition calls for” and asking permission to build a new meetinghouse “for our seasonably assembling to worship God.”77 By the first months of 1669 it was evident that issues of the Half-Way Covenant and the selection of Davenport and Allen as ministers of First Church was taking second place to the issue of the power of church councils. This appeared in two forms. On the one hand, the First Church dissenters believed that the judgment of the initial clerical council that had urged their dismissal was a binding judgment that the congregation’s majority was required to yield to. This was the basis for their going ahead with plans for a new meetinghouse, despite the fact that they had not been dismissed. Davenport and the church majority did not accept the fact that the dissenters were no longer members of the congregation and subject to its discipline. The other way in which the issue of council authority arose regarded the recommendations of the Synod of 1662. The dissenters regarded those proposals as authoritative. They consistently made the point when writing to area churches that had approved the recommendations that they, too, supported those findings and were seeking release from First Church to carry



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them out in a new church. In a March letter to area churches they spoke of their adherence to the “church order . . . solemnly declared from the Scriptures in the Platform of discipline and the last Synod’s determination about the subjects of Baptism and consociation of churches.”78 And in their appeal to the magistrates they stressed their commitment to “the Platform of church government here established and the declaration of the Synod in ’62 [emphasis added], without any desire of innovation upon either in any measure.”79 Davenport, of course, had rejected the synod’s recommendation for councils of consociated churches, and he had insisted that its proposals could not be imposed on churches but must be left to their individual judgment. His position was supported by the majority of First Church members and had played a key role in why the majority had sought his ministry. A critical issue was whether the church had bound itself to accept the judgment of the initial council when it had met. The Boston dissenters were able to point to the fact that elder Penn had agreed to calling of the initial council to help resolve the dispute. But the church majority responded that “it was only the elder” who had agreed to a council and that “the church was not bound to stand to what was written in the letters sent by the elder to the churches.”80 Because he strongly believed that church elders could not act contrary to or without the approval of the church membership, Davenport did not believe that First Church was bound by the findings of the original council. Reflecting his belief that it was the whole church that had responsibility for making such decisions, Davenport propounded to the church the question of whether the dissenters should be allowed to leave. It would have been in keeping with the position he took during the Hartford church controversy if he had supported the separation, but there is no evidence of what position he personally took. It is clear that the relations between the leaders of the church majority and minority were deeply embittered by years of dispute. On this question Davenport’s position may not have carried much weight. The congregation voted to deny the request. Proceeding to discuss whether another council should be called, as the dissenters wished, Davenport, Allen, and many of the members of the congregation expressed their belief that “to grant a council tends to overthrow the Congregational way.”81 This was a separate issue on which Davenport’s views were clear. Rebuffed, the dissenters decided to once again write directly to other churches. They called on the churches to whom they wrote to “send your elders and messengers to meet in council at Boston upon the 13th of April.”

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Though their own churches declined to participate, Dedham’s John Allin and Roxbury’s John Eliot wrote endorsing the plan, indicating that it was “high time for the elders to interpose” and that such a council was “regular, expedient, and necessary.”82 The right of councils to control an individual congregation had become the central bone of contention. The minority were still attending the First Church, and tempers were flaring. At a meeting of the First Church congregation at this time, Edward Hutchinson accused leading dissenters of charging the church elders with lying, and one of the minority claimed that Reverend Allen had answered a question about “what relief should be afforded unto brethren oppressed” by saying that “there was none until the day of judgment.”83 The council requested by the dissenters met in Boston on April 13, with fifteen churches represented. No one suggested that this council had been agreed to by the First Church majority. Indeed, John Davenport Jr. wrote to John Winthrop Jr. that the council was “contrary to the express mind of the church.”84 In an exchange of letters between the council and First Church, the council sought a meeting with First Church elders. Writing on behalf of the congregation, Davenport (and Penn) indicated, “I do not see that you are an orderly council,” and “we cannot meet and act with you in matters that concern this church against the expressed mind of this church.” The council sent a delegation led by Richard Mather to the town house, where First Church was gathered to consider censuring the dissidents. Mather carried a letter from the council claiming that the council was “at this time by the providence of God convened under an ordinance of Christ (we hope), in observance of the right rules, and in pursuance of the good ends of consociation of churches.” The letter stated that the council was not “assuming unto ourselves any undue power over you” and was not “presuming to offer any violence unto your Christian liberty,” but, in offering “the right hand of fellowship” to assist First Church, it implied the right (as suggested in the 1662 proposals) to withdraw that fellowship.85 When Mather reached First Church, the door was locked against him.86 Eventually, John Leverett, Allen, Penn and others met with the aged clergyman and brought the letter, signed by about thirty members of the council, in to the church. The church refused to hear the council’s arguments and proceeded to discuss censuring the dissenters.87 Elder Penn produced a list of charges, stating that the dissenters had obstructed the church in its efforts to elect Davenport and Allen, tried to hinder other churches from participating in the ordination of the two clergymen, had walked out on a celebration of



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the Lord’s Supper, and then later tried to participate in the sacrament without apologizing for having walked out earlier. Individual dissenters were also charged with other offenses, including Thomas Savage, for “saying that Mr. Davenport left the church of New Haven for worldly ends.88 Before the church assembled again to vote on the charges, the council issued its findings. It decided that the earlier council had been justified in finding grounds for the dissenters to be dismissed and allowed to form a new church. That council had been “orderly called” and had correctly “obliged” First Church to dismiss the minority. The council found that “the dissenting brethren may seasonally make use of their Christian liberty” to form another church body, and it asserted that this was justified because only by doing so could they have “administration of Baptism and ecclesiastical discipline to the children of the covenant, and consociation of churches according to the late synod of 1662.” In essence, these church leaders, proponents of the synod’s proposals, were stating that congregational minorities in those churches that rejected the synod findings could secede and form their own churches. In reference to the First Church dissenters, the council argued that they would “neglect the duty incumbent on them” if they failed to avail themselves of the liberty they had to form a new church, and that “if they should not make reasonable use of this Christian liberty” they “are in danger to be led into temptation.”89 Dedham’s John Allin again added his support, stating that “the regular sentence of a council of churches in order and orderly called to consult in a case ought to be observed.”90 The findings of the council were delivered to elder Penn, who conveyed them to the congregation. This led to additional charges being laid against the dissenters in First Church. They were accused of “endeavoring to deprive the Church of its power within itself, . . . by twice assuming power to send to other churches to meet in Council, the first time without the church’s knowledge and the second time against their consent.” The dissenters response to the charges against them were rejected, and the congregation “declared the dissenters to be under great guilt, saying God would in his time look upon it and require it, . . . if not in this world yet in another, where the council could not help them.” The church proceeded to ban them from the Lord’s Supper and to declare them schismatics, adding that the recent council “was not an ordinance of Christ.” At this point the dissenters withdrew.91 By law, the formation of a new church required the approbation of local congregations and of the colony magistrates. While First Church refused to recognize the legitimacy of the proposed new congregation, the dissenters

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asserted that the council’s permission was sufficient ecclesiastical approval. The colony magistrates proved divided. Six magistrates, one of whom had been a lay representative at the first church council, and two of whom were representatives at the second, approved the decision to form a new church. But Governor Richard Bellingham, a member of First Church, and five magistrates, including First Church members John Leverett, and Edward Tyng, signed a statement asserting that the formation of the new congregation was “greatly inconsistent with and contrary to the said order of the Gospel,” concluding that “we approve not of the said transaction.”92 Despite this declaration, the dissenters and clergy of neighboring churches met in Charlestown to organize the new church. Learning of this plan, Davenport and his fellow elders wrote, “with the consent of the brethren,” conveying their concerns to the clergy who were to participate in the event.93 The objections were pushed aside, and Third Church was formed on May 12. Thomas Thatcher prayed “that this infant church might live to condemn its condemners,” a sentiment that perhaps belied the claims that the dissenters made that they wanted to heal the breach with First Church.94

Ch a pt e r 2 1

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he division in the First Church Boston spilled into the politics of the Bay Colony. The issues involved far more than the congregation and its dissident brethren, and so John Davenport welcomed an invitation from the deputies of the Massachusetts General Court to deliver the annual Election Day sermon in May 1669, one week after the formation of Third Church. The elderly clergyman minced no words. Having elaborated on the need for the people to choose godly magistrates and for the magistrates to honor God, he told the magistrates that “when they that are called to ruling power, cease to exert it in subservience to the kingdom of Christ, there will be an end of New England’s glory, and happiness, and safety.” Davenport invoked his authority as one who was involved from “the first beginning of this colony of Massachusetts.” He related how the first churches “were gathered in a Congregational way, and walked therein, according to the rules of the Gospel, with much peace and content among themselves,” so that his friend John Cotton wrote that in New England “the order of the churches and of the Commonwealth was so settled, by common consent, that it brought to his mind the New Heaven and New Earth, wherein dwells righteousness.” But this order was threatened by “two extremes: misguided zeal, and formality.” In words that clearly referred to the magistrates’ interference in the affairs of his congregation, he warned them that they “deprive not any instituted Christian church, walking according to Gospel rules, of the power and privileges which Christ hath purchased for them by his precious blood.” He indirectly criticized the council of churches which had endorsed Third Church and directly criticized the magistrates, who had “countenance[d]

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Title page from John Davenport, A Sermon Preach’d at the Election of the Governour.



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and upheld others to exercise power over the churches in such things, to whom Christ never gave such power.” Davenport acknowledged the need for occasional synods or councils, but he reminded his hearers that Cotton had taught that “concerning the power of councils, that the question is carried to the council, but the cause still remaineth in and with the church.” Alluding to the Halfway Covenant, he warned the magistrates against “imposing on the churches anything Christ hath not put upon them,” such as “men’s opinion, especially when they are such as prevailed in an hour of temptation, though consented to by the major part of a topical synod, yet disliked by some of themselves, and by other godly ministers both in this country, and in other countries, so that they are things controverted and under dispute.” He denied the need for standing councils—the direction in which the authoritarian elements in the region were moving toward—warning that such bodies “under a pretence of helping the church with their light, bereave them of their powers.” Should the magistrates and deputies fail to correct their behavior, they would feel “God’s punishing justice,” and the Lord would “remove the golden candlesticks and the burning and shining lights in them.”1 Davenport’s Election Day sermon was as stinging a public attack on the civil leaders of Massachusetts as had ever been delivered by a respected clergyman. The deputies, who sided with Davenport, voted their thanks. The magistrates declined to do so. It was in this highly charged atmosphere that supporters of the Third Church accused elder Penn and Davenport of having behaved improperly in the events leading to Davenport’s assumption of the First Church pulpit. The political nature of this attack is clear. Had not the peace of the colony been disrupted by the debates over the Half-Way Covenant and the authority exercised by church councils and civil magistrates, it is highly unlikely that the charges would have been leveled. The two men were accused of having first concealed a letter from the church of New Haven that denied Davenport the dismissal he had requested, and then of having forged the letter read to the Boston congregation purporting to be the New Haven dismissal necessary for Davenport to be called. There were many lines of communication between Boston and New Haven, and anyone interested must have been able to follow events in the two congregations. Indeed, some suggestions of irregularity had been made earlier, First Church dissident Thomas Savage being one of a number of men who questioned Davenport’s explanation of his actions and motives.

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The impetus for the new attack was undoubtedly Davenport’s Election Day sermon. The event that provided the excuse for the charges was a visit to Boston by Nicholas Street, Davenport’s former colleague in the New Haven ministry, in early June 1669. In discussions of the letter of dismissal that had been read to First Church, it became evident that the letter read was much shorter than the letter actually sent and signed by Street. The same conversations likely touched on the earlier letter. With rumors of misconduct spreading, elder Penn called a meeting of First Church on June 17 to respond to the charges. What the dissidents referred to as the concealed letter was the letter from Street to Penn on August 25 of the preceding year in which Street questioned the accuracy of Davenport’s understanding of how things stood between him and the New Haven church. Penn had written asking for a formal dismissal. The church, Street wrote, had allowed Davenport to go to Boston “to attend and judge a call of God,” but not “for a discovery of God’s mind in this matter.” He further stated that, while Davenport had long asserted that his original covenant with the church gave him the right to leave on his own judgment, the current members of that church did not agree with this understanding. Finally, while stating that the church “could not reign him up to you by any immediate act of ours [emphasis added],” he acknowledged that a clause in a previous letter “is capable of a strained interpretation of a virtual dismission.” Discussing this letter at the June 1669 meeting of First Church, Davenport said that after Penn had brought it to him, he had not concealed it but shared it with as many as forty members of the Boston congregation. He had not presented it to the church as a whole because it mainly concerned his understanding of various events and was full of mistakes. He had “answered it, declaring his resolution never to return unto New Haven again, though he had not accepted office here at Boston.” A new letter had been requested from New Haven.2 The final letter of dismissal was long and tortuous, quite probably reflecting Street’s efforts to reconcile the feelings of those in New Haven who were willing to allow Davenport to go and those who wished him to stay, all of this in context that it was clear that their revered minister was not coming back. This letter was edited by Penn, with the active or passive assistance of Davenport, Allen, and Davenport’s son John. There is no doubt that they had tried to undercut the opposition by cutting out the portions that expressed the reservations of the New Haven church. Hoping to shield Davenport from criticism, at the June meeting Penn tried to take all of the



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blame upon himself, but Davenport “wondered what the elder should mean by so saying,” acknowledging that he had indeed seen the edited version but “saw no appearance of evil in it.” Addressing the charges that had been made, he said that “it savored of much ignorance and malice for any to think that this extract was a forgery (which was to make a writing contrary to the intent of the author).”3 On June 29 a lengthier statement by Davenport was read to the First Church congregation. In it he went into more detail as to why only an extract of the letter of dismissal had been read, emphasizing that nothing had been added to the letter and nothing taken out that altered its clear meaning. The statement having been read, the congregation voted that there had been no just cause for the reproaches hurled at the elders. On July 4 the congregation gathered to celebrate together the Lord’s Supper.4 While the First Church was itself addressing the charges against Davenport and Penn, a council of seventeen ministers had gathered to consider the matter. On the fifteenth of July they issued a statement “against the scandal given by the present elders of the first church of Christ in Boston, by their fraudulent dealing about the letters sent from the church in New Haven to the church of Boston.” It is not clear who called the council together, and its assumption of authority was precisely the type of development Davenport had warned against. The clergy were largely those who had been active in promoting the Half-Way Covenant and the Third Church. Twelve of the seventeen had been members or outspoken supporters of the second council, which had authorized Third Church.5 Furthermore, these were the ministers whom Davenport had spoken harshly about in his Election Day sermon. The most notable addition was the name of Increase Mather. Mather had been a strong supporter of Davenport in the campaign against the Half-Way Covenant, and neither he nor Second Church Boston, where he was pastor, had been involved in either of the councils that listened to the First Church dissidents.6 The report of the seventeen clergy was harsh in its condemnation of the First Church elders, blaming them for “an act of great unfaithfulness and neglect of sincerity and truth.” They talked of the dangerous consequences of the actions for the New Haven Church, the Boston First Church, and the reputation of the colony as a whole. The edited letter they referred to as nothing “less than great unfaithfulness, falsehood if not forgery.” They cited Davenport’s earlier account of his departure from St. Stephen’s against him, when he had said that had the church not agreed to his leaving, he

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would have stayed, regardless of the consequences. The same necessity for a proper dismissal was necessary when he sought to leave New Haven, according to the seventeen.7 This report was sent to the First Church elders with a covering letter on August 4, the day before a public fast in the colony. The cover letter would have inflamed matters more. Declaring themselves “the Lord’s watchmen,” the clergy expressed their amazement that the First Church elders were so insensible of how they had offended others by their action, and they stated that in what they had done, the elders had blasphemed against the name of God.8 In their reply the First Church elders denied that the full letter they had edited would have indicated New Haven’s refusing to allow Davenport to leave, but only that they refused to do so by an immediate act.9 The attempted intervention of the seventeen was exactly the sort of “prelatical” innovation that Davenport had complained against, and rather than healing divisions, it only inflamed them. The First Church struck back to defend itself. On August 16 Captain Clarke was sent by the church to New Haven to gain a clarification regarding Davenport’s dismissal. Four days later John Leverett, the elders, and three other members of the congregation were instructed to write to the Dedham church, which had separately inquired about the disputed letters. They informed that congregation, which had refused to allow their pastor John Allin to participate as a member of the second council that authorized Third Church, that the edited letter, while omitting irrelevant material, had involved “no endeavoring to counterfeit or simulate name or hand, but barely transcribing.” They further asserted that since the controversy had arisen, the New Haven church had reaffirmed the fact that it had dismissed Davenport, though Nicholas Street had told them that “the dismission was not so honorable as Mr. Davenport deserved.” On October 9, First Church, having received the new information requested from New Haven, “voted unanimously that the church doth stand to the former vote and judgment in the case of the elders about extracting the sense of the letters dismissive.”10 At this time First Church evidently further incensed its opponents by implicitly criticizing the intolerant treatment of Baptists by the colony magistrates. Davenport and many of his First Church supporters had previously questioned the harsh treatment of Baptists. In 1669 the church received a letter from one of its former members, Nehemiah Bourne, “reflecting much upon this Government and their proceedings against some Anabaptists.”11 Bourne had left Boston in 1643, had fought in the English regiment of



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Thomas Rainsborough, and then in the navy, rising to become one of the protectorate’s naval commissioners. As early as 1645 he had taken a stand against the Massachusetts treatment of Baptists.12 He corresponded with John Winthrop Jr. and his movements were familiar to the regicides Whalley and Goffe (with whom he had served) and to Davenport. He appears to have been back in New England in the 1660s, although he was again in London by 1670. Bourne may have been in Boston in April 1668 when a major debate was staged with Baptist spokesmen in the First Church meetinghouse. Dedham’s John Allin moderated the debate and led the effort to confute the Baptist errors. Davenport did not arrive in the town till the following month, but he would have been well aware of the controversy. It was a few weeks after his arrival that the General Court ordered the banishment of the Baptists dissidents, the decision that Edward Hutchinson and other Davenport supporters petitioned against.13 In 1669 a group of English puritan clergy, including Davenport’s friends Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye, wrote a letter criticizing the actions taken by the magistrates.14 It is likely that Bourne decided to return to England as a result of this controversy, and he shared his views on the treatment of Baptists with his friends in First Church before his departure. Davenport and his fellow elders decided to make his letter public. Their doing so was added to the complaints against the church by the magistrates who supported the congregation’s dissidents. The alignment between the opposition of key members of First Church to the Half-Way Covenant and their moderate stance regarding Baptists was evident in October 1669, when the First Church Boston invited John Oxenbridge, noted for his sympathy to the Baptists, “to be assistant to the present teaching elders in preaching the word of God.”15 Oxenbridge had started his collegiate education at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1626 but transferred and received his BA and MA from Davenport’s college, Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Having been deprived of his post as college tutor by William Laud, he settled for a time in Bermuda, where he was noted for organizing conventicles and a strong commitment to catechizing. In 1641 he returned to England and became an assistant to Davenport’s friend William Bridge in Norwich. He was a key supporter of the congregational way there and in other posts. Forced out of a church living at the Restoration, he had preached briefly in Suriname and then in Barbados until settling in Massachusetts in 1669. Chosen to assist Davenport and Allen that October, he would succeed Davenport as pastor in 1670. He continued to uphold the positions taken by

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Davenport and First Church. In the 1671 election sermon he would attack the Half-Way Covenant and speak in favor of tolerating Baptists.16 While controversy raged in the broader community, Davenport and First Church were also occupied in the normal rhythms of religious life. At Davenport’s request, the congregation decided on December 13, 1669, that the elders “should go from house to house to visit the families and see how they are instructed in the grounds of religion.”17 Evidently, Davenport drew up a new catechism for the purpose. No copy survives, but it was likely similar to the one he and William Hooke had developed for the New Haven church. The new one, however, evidently included a strong section emphasizing the congregational forms of church government that had been set out in the Cambridge Platform. This would have been in keeping with his concern for the drift toward Presbyterian principles that had divided the congregation and been the focus of so much of his defense of the old New England Way.18 Davenport also continued to devote himself to offering pastoral guidance to those in need. It is rare to find a glimpse of such sessions, but Davenport’s son related how their friend Thomas Temple had “been ill in body and mind a great while, but especially afflicted in spirit, in a sense of sin, [troubled by] God’s wrath, [and] fears of death and eternity.” He often sent for Davenport, “delighting to speak with him,” and the clergyman “hoped that he would bring it to a good issue.”19 He also preached sermons on various fast days, two of which were published in 1669. In the first of these, “God’s Call to His People to Turn to Him,” he spoke of how the efforts to build the temple in Jerusalem had “been hindered until the second year of Darius, King of Persia.” The lesson was that “God sometimes suffers the enemies of true religion to prevail for the building of God’s house.” In New England, as had been the case in Israel, people were remiss and neglected the service of God while pursuing their own private ends. It was the task of the ministers to bring people back to God, and Davenport used this occasion to spell out again his view of the ministry. Though God had “absolute power to convert whom he will, and by what means he will,” ordinarily he would bring people to him by means of a preaching ministry. “The ministry is committed to men, but the efficacy is from God’s Spirit.” “God,” he told the congregation, “puts forth his efficacy more in the Word preached, than in the Word read,” and “the ministry of the Word is called the ministration of the Spirit.” Those who “lived long under



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the ministry of the Word” and were not yet converted were guilty of a great offense. In engaging John Oxenbridge to assist Davenport and Allen in October 1669, the First Church had acknowledged that the fight Davenport was waging was taking a toll on the pastor as he approached his seventy-fourth birthday. He frequently “complained when he walked of a straitness in the upper part of his breast, as in his breath.” His son reported that he had “had a good measure of health all winter,” yet on Sunday, March 12, 1670, Davenport became seriously ill.20 At first he had an upset stomach and felt pain on the right side in the small of his back. He was weak and thought that it might have been “the beginning of the gravel at night,” evidently kidney stones that had troubled him. As the pain increased he vomited four times. That evening he went to bed. John Jr.’s wife, Abigail, brought his two grandchildren in to see him “as he lay on the bed, and he said (of his own accord) he desired the Lord to bless them both.” The family thought that he had fallen asleep, but checking at his door around nine o’clock, Elizabeth “heard him make some noise as if he would speak and could not.” Because there was no candlelight showing under the door that might indicate that John was up, she entered along with their son. John tried to speak to them “but could not except one or two shout words, and all the right side from head to foot” was as if “dead, for he could not stir them.” He continued “to be greatly oppressed in the upper part of his breast” and with “a great stupefying in his brain, being in a drowsy, heavy, and for the most part senseless frame.” On the second day John Jr. and his wife Abigail sat with him and he gave them “at several times his left hand, though he could not speak.” His son wrote to their friend John Winthrop Jr. that on “the 15th day, about nine at night, the Lord took him out of a troublesome, unthankful, evil world, to the enjoyment of the heavenly inheritance before prepared for him, even a crown of glory.”21 His son reported that “godly people that loved him in his lifetime greatly bewail the loss of this blessed choice sent of the Lord, now above the wrath of men and devils, triumphing in glory.”22 His physical remains were placed alongside his old friend John Cotton in the public burial ground, which is next to where King’s Chapel now stands. News gradually spread. His New Haven friend William Jones heard the news from different sources and originally “kept the knowledge of it from my wife, she being not in a present condition to bear it.”23 John Winthrop Jr. sent the news to London, writing

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that Davenport had “been taken suddenly by a palsy on one side which deprived him of motion, and soon after of speech.”24 The controversy that surrounded his last years was not solely of Davenport’s making and did not end with his death. The divisions over the Synod of 1662 and the formation of Third Church were evident at the opening of the May 1670 session of the colony’s legislature. The members of the council (upper house) passed a vote calling for colony clergy to confer on healing the differences in the colony. The deputies (lower house) rejected the suggestion because they shared Davenport’s opposition to anything that suggested an authoritative council of clergy.25 Shortly thereafter, a friend of Davenport, the Hadley clergyman John Russell, penned a letter to the general court on behalf of the residents of Hadley and some residents of Northampton. In it, Russell asked “whether the rods of God upon our churches and land have not this speaking voice to us that there should be some public and solemn inquiry [into] what it is that hath provoked the Lord (who doth not afflict willingly but if need be).”26 The deputies responded by appointing a committee to inquire into the causes for God’s anger, inviting some of the magistrates but no clergy to join with them. The committee report, reflecting the views of the majority, listed the many ways that God had shown his displeasure with New England in recent years, including poor harvests, plagues of caterpillars and grasshoppers, floods, interruption of trade, the death of many distinguished ministers, and epidemics of various diseases, as well as warning signs such as earthquakes and comets. They identified twelve causes, among which was “declension from the primitive foundation work, innovation in doctrine and worship, . . . an invasion of the rights, liberties and privileges of churches, an usurpation of a lordly and prelatical power over God’s heritage, . . . turning the pleasant gardens of Christ into a wilderness, and the inevitable and total extirpation of the principles and pillars of the congregational way.” It was a list that Davenport may well have prepared had he been alive. They further stipulated that the formation of Third Church Boston was irregular, illegal, and disorderly.27 Fifteen clergy who were supportive of the policies being attacked angrily responded to the General Court at its following session in 1671. They protested their adherence to the true principles of the Congregational Way and denounced the deputies’ report, stating that “the charge evidently appears to be the transports of a party, by instancing the business of the third church,



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and so designing to hinder the consummation of that work of God, . . . and by misrepresenting that weighty and worthy transaction.” They further complained that by the action of the deputies “an antiministerial spirit had . . . been strengthened and emboldened.”28 The General Court addressed by the fifteen clergy was different from that which had produced the deputies report. Thirty of the fifty deputies who had sat in the lower house in May 1670 had been replaced through the electioneering of those clergy who supported the new directions in the region’s religious culture. Though the court had traditionally reacted harshly to any criticisms of its behavior, on this occasion it embraced the ministers’ complaint about the report of the previous court’s deputies. It issued a report that it was proper for some to have taken exception to the deputies’ report of 1670, that “all papers referring to the case should be accounted useless,” and that “they knew of no just cause of those scandalizing reflections . . . cast upon the magistrates, elders, and churches, either in reference to the new church in Boston.”29 While the Boston First Church and its leaders continued to resist the Half-Way Covenant and to sympathize with Baptists, Davenport’s fight was essentially lost. The future of New England would see an expansion of Baptism and a growing consociation of churches. Yet his influence did not end with his death. In 1672 opponents of Presbyterian initiatives published his The Power of Congregational Churches Asserted and Vindicated, the second reply to Paget’s Presbyterian views that he had originally sent on the great ship in the 1640s. Davenport’s 1669 election sermon was an important moment in another debate over the nature of the puritan experiment. The early leaders of the region had believed that while the state should provide a supportive environment for the growth of the church, it should avoid directly interfering in purely religious matters. This is why Anne Hutchinson was judged by the civil authorities for her challenges to public order but by the church for her religious beliefs. Over time the civil authorities did call synods to facilitate the efforts of the churches to maintain unity, and they had increasingly (most recently in the case of the Synod of 1662) shown a willingness to recommend (though not impose) the resulting proposals to the churches. As part of the move to establish greater authority over the region, clergymen such as John Norton had urged civil authorities to take a more direct responsibility to ensure the religious health of New England by harkening to clerical advice. Davenport’s Election Day sermon challenged this view, warning the magistrates against “imposing on the churches anything that

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Christ hath not put upon them” and warning them against interfering with the rights of individual congregations. The subsequent debates in the Massachusetts General Court revealed deep differences over these issues, differences that would continue to be argued until the loss of the Massachusetts charter in 1684. One such dispute pitted Increase Mather, who had reversed his positions on the Synod of 1662, against Davenport’s friend and ally John Leverett. In 1675 Mather urged the magistrates to take an active role in correcting the things that he believed were unpleasing to God. Leverett blocked several of the initiatives advanced by Mather, maintaining that it was the responsibility of the clergy, not the magistrates, to stir the people to reform. It was a position with which Davenport would have approved.30

Epilogue

B

ecause John Davenport opposed the changes that were transforming New England in the post-Restoration era and lost, his reputation suffered a diminishment that has lasted until this day. Because he did not spend most of his New England career in Boston, as did his friends John Cotton and Increase Mather and Increase’s son Cotton, he has been neglected in works that focus on that community. Physically on the outskirts of New England, New Haven and its founder have been on the periphery of scholarship. When mentioned in studies of New England puritanism, Davenport is never the focal point, and so there has been no incentive to go beyond the stereotypes that depict him as the hardest of the hard among the clergy of the region. The aspersions cast upon him by those who founded Third Church Boston have contributed to the lack of sympathy that historians and others have shown him. His reputation before 1668 belies that image. When Davenport arrived in New England in 1637, John Cotton welcomed him “as eyes unto them in the wilderness,” and the anonymous author of the preface to Davenport’s Another Essay wrote that John Cotton had said of him “that he is a man mighty in judgment, and learning, and singular prudence.”1 In a letter to John Winthrop Jr., Samuel Hartlib, his old friend from his days in England, referred to Davenport as his “most reverend and precious friend,” one who sought “all public good both in religion, learning, and industry,” and “an excellent, holy, and devout soul.”2 The natives in the New Haven area were amazed at his learning and devotion to his books. Cotton Mather notes that they called him “So big study man.”3 In his lifetime he was regarded as one of the “candlesticks” of New England, the godly light from which drew men toward God. 351

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Davenport’s story provides an appreciation of a number of critical aspects of the story of the puritan experiment in America. Too often New England and its history are written as separate from the larger Atlantic community of which it was a part. Davenport’s goal throughout his life was to assist in the building of a reformed Christendom. He believed that he was living in the Middle Advent, when the Spirit was bringing the godly a new light that would help them perfect their institutions and bring history closer to the New Jerusalem. This led him to be concerned with all of Christendom and not simply the place he was in. Similar concerns motivated John Cotton in his writings, as well as the many men and women who went back to England in the 1640s when their mother country became a religious battleground. Davenport’s experiences in England, the Netherlands, and America led him to espouse and then to forcefully defend Congregational principles and to resist proposals that would have allowed clerical or civil interference with local autonomy. Once he arrived at these beliefs, he never questioned the right of a congregation to govern itself without outside interference. And at a time when clerical professionalism led many puritan clergy to emphasize the powers of their office, he continued to assert the right of the lay members of a congregation to govern their own affairs. The New Haven church members were no silent democracy meekly following the lead of an autocratic and aristocratic pastor. The closing years of his life were full of strife largely because he was one of the last of the region’s clergy to uphold those founding principles in opposition to fellow clergy and civil authorities. Although he believed that the lay members of the church and not the clergy should govern a congregation, Davenport also believed that ministers were God’s instruments called to bring the elect to an awareness of their faith and assumption of their responsibilities as saints. No other theme recurs more frequently in his sermons, from his first preaching in Northumberland to his last sermons in Boston. No other opponent of changing the membership standards of the New England churches was so emphatic in finding his fellow ministers wanting for seeking to expand the church by lowering requirements instead of making a greater effort to bring the next generation to faith as God intended them to do. Davenport’s vehemence in insisting on congregational authority, his high expectations for his fellow clergymen, and his demands that those whom God had elected step forward to assume the responsibilities of sainthood contribute to the image of him as a stern and somewhat forbidding



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character. But it should be remembered that on many matters he was less inflexible than many of his puritan contemporaries. In his famous lay sermon on Christian charity, John Winthrop warned that if the colonists were to “neglect the observation of . . . the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall . . . [and] embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us; be revenged of such a [sinful] people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.”4 But Winthrop also expressed the hope that in their efforts to build the kingdom of God in America, the colonists “shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with.” This same mixture of a belief in doing God’s will as he understood it, yet recognizing that a fuller understanding of the truth was possible, is characteristic of Davenport. Unlike some puritans who believed that they knew what God wished to the least detail, Davenport always believed that it was impossible to know precisely the mysteries of faith and what God wanted of men. This underlay his opposition to practices that would have closed off rather than encouraged further search for God’s truths. His view of history was one of gradual enlightenment through the Middle Advent. The New Jerusalem was a goal to strive for, but not to be achieved in his lifetime. Davenport consistently urged unity on the fundamentals that all could agree on and tolerance of divergent views that were contested. He pleaded for Protestant unity against Catholic threats in the 1620s and early 1630s. He tried to broker an accommodation between those who had fallen into conflict over the meaning of free grace in Boston in 1637. He was willing to quietly tolerate Baptists in New England if they would not create public disorder. In the struggle that occupied his last years, his primary goal was to prevent the establishment of a system of clerical consociations that would impose unity on individual congregations and make all churches adopt the Half-Way Covenant. At the same time, when he believed the rule of God was clear, he would brook no compromise or temporizing. Once he was persuaded that conformity to the Church of England ceremonies was sinful, he ceased to perform them, even though it cost him his living and many of his friends. John Davenport was not a typical puritan. In fact, perhaps the most important lesson of his story is that there was no such thing as a typical puritan.

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Like others who are identified with that label, he was a man who believed himself called to lead an exemplary life and who struggled to discern and perform God’s will. As in the case of other puritans, his life reveals how such a search can be both an inspiring story of a pilgrim’s progress and a cautionary tale of the dangers of religious zeal.

Abbreviations

ATR Franklin B. Dexter, ed., Ancient Town Records, vol. 1, New Haven Town Records, 1649–1662 (New Haven, CT, 1917). Vol. 2, New Haven Town Records, 1862–1684 (New Haven, CT, 1919). Atwater, New Haven Edward E. Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven (Meriden, CT, 1902). BL British Library Calder, New Haven Isabel M. Calder, The New Haven Colony (New Haven, CT, 1934). Congregational Communion Francis J. Bremer, Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the Anglo-American Puritan Community, 1610–1692 (Boston, 1994). CSPD, James I Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Reign of James I (London, 1857– 1858).

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Abbreviations

CSPD, Charles I Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Reign of Charles I (London, 1858– 1890). CSP, Colonial Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies (London, 1860). CSPD, Interregnum Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1653–1654 (London, 1879). Davenport PhD John Brian Davenport, “‘Yours unfeignedly in the Lord’: The Theology of John Davenport (1597–1670) and Its Context” (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1994). Davenport Notebook John Davenport notebook, cataloged as “John Davenport, Sermons and Writings, 1615–1658,” in Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, GEN MSS 202. Davenport, Anchor-hold John Davenport, The Saints Anchor-Hold, in All Storms and Tempests Preached in Sundry Sermons, and Published for the Support and Comfort of Gods People, in All Times of Trial (1661). Davenport, Another Essay John Davenport, Another Essay for the Investigation of the Truth (Cambridge, MA, 1663). Davenport, Answer of the Elders John Davenport, An Answer of the Elders of the Several Churches in New-England unto Nine Positions, Sent over to Them, by Divers Reverend and Godly Ministers in England, to Declare Their Judgments Therein (1643). Davenport, An Apology An Apology of the Churches in New England for Church-Covenant; or a Discourse Touching the Covenant Between God and Men, and Especially Con-



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357

cerning Church Covenant, . . . Sent over in Answer to Master Bernard, etc. (1643). Davenport, Election Sermon John Davenport, A Sermon Preach’d at the Election of the Governour at Boston, in New-England, May 19th, 1669 (1670). Davenport, Power John Davenport, The Power of Congregational Churches Asserted and Vindicated in Answer to a Treatise of Mr. J. Paget Entitled “The Defense of ChurchGovernment Exercised in Classes and Synods (1672). Davenport, Reply to Paget John Davenport, An Apologetical Reply to a Book Called An Answer to the Unjust Complaint (Rotterdam, 1636). Davenport, “Third Essay” John Davenport, “A Third Essay Containing Replies to the Answer,” John Davenport Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. Davenport, “Vindication” John Davenport, “A Vindication of the Treatise Entitled Another Essay,” John Davenport Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. Letters Isabel M. Calder, The Letters of John Davenport (New Haven, CT, 1636). Mather, Magnalia Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana; or, The Ecclesiastical History of New England (Hartford, CT: 1855). MHSC Massachusetts Historical Society Collections (Boston). NHR I Charles Hoadley, ed., Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven, from 1638 to 1649 (Hartford, CT, 1857).

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Abbreviations

NHR II Charles Hoadley, ed., Records of the Colony of Jurisdiction of New Haven, from May 1653 to the Union (Hartford, CT, 1858). ODNB H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (http://www. oxforddnb.com). SP English State Papers, National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. Walker, Creeds Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (Boston, 1960). WJ Richard Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop (Cambridge, MA, 1996). WP The Winthrop Papers, 6 vols. to date (Boston, 1925–), Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston).

Notes

Introduction: Why John Davenport? 1. Samuel Eliot Morison, “Those Misunderstood Puritans,” Forum (1931), 142–147; a reprint with introduction by Francis J. Bremer is Samuel Eliot Morison, Those Misunderstood Puritans (North Brookfield, MA, 1992).

Chapter 1: Coventry 1. See Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, U.K., 1979). 2. L. G. Wickam Legg, editor, A Relation of a Short Survey of 26 Counties Observed in a Seven Weeks Journey Begun on August 11, 1634 (London, 1904), 69. 3. W. B. Stephens, editor, A History of the County of Warwick, vol. 8, The City of Coventry and the Borough of Warwick (1969), 1. 4. Levi Fox, Coventry’s Heritage (Coventry, U.K., 1957). 5. John Trevor, Coventry’s Civil War, 1642–1660, Historical Association Booklet (Coventry, UK, 1999), 3–5. 6. John Taylor, quoted in David McGrory, A History of Coventry (Chichester, U.K., 2003), 51. 7. Nehemiah Wharton’s account, in Trevor, Coventry’s Civil War, 5. 8. McGrory, Coventry, 56. 9. Fox, Coventry’s Heritage, 37. 10. Ann Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, U.K., 1987), 11–15. 11. Trevor, Coventry’s Civil War, 3–5. 12. A Lieutenant Hammond, from East Anglia, quoted in Trevor, Coventry’s Civil War, 5. 13. Frederick Smith, Coventry: Six Hundred Years of Municipal Life (Coventry, U.K., 1946), 59. 14. Legg, Short Survey, 70. 359

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Notes to Pages 8–15

15. Excerpt of Camden’s Britannia (1586), in Smith, Coventry, 202. 16. The best discussion of the history, legend, and uses of the legend is to be found in Daniel Donoghue, Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend (Oxford, 2003). 17. Legg, Short Survey, 70. 18. F. Bliss Burbidge, Old Coventry and Lady Godiva (Birmingham, UK, 1952), 229. 19. Burbidge, Old Coventry, 230. 20. Quoted in Barbara Coulton, “Implementing the Reformation in the Urban Community: Coventry and Shrewsbury 1559–1603,” Midland History 25 (2000): 48. 21. Coulton, “Reformation,” 44. 22. Ben Lowe, “Thomas Lever,” ODNB. 23. Jan Broadway, “Humphrey Fenn,” ODNB. 24. Prince, New England Chronology, 301. 25. Quoted in McGrory, Coventry, 168. 26. Broadway, “Humphrey Fenn.” 27. Eales, “Julines Herring.” 28. Trevor, Coventry’s Civil War, 17. 29. Trevor, Coventry’s Civil War, 19, quoting Richard Montague. 30. Stephens, The County of Warwick, 71–72. 31. Poole, Coventry, 387, for Edward Davenport as member of Parliament. 32. The will of Christopher Davenport, National Archives, Kew, UK, PROB 11/156 33. The will of Christopher Davenport. The quotes refer to his previous gift. In the will he left additional funds to maintain the school. 34. The will of Henry Davenport, Litchfield Record Office, B/C/11, Henry Davenport 1627. I thank Andrew George of the Record Office for identifying the location of the will and inventory and arranging for me to acquire a copy. 35. Henry Davenport left homes on Cook Street and Earle Street to his wife; because he was an alderman for the Smithford Street ward, this makes the Earle Street location his probable home. Further evidence is found in the fact that his widow indicated that the Earle Street home was her home. I would like to thank Robert Davenport for pointing me to these wills. 36. Victoria County History, A History of Warwickshire (1969), 8:24. 37. Inventory of Henry Davenport, Litchfield Record Office, B/C/11, Henry Davenport 1627. 38. Phytian-Adams, Desolation, 74–76. 39. Bliss, Old Coventry, 239. 40. Bliss, Old Coventry, 237. 41. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 76–77. 42. Fox, Coventry’s Heritage, 131. 43. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 77. 44. Smith, Coventry, 58. 45. See Margaret Pelling, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations, and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London, 1998), chapter 1. 46. Mary Dormer Harris, The Ancient Records of Coventry, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers (1924), 1:6. 47. See Francis J. Bremer and Ellen Rydell, “Performance Art? Puritans in the Pulpit,” History Today, 45 (September 1995): 50–54.



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48. Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare: The Biography (London, 2005), 175, 395. 49. Bliss, Old Coventry, 236. 50. Poole, Coventry, 371. 51. Smith, Coventry, 90–91. 52. Fox, Coventry’s Heritage, 94–95. 53. Bliss, Old Coventry, 237. 54. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 110. 55. Poole, Coventry, 404. 56. Bliss, Old Coventry, 236. 57. Poole, Coventry, 256. 58. George Demidowicz, A Guide to the Buildings of Coventry (Stroud, UK, 2003), 33–34. 59. Discussion of the grammar school is drawn from the 1628 “Rules and Ordinances,” which is printed in Poole, Coventry, 257–258. 60. “Rules and Ordinances,” 258. 61. Ackroyd, Shakespeare, discusses the typical curriculum, 55–59. 62. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 28 February 1634, in British Library, Additional Manuscripts 6394, the Boswell Papers, pt. 1, fol. 185. 63. Demidowicz, Buildings, 33–34, notes that the stalls still survive with schoolboy markings visible on them. 64. “Rules and Ordinances,” 258. 65. Eaton, quoted in Elizabeth T. Van Beek, “A Coventry Backdrop: Davenport’s and Eaton’s Old World Roots,” unpublished paper, 3. The sermon Van Beek quotes is actually one preached and printed before Eaton’s arrival in Coventry, but it is reasonable to assume that his sentiments remained the same at Holy Trinity. 66. Van Beek, “Coventry Backdrop,” 4. 67. Interestingly, Cooper left Great Budworth, Cheshire, to come to Holy Trinity, whereas Eaton went from Holy Trinity to Great Budworth. 68. Thomas Cooper, A Brand Taken out of the Fire; or, The Romish Spider, with His Web of Treason, Woven and Broken (1606), epistle. 69. Cooper, Brand, 24. 70. Cooper, Brand, 30. 71. Thomas Cooper, The Convert’s First Love Discerned, Justified, Left, and Recovered (1610), 16. 72. Cooper, First Love, 28. 73. Cooper, First Love, 35. 74. Cooper, First Love, 34. 75. Cooper, First Love, 5. 76. Cooper, First Love, 5. 77. Cooper, Brand, 9. 78. Hughes, Politics, 68, 80. 79. Francis Holyoake, A Sermon of Obedience (Oxford, 1610), 9. 80. William Hinton, prefatory epistle to Holyoake, Obedience. 81. Quoted in Bliss, Old Coventry, 218. 82. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 13 October 1624, Letters, 12–15. In this letter Davenport indicates both his kinsmen’s refusal and that he persuaded them to bow.

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Notes to Pages 23–31

83. Hughes, Politics, 80. 84. Quoted in Janet Bately, “Cawdrey, Robert (b. 1537/8?, d. in or after 1604),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), available at http://www .oxforddnb.com. 85. Janet Bately, “Robert Cawdrey,” ODNB. 86. Most notably by Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 65. 87. Sean Kelsey, “Edward Conway,” ODNB; Hughes, Politics, 26; a list of “ancient manuscripts” printed in Poole, Coventry, 376. 88. Thomas S. Freeman, “Isabel Darcy,” ODNB, and Christine Newman, “‘An Honorable and Elect Lady’: The Faith of Isabel, Lady Bowes,” in Life and Thought in the Northern Church, c. 1100–c. 1700, ed. Diana Wood (Woodridge, Suffolk, U.K., 1999), 407–419. 89. I owe this to a private communication from Dr. Thomas Freeman.

Chapter 2: Oxford 1. Andrew Clark, ed., Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford Compiled in 1661–6 by Anthony Wood, vol. 1, The City and Suburbs (Oxford, 1889), 50. 2. General information on Oxford is drawn from Alan Crossley, “City and University,” in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 4, Seventeenth-Century Oxford, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford, 1997), and Victoria County History, A History of the County of Oxford, vol. 4, The City of Oxford (London, 1979). I would like to thank Dr. J. R. L. Highfield for reviewing a draft of this chapter and offering suggestions. 3. The standard work on the college is G. H. Martin and J. R. L. Highfield, A History of Merton College, Oxford (Oxford, 1997). 4. Mark Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558–1642 (Oxford, 1959), 191– 193, 207–208. 5. Tyacke, History of the University of Oxford, 81–86. 6. Tyacke, 57. 7. Anthony Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester, 2007), 12–13. 8. Congregational Communion, 25. 9. Martin and Highfield, Merton, 195. 10. Bremer, Congregational Communion, 27. 11. Martin and Highfield, Merton, 182. 12. Martin and Highfield, Merton, 224–225. 13. Anthony Wood, quoted in Martin and Highfield, Merton, 226. 14. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 28 February 1634, British Library, Boswell Papers, fol. 185. 15. Tyacke, History of the University of Oxford, 19; Bremer, Congregational Communion, 28. 16. Descriptions derived from Alan Bott, Merton College: A Short History of the Buildings (Oxford, 1993). I would like to thank Dr. J. R. L. Highfield for his thoughts on where the Davenports may have been housed. 17. Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis (London, 1792), 3:1221–1222. 18. Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, 2:333.



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19. Register of the University of Oxford, vol. 2, pt. 1, 374; pt. 3, 327. John Berchmans Dockery, Christopher Davenport: Friar and Diplomat (London, 1960), 13, accepts Wood’s belief that this was a different individual. 20. Sidney Graves Hamilton, Hertford College (London, 1903), 101. Magdalen Hall was eventually absorbed by Hertford. 21. R. S. Stanier, Magdalen School, A History of Magdalen College School, Oxford (Oxford, 1940). 22. Quoted in Hamilton, Hertford, 108. 23. Hamilton, Hertford, 110–111. 24. The standard biography is Dockery, Christopher Davenport. 25. For a discussion of the formation and importance of such friendships see Congregational Communion, especially chap. 1. 26. “Philip Nye,” ODNB. 27. “William Laud,” ODNB.

Chapter 3: Hilton Castle 1. Information on Hilton Castle and the surrounding area, unless otherwise indicated, is drawn from Maureen Meikle and Christine Newman, Sunderland and Its Origins: Monks to Mariners (London, 2007). I would like to thank Dr. Newman for sharing her findings and discussing Davenport’s stay at Hilton Castle with me. I would also like to thank Dr. Gillian Cookson for arranging for me to visit Hilton Castle and for discussing the region with me, and Maurice Bates for providing us access to the site. 2. Diana Newton, North-East England, 1569–1625: Governance, Culture and Identity (Woodbridge, U.K., 2006), 117n1, referring to the estimate of John Guy. 3. See Christine Newman, “The Bowes of Streatlam, County Durham: A Story of the Politics and Religion of a Sixteenth Century Northern Gentry Family” (PhD dissertation, University of York, 1991), and Christine M. Newman, The Bowes of Streatlam, County Durham: The Politics and Religion of a Tudor Gentry Family (Durham, NC, 1999). 4. Margaret Clark, “Henry Robinson,” ODNB. 5. Christine M. Newman, “‘An Honorable and Elect Lady’: The Faith of Isabel, Lady Bowes,” in Life and Thought in the Northern Church, c. 1100–c. 1700, ed. Diana Wood (Woodbridge, U.K., 1999), 407–419; Thomas S. Freeman, “Isabel Darcy,” ODNB. 6. Meikle and Newman, Sunderland, 66, 69. 7. Quoted in Diana Newton, “The Clergy, Identity, and Lay Society in the Diocese of Durham, 1561–1635” Northern History, 44 (2007), 35. 8. I would like to thank Douglas Smith for this information, gleaned from a general muster of Sunderland in 1615. 9. This discussion of the various types of Christians that Davenport addressed is based on a reading of Christopher Haigh, The Plain Man’s Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford, 2007). 10. Patrick Collinson, “England and International Protestantism, 1558–1640,” in International Calvinism, ed. M. Prestwick (Oxford, 1985), 197–223. 11. For an examination of the different varieties of predestinarian theology, see Sean F. Hughes, “‘The Problem of Calvinism’: English Theologies of Predestination, c. 1580–1630,” in Belief and Practice in Reformation England, ed. Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot, U.K., 1998), 229–249.

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Notes to Pages 41–53

12. Perkins, quoted in Jonathan D. Moore, English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), 33. 13. See Ian Green, The Christian’s ABC: Catechism and Catechizing in England, c. 1530–1714 (Oxford, 1996). 14. All quotes from these sermons are from the notebook by John Davenport, Sermons [England?], 1632-1633, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, General Manuscripts, vol. 58. 15. Davenport PhD, 20–21. 16. Meike and Newman, Sunderland, 115. 17. Thomas Triplet, quoted in Meike and Newman, Sunderland, 115. 18. Manuscript at Society of Antiquaries in London, SAL/MS/241 19. Clergy of the Church of England Database, citing London Record Office manuscript O B/A/17. 20. Robert Davenport first pointed out this entry in the Eaton Socon parish register. It was confirmed for me by David Busby, who was also kind enough to provide me information on Eaton Socon. Although the evidence that this was the same John Davenport is not conclusive, circumstantial evidence makes it highly likely. 21. See James T. Johnson, A Society Ordained by God (Nashville, TN, 1970). 22. William Gouge, Of Domestical Duties (London, 1622), epistle dedicatory.

Chapter 4: London—The Early Years 1. Discussion of London is drawn from Liza Picard, Elizabeth’s London (London, 2003). 2. Laura Wright, “Speaking and Listening in Early Modern London,” in The City and the Senses: Urban Culture since 1500, ed. Alexander Cowan and Jill Steward (Aldershot, U.K., 2005), 60–74. 3. Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York, 2003), 15–16. 4. Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare, the Biography (London, 2005), 112–114. 5. See Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989). 6. For more on the lectureships, see Paul Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent, 1560–1662 (Stanford, CA, 1970). 7. Seaver, Lectureships, 226–235, quote on p. 235. 8. Anonymous contemporary source quoted in Seaver, Lectureships, 237. 9. London Municipal Archives, DL/C/314, fol. 124. 10. Christian E. Hauer Jr. and William A. Young, A Comprehensive History of the London Church and Parish of St. Mary, the Virgin, Aldermanbury (Lewiston, PA, 193), 55–73. 11. Tai Liu, Puritan London: A Study of Religion and Society in the City Parishes (Newark, DE, 1986), 28. 12. Antonia Fraser, ed., A Survey of London Written in the Year 1598 by John Stowe (Stroud, UK, 2005), 282. 13. On Harland, see George Hennesey, Novum Reportium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense (London, 1898), 299–300. This is likely the Robert Harland who received his BA from St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1585. 14. Clergy of the Church of England Database (http://www.theclergydatabase.org .uk/index.html), citing London Metropolitan Record Office vicar general’s book.



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I thank Tim Wales for pointing me to Davenport’s tenure here and discussing the parish with me. 15. Details on the church are drawn from Philip Norman, “On the Destroyed Church of St. Michael Wood Street, in the City of London, with Some Notes on the Church of St. Michael Bassishaw,” Archaeologia 58 (1902), 189–216. 16. Quoted in Liu, Puritan London, 38. 17. Liu, Puritan London, 220. 18. Calder, New Haven, 4. 19. London Metropolitan Record Office, DL/C/316, fol. 107v. 20. Malcolm Johnson, St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Chichester, U.K., 2005), 121. 21. Fraser, Stowe, 179–180. 22. The following information on Davenport’s activities in the parish is drawn from London Metropolitan Record Office, MS 4526: Vestry Minutes, vol. 1, 1616–1690, and MS 4524: Churchwardens Records, vol. 1, 1567–1632. 23. Notes on these sermons are contained in a sermon notebook that is cataloged in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The volume has been missing for years but has come into the possession of James Gray, who brought it to my attention and is working to return it to its proper owner. 24. St. Lawrence Jewry Vestry Minutes 1556–1669, Guildhall MS 2590/1, fol. 234. I acknowledge Kate Harvey’s invaluable assistance in helping to track down leads on Davenport’s London career. The reference to his house is found in a letter to Sir Edward Conway, Letters, 14–15.25. Foster, Alumni Oxoniensis, 1:153. 26. St. Lawrence Jewry Vestry Minutes 1556–1169, Guildhall Library MS 2590/1, fol. 234. 27. St. Lawrence Jewry Churchwardens Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 02593, fol. 262r. 28. St. Lawrence Jewry Churchwardens Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 02593, fol. 263r. 29. St. Lawrence Jewry Churchwardens Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 02593, fol. 267r. 30. St. Lawrence Jewry Churchwardens Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 02593, fol. 271r. 31. St. Lawrence Jewry Churchwardens Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 02593, fol. 283r. 32. Fraser, Stowe, 268. 33. Liu, Puritan London, 33–34. 34. Mather, Magnalia, 1:322. 35. Cotton Mather, Johannes in Eremo, 11. 36. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 13 October 1624, Letters, 12–15. 37. Wesley Frank Craven, The Dissolution of the Virginia Company (1932; reprint, 1964), 26–28, 120. 38. Andrew Fitzmaurice, “‘Every Man that prints, adventures’: The Rhetoric of the Virginia Company Sermons,” in The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature, and History, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCulloch (Manchester, 2000), 4–14. 39. Quoted in Andrew Fitzmaurice, “The Civic Solution to the Crisis of English Colonization, 1609–1625,” Historical Journal 42 (1999), 45. 40. Susan Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, DC, 1906), 1:545–546.

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Notes to Pages 57–63

41. I am thankful to Andrew Fitzmaurice for an e-mail exchange discussing the possible reasons for the company’s failure to publish Davenport’s sermon. 42. Fitzmaurice, “Civic Solution,” 50. 43. Raymond Phineas Stearns, The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter (Urbana, IL, 1954), 30. 44. David A. Kirby, “The Radicals of St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street, London, 1624– 1642,” Guildhall Miscellany 3 (1970), 98. 45. Fraser, Stowe, 275. 46. General information on the parish is drawn from Kirby, “Radicals”; Dorothy Ann Williams, “London Puritanism: The Parish of St. Stephen Coleman Street,” Church Quarterly Review 160 (1959), 464–482. 47. Information in this paragraph and the quotes from primary sources are from Williams, “London Puritanism,” 468–473. 48. John Davenport to Mary, Lady Vere, October 1624, Letters, 19. 49. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 17 October 1624, Letters, 17–18. 50. Jacqueline Eales discusses the general subject of aristocratic support for puritanism in “A Road to Revolution: The Continuity of Puritanism, 1559–1642,” in The Culture of Puritanism, 1560–1700, ed. Jacqueline Eales and Christopher Durston (Basingstoke, U.K., 1996), 184–209. 51. Helen Payne, “Lucy [née Harrington] Russell, Countess of Bedford,” ODNB. 52. Ole Peter Grell, Dutch Calvinists in Early Stuart London: The Dutch Church in Austin Friars 1603–1642 (Leiden, 1989), 52. 53. Sean Kelsey, “Edward Conway, First Viscount Conway,” ODNB. 54. D. J. B. Trim, “Horace Vere, Baron Vere of Tilbury,” ODNB. 55. Jacqueline Eales, “Mary Vere,” ODNB, in which she quotes the clergyman John Geree. 56. Tom Webster, introduction to The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634–38, ed. Tom Webster and Kenneth Shipps (Woodridge, U.K., 2004), xl, in which he quotes Clarke. 57. Webster, introduction to Rogers, xlv. 58. On the Harleys, see Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil Wars (Cambridge, U.K., 1990). 59. Sir Thomas Wroth to Sir Robert Harley, 28 March 1629, BL, Add. MS 70001, fol. 248. 60. The sermon notebook, indicating that it was initially a part of the library of Kimbolton Castle, the seat of the Montagus, is in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, General MSS, 58. 61. Montaigne to Conway, 14 October 1624, CSPD James I, 1623–25 (1859), pp. 347– 369. 62. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 13 October 1624, Letters, 12–15. 63. George Abbott to Sir Edward Conway, 14 October 1624, SP 14/173/43. I thank Kate Harvey for this reference. 64. CSPD: James I, 1623–25, pp. 347–369. 65. CSPD: James I, 1623–25, pp. 347–369. 66. Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 3 November 1624, Letters, 23. 67. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 14 October 1624, Letters, 15–16. 68. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 17 October 1624; John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 19 October 1624; John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 3 November 1624, Letters, 17–18, 20–22, 22–23. Because of Conway’s official position, Davenport’s let-



Notes to Pages 64–70

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ters to him survive in the State Papers. Contacts with other supporters, which are clear from these documents, do not survive.

Chapter 5: London Rector 1. The amount was paid quarterly, as indicated in Churchwardens Accounts, St. Stephen’s Coleman Street, Guildhall Library MS 04457. 2. St. Stephen Colman Vestry Minute Book, Guildhall MS 4458/1/part 1, fol. 18. 3. Palmer was a supporter of the anti-Calvinist movement in the church and would eventually be removed from his living during the puritan revolution. 4. Davenport Notebook. 5. Mark Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642 (Oxford, 1959), 225. 6. SP 16/27/46. 7. Register of the University of Oxford, ii, pt. 3, 445. 8. Davenport Notebook. John Brian Davenport was the first to note the full range of material in this notebook in appendix A of Davenport PhD. 9. John Davenport to Sir Edward Conway, 13 October 1624, Letters, 12–15. 10. Kenneth Fincham, “Abbot, George (1562–1633),” ODNB. 11. P. E. McCullough, “King, John (d. 1621),” ODNB. 12. Peter Heylin, quoted in Andrew Foster, “Mountain [Montaigne], George (1569– 1628),” ODNB. 13. Details on this dispute are drawn from Peter Lake and David Como, “‘Orthodoxy’ and Its Discontents: Dispute Settlement and the Production of ‘Consensus’ in the London (Puritan) ‘Underground,’” Journal of British Studies 39 (2000), 34–70. 14. This incident is also treated in Lake and Como, “‘Orthodoxy,’” and more completely in Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy,’ ‘Heterodoxy,’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester, 2001). 15. In addition to the above, see also Stephen Foster, Notes from the Caroline Underground: Alexander Leighton, the Puritan Triumvirate, and the Laudian Reaction to Nonconformity (Hamden, CT, 1978). 16. Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, U.K., 1982), explores the background of moderate puritanism. Mark E. Dever, Richard Sibbes: Puritanism and Calvinism in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Macon, GA, 2000), and Jonathan D. Moore, English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), both raise questions about how distinctively puritan these two men were. 17. On Sibbes, see Dever, Sibbes. 18. On Preston, see Moore, Hypothetical Universalism. 19. David Hall discusses the differences between private and public exchanges in Ways of Writing: The Practice and Politics of Text-Making in Seventeenth-Century New England (Philadelphia, 2008). 20. Davenport Notebook. 21. Davenport Notebook. 22. Davenport Notebook. 23. Interestingly, he crossed out the names of Goodwin and Ball, perhaps hoping to protect their identity in the case that his notes were seized.

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Notes to Pages 72–76

24. Details on the plague are drawn from F. P. Wilson, The Plague in Shakespeare’s London (1927); Stephen Porter, Lord Have Mercy upon Us: London’s Plague Years (2005), and Paul Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1985). 25. Orders to the Used in the Time of Infection of the Plague Within the City and Liberties of London (London, 1625). 26. A Forme of Common Prayer, Together with an Order of Fasting: For the Averting of God’s Heavy Visitation upon the Many Places of This Kingdom, and for Drawing Down of His Blessings on Us (London, 1625). 27. Thomas Decker, “To the Reader,” in A Rod for Runaways: God’s Token of His Fearful Judgments (1625). 28. Decker, Rod for Runaways, n.p. 29. Decker, Rod for Runaways, n.p. 30. Guildhall, MS 204: The Journal of Nehemiah Wallington, fol. 407. 31. William Orme, ed., Remarkable Passages in the Life of William Kiffin (London, 1823), 2. 32. Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722; reprint, New York, 2001), 17, 51, 73, 85–86. 33. Decker, Rod for Runaways, n.p. 34. Lachrymae Londinenses; or, London’s Teares and Lamentations for God’s Heavie Visitation of the Plague of Pestilence (London, 1626), 10. 35. Defoe, Plague Year, 65. 36. William Chibald, A Cordiall of Comfort (1625). 37. William Crashawe, Londons Lamentation for her sinnes (1625), quoted in Wilson, Plague, 155. 38. J.D., “To the Reader,” in Salomons Pest-House, by J.D. (London, 1630); J.D. is identified as a “reverend, learned, and godly divine” and may have been John Davenport. 39. A General of Great Bill for this Year for the whole number of Burials . . . 1624–1625 (1625). 40. Salomons Pest-House, 16, 18, 20, and “To the Reader.” 41. John B. Davenport, Davenport PhD, assesses the issue of Davenport’s authorship and concludes that although there are stylistic similarities (especially strong antiCatholicism), it cannot be proved. While that is correct, some of those who he suggests as alternatives to J.D. either were not in London at the time or had (like John Donne) fled the city. 42. Guildhall, MS 4458/1, Vestry Minute Book of St. Stephen’s Coleman Street, fol. 27. 43. Simeon E. Baldwin, Theophilus Eaton (New Haven, CT, 2007), 10n. 44. CSPD: Charles I, 1634–5 (1864), 23–48. 45. St. Stephen Colman Vestry Minute Book, Guildhall MS 4458/1/part 1, fol. 22. 46. St. Stephen Colman Vestry Minute Book, Guildhall MS 4458/1/part 1, fol. 23. 47. Churchwardens Accounts, St. Stephen’s Coleman Street, Guildhall Library MS 04457, fol. 266r. 48. The numbers are drawn from John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in 17th-Century England (Woodbridge, U.K., 2006), 47. Coffey tabulated the numbers for 1635. The number of deaths during the plague were, of course, more considerable, but public regulations forbade the formal burial of plague victims.



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49. SP 16/154/98. 50. Elliot Vernon, “The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism during the English Revolution” (PhD dissertation, Cambridge University, 1999), 90. I thank Dr. Vernon for providing me a copy of the thesis. 51. A good discussion of this challenge as negotiated by another London puritan at this time is found in J. F. Merritt, “The Pastoral Tightrope: A Puritan Pedagogue in Jacobean London,” in Politics, Religion and Popularity: Early Stuart Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell, ed. Thomas Cogwell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake (Cambridge, U.K., 2002), 143–161. 52. Robert Keayne Sermon Notebooks, Massachusetts Historical Society MSS. The London notebook has been edited and introduced by Susan B. Ortman, “Gadding about London in Search of a Proper Sermon: How Robert Keayne’s Sermon Notes from 1627–28 Inform Us about the Religious and Political Issues Facing the London Puritan Community” (MA thesis, Millersville University, 2004). 53. Dever, Sibbes, 53. 54. Montague Notebook. The sermon notebook has a notation on the inside cover identifying it as having been part of the Kimbolton Castle Library. I thank John Morrill and Hunter Powell for pointing out that Kimbolton Castle was the home of the Montagus and Hunter Powell for pointing out the Mandeville-Nye connection. 55. Directions quoted in John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, U.K., 1998), 81. 56. Anne Hughes, “Thomas Dugard and His Circle in the 1630s: A ‘ParliamentaryPuritan’ Connexion,” Historical Journal 29 (1986), 771–773. 57. Raymond P. Stearns, The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter (Urbana, IL 1954), 34, citing Peter’s Last Legacy. 58. BL, Add. MS 70001 fol. 248. 59. Orme, Kiffin, 4–5. 60. The entry on Scudder in the ODNB indicates that the first edition of the work was published in 1631. However, Early English Books Online indicates a 1627 edition, which would be consistent with the date of Davenport’s prefatory letter. 61. Samuel Hartlib “Defectus et Desiderata Physica, Etc.,” pt. 3, BL Sloane MSS 638ff.

Chapter 6: Campaigning for Reform 1. Order quoted in John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, U.K., 1998), 81. 2. Anthony Milton, ed., The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge, U.K., 2005), 13:xix. Milton’s is a fine introduction to the English involvement in the synod and the subsequent debate over it. 3. Unless otherwise indicated, information on the feoffees in this and the following paragraphs is based on the introduction and source documents in Isabel M. Calder, ed., Activities of the Puritan Faction of the Church of England 1625–33 (London, 1957). 4. Order book quoted in Isabel M. Calder, Activities of the Puritan Faction of the Church of England, 1625–33 (London, 1957), xii–xiii. 5. Hugh Peter, Gods Doing and Mans Duty (1646), 43. 6. William Prynne, Canterburies Doom (1646), 385.

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Notes to Pages 86–91

7. Calder, Activities, xii–xiii. 8. C. R. Elrington, ed., The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D. (1847– 64), 16:462. 9. Taylor was another prominent member of the puritan clerical brotherhood. In 1625 he accepted the call to be curate and lecturer of St. Mary Aldermanbury, where Conway’s son-in-law Sir Robert Harley was a parishioner. This was the parish where Davenport had preached without a license a few years earlier, and it was in the same area of the city as St. Lawrence and St. Stephen’s. 10. Letters, 26–27. 11. D. J. B. Trim, “Vere, Horace, Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565–1635),” ODNB. 12. Barbara Donagan, “Sedgwick, Obadiah (1599/1600–1658),” ODNB. 13. Vivienne Larminie, “Bamford, Samuel (d. 1657),” ODNB. 14. Ole Peter Grell, Dutch Calvinists in Early Stuart London: The Dutch Church in Austin Friars 1603–1642 (Leiden, 1989), 63–64. 15. M. Greengrass, “Hartlib, Samuel (c. 1600–1662),” ODNB. 16. J. H. Hessels, ed., Ecclesiae Londono-Batavae Archivum, 3 vols. (Cambridge, U.K., 1887–97), vol. 3, entry no. 2087. Davenport stopped this support, at least temporarily, around 1631, which prompted an inquiry from the administrators of the Dutch consistory in London. 17. William Prynne, A Breviate of the Prelates Intolerable Usurpation (1637), 64. Some historians claim that the four were brought before the Star Chamber, but Mark Dever demonstrates that it was clearly the High Commission in Dever, Sibbes, 79. 18. John Davenport to Mary, Lady Vere, 30 June 1628, Letters, 29–30. 19. Davenport’s words in the following paragraphs are taken from the notes of the sermon recorded by Robert Keayne in his notebook. Robert Keayne Sermon Notebooks, Massachusetts Historical Society MSS. 20. Coffey, John Goodwin, 45. 21. John Davenport to Mary, Lady Vere, 30 June 1628, Letters, 29–30. David Como has argued that “a fairly clear shift in religious policy began to take place [following the end of Parliament], particularly in London,” where a succession of godly ministers, most of whom appear to have been left alone to this point, now found themselves called to answer for a whole range of offences.” Como, “Predestination and Political Conflict in Laud’s London,” Historical Journal 46 (2003), 267–268. 22. Coffey, John Goodwin, 45. 23. The private subscription effort may well have embarrassed the king and Laud, as soon thereafter the government authorized a public collection, with funds to be distributed through the Dutch Church in London. The fact that Davenport and his colleagues had been primarily concerned with the plight of the refugees rather than a chance to criticize the government was evidenced by the support they gave to the public appeal. St. Stephen’s alone contributed £24 to the authorized collection. Grell, Dutch Calvinists, 210. 24. See G. A. Raikes, ed., The Ancient Vellum Book of the Honorable Artillery Company (London, 1890). 25. John Davenport, A Royal Edict for Military Exercises (1629), 6–7, 11–12, 14–15, 16–17, 18, 21, 25, 25–26. 26. For Dury, Hartlib, and Comenius, see Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor, eds., Samuel Hartlib and the Universal Reformation (Cambridge, U.K., 1994).



Notes to Pages 91–98

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27. Hartlib Papers, University of Sheffield, 23/2/17A-18B. I have used the electronic edition. An excellent discussion of this project is to be found in J. T. Peacey, “Seasonable Treatises: A Godly Project of the 1630s,” English Historical Review 113 (1998), 667–679. 28. Samuel Hartlib to John Dury, 31 August 1630, Hartlib Papers, 7/11/1A-3B. 29. Hartlib to Dury, 13 September 1630, Hartlib Papers, 7/12/1A-4B. 30. Hartlib Papers 33/3/9A-10B. 31. Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 257. 32. This point is made in Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006), 182. 33. Ward quoted in Susan Hardman Moore, “Popery, Purity and Providence: Deciphering the New England Experiment” in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (Cambridge, U.K., 1994), 284. 34. John Cotton to unidentified clergyman, 3 December 1634, in The Correspondence of John Cotton, ed. Sargent Bush Jr. (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 181–188. 35. The best treatment of Ussher and his career is Allan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History and Politics in Early-Modern Ireland and England (New York, 2007). 36. Coffey, John Goodwin, 48. 37. Coffey, John Goodwin, 48. 38. John Davenport to John Leverett, 1665, Letters, 252–253. 39. Letters, 252–253n26. 40. Letters, 252–253n26. 41. John Davenport to John Dury, 27 October 1628, and Dury’s undated response in Hartlib Papers, 4/5/1A-B. 42. Matthew Craddock to John Endecott, 16 February 1629, in Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 1, 1628–1641, ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff (Boston, 1853), 385. 43. Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts, 37. 44. Matthew Craddock to John Endecott, 17 April 1629, in Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts, 386. 45. Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts, 47, 49, 50–51, 54–59, 61–63. 46. For Laud’s actions in London, see David R. Como, “Predestination and Political Conflict in Laud’s London,” Historical Journal 46 (2003), 267–268. 47. SP 16/202/3. I thank Kate Harvey for this citation. 48. Paul Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of English Dissent (Stanford, CA, 1970), 243–244. 49. Sibbes’s “Consolatory Letter to an Afflicted Conscience,” quoted in Dever, Sibbes, 218. 50. Richard L. Greaves, “John Lothropp,” ODNB. 51. John Davenport to William Laud, 15 January 1630/1, Letters, 33–38. 52. Gerald Bray, ed., The Anglican Canons 1529–1947, Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge, U.K., 1998), 6:299. 53. Davenport to Laud, 15 January 1630/1, Letters, 33–38. 54. Davenport to Laud, 15 January 1630/1, Letters, 33–38. 55. Calder, Activities, 3, xxii. 56. Anthony Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester, U.K., 2007), 20–22.

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Notes to Pages 99–106

57. Heylyn’s sermon quoted in Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic, 22. For a discussion of the sorts of conferences Heylyn was complaining about, see Congregational Communion. 58. Mather, Magnalia, 1:323.

Chapter 7: Nonconformity 1. The account is in the “Jessey Records of Memorandum” retelling the early history of the congregation, which is printed in Champlin Burrage, The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research (1550–1641) (Cambridge, U.K., 1912), 2:298. 2. The best discussion of the conference is found in Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), chap. 7. Michael Winship, in a book manuscript that he generously shared with me, argues that the conference debate over the role of bishops is neglected by Webster in his account. 3. John Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared (1648), reprinted in Larzer Ziff, ed., John Cotton on the Churches of New England (Cambridge, MA, 1968). 4. Readers should note that Protestant and Catholic numbering of the Ten Commandments differed. For Davenport and his fellow puritans, the Second Commandment was “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” whereas this was part of the First Commandment for Catholics. 5. John Norton, Abel Being Dead, yet Speaketh; or, The Life and Death of that deservedly famous man of God, Mr. John Cotton (1658), 32–33. The fact that Davenport was alive at the time makes it likely that he provided the account directly to Norton. 6. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 103–111. 7. John Davenport to Mary, Lady Vere, 1633, Letters, 39–40. 8. St. Stephen’s Churchwarden’s Accounts, Guildhall Library MS 04457, fol. 305v. 9. John Davenport to Mary, Lady Vere, 1633, Letters, 39–40. 10. John Davenport to Mary, Lady Vere, 1633, Letters, 39–40. 11. Stephen Goffe to William Boswell, 7 June 1633, Boswell Papers, BL Add. MS 6394, fol. 137. 12. Montagu Notebook. 13. The manuscript notebook in which the sermon is recorded ends in midpassage at this point; indeed, in midsentence. It is possible that the individual recording the sermon, likely Edward Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, recognized at this point the subversive nature of Davenport’s message and ceased writing either because he disagreed or, more likely, because he did not want to leave evidence of the words that might well be used against him or against Davenport. 14. The notion of a time when conformity ceased to be negotiable is drawn from David D. Hall’s introduction to the second printing of The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 2006), xxiv. 15. Davenport, Reply to Paget. 16. Noted by Justinian Pagit, the recorder of King’s Bench, in his commonplace book; BL, Harleian MS 1026 fol. 54r. David Como, “Predestination and Political Conflict in Laud’s London,” Historical Journal 46 (2003), suggests that while this was the real reason for



Notes to Pages 106–111

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Davenport’s pursuit, the government officially masked it by pursuing him for nonconformity. Although Como’s general argument that Laud wished to avoid appearing to prosecute predestinarian thought is persuasive, given the circumstances it would appear that, in this case, Davenport’s preaching was considered the easiest way to remove him from his living. 17. Edward Howes to John Winthrop Jr., 5 August 1633, WP 3:133–135; Francis Kirby to John Winthrop Jr., 6 August 1633, WP 3:135–136. 18. Davenport, Reply to Paget. 19. Davenport, Reply to Paget. There is no doubt that Davenport was correct in assuming that he would be unable to continue his ministry in London as he believed he must. Within two years of his appointment to St. Stephen’s, Davenport’s replacement John Goodwin was in trouble with the authorities. Along with Sidrach Simpson, Andrew Moline, and John Viner, Goodwin was brought before the authorities for “breach of the canons of the church in sermons, or practice, or both.” The following year he was reported again for allowing communicants to receive while sitting at Easter. Laud, quoted in John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in 17thCentury England (Woodbridge, U.K., 2006), 56–57. 20. Guildhall MS 9531/15. 21. Laud’s Account of His Province for 1633, in The Works of William Laud, ed. William Scott, 9 vols. (Oxford, 1847–1860), 5:318–319. 22. “Notes from William Laud Account of the Fourteenth Day of His Trial,” in Works, 4:260. 23. Davenport, Reply to Paget. 24. Anne A. Davenport, “Scotus as the Father of Modernity: The Natural Philosophy of the English Franciscan Christopher Davenport in 1652,” Early Science and Medicine 12 (2007), 57–58. 25. Davenport, “Christopher Davenport,” 59. 26. Geoffrey Ingle Soden, Godfrey Goodman: Bishop of Gloucester, 1583–1656 (London, 1953), 228–230. 27. Davenport, “Christopher Davenport,” 59n22.

Chapter 8: The Dutch Interlude—Controversy in Amsterdam 1. Davenport, Reply to Paget. 2. Stephen Goffe to William Laud, 16 December 1633, SP 16/252/55. 3. Ethel Bruce Sainsbury, ed., A Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1635–1639 (Oxford, 1907), 157. 4. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 284. 5. Sir William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland, and Ireland, Remains Historical and Literary Published by the Chetham Society (1844), 1:55. 6. Brereton, Travels, 68. 7. Brereton, Travels, 57. 8. Information on the Jewish community in this and the next paragraph is drawn from Steven Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago, 2003), 12–25. 9. Brereton, Travels, 60. 10. See R. H. Popkin, “Some Aspects of Jewish-Christian Theological Exchanges in Holland and England, 1640–1700,” in Jewish Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Van Den Berg and Ernestine G. E. Van Der Wall (Dordrecht, 1988);

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Notes to Pages 113–118

S. Katz, “Philo-Semitism in the Radical Tradition: Henry Jessey, Morgan Llwyd, and Jacob Boehme,” in Jewish Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Van Den Berg and Ernestine G. E. Van Der Wall (Dordrecht, 1988). 11. Alice Clare Carter, The English Reformed Church in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (Amsterdam, 1964), 16. 12. I thank Jeremy Bangs for allowing me to read his book Strangers and Pilgrims, Travelers and Sojourners: Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation (Plymouth, MA, 2009) before its publication. It is a major contribution to understanding the English and Dutch background of the Pilgrims, with important insights into the situation of the non-Separatist English congregations in the Netherlands. 13. Carter, English Church, 19–20, 15. 14. Ger van Dijk, History of the Beguinage in Amsterdam from 1307 to the Present (Amsterdam, 2005), 6–12. 15. For details on Paget’s life, see Keith L. Sprunger, “Paget, John (d. 1638),” ODNB. 16. Carter, English Church, 45–49. 17. Carter, English Church, 53–66. 18. On Forbes, see G. W. Sprott, “Forbes, John (c. 1565–1634),” ODNB. 19. Raymond Phineas Stearns, Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands: The Rise and Fall of the English Congregational Classis, 1621–1635 (Chicago, 1940), 77–79. 20. Quoted in Stearns, Congregationalism, 42. 21. Stearns, Congregationalism, 43–44. 22. Raymond P. Stearns, The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter (Urbana, IL, 1954), 68–70. 23. The questions and answers are reprinted with an introduction in George H. Williams, Norman Petit, Winfried Herget, and Sargent Bush Jr., eds., Thomas Hooker: Writings in England and Holland, 1626–1633, Harvard Theological Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1975), 28:271–291. 24. For discussion of the issues, see Sargent Bush Jr., The Writings of Thomas Hooker: Spiritual Adventure in Two Worlds (Madison, WI, 1980), 56–73. 25. Thomas Hooker to John Cotton, in Williams et al., Writings in England and Holland, 297. 26. Carter, English Church, 79–80. 27. There is a good deal of misunderstanding of the reasons for Balmford not becoming copastor of the Amsterdam church. Keith Sprunger, for instance, in Dutch Puritanism, attributes it to the fact that “the Hookerites, moreover, had also organized against Balmford, suspecting that he would be a tool of Paget, and carried door to door a petition against Balmford” (112). But this is doubtful given that Balmford clearly shared the views of Hooker and Davenport. In contrast, the records of the consistory of the English Church in Amsterdam refer to a letter whereby “Mr. Balmford was denied to us, which we received from the consistory in The Hague,” and again to “a copy of the letter sent us from The Hague in the denial of him to us.” Amsterdam Archives, Records of the English Church, Collection 318: 3, Consistory Records, 33, 34. Carter, who clearly examined the church records, fails to note this, in general sharing the views expressed by Sprunger (English Church, 80–81). Although there was some opposition to Balmford from supporters of Hooker, Davenport himself later explained that discussions with the members of the Dutch classis led them to hope that they might yet get Hooker as their minister. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 94–95.



Notes to Pages 118–123

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28. Davenport wrote that it was “J.C.” who had invited him. Crisp is identified by Carter (English Church, 79) as one of those who tried to secure Welde’s appointment, and it is likely that he was the J.C. identified by Davenport. 29. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 101. 30. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 112. 31. Brereton, Travels, 63. 32. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 15–16, 116. 33. Sir William Boswell to Sir John Coke, 18/28 November 1633, SP 84/147/174. 34. Sir William Boswell to Sir John Coke, State Papers Holland 84/147/174. 35. Stephen Goffe to William Brough, 26/16 December 1633, SP 16/252/101. 36. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 13/23 December 1633, BL, Boswell Papers, Add. MS 6394, fol. 156. 37. See Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 116. 38. Sir William Boswell to Sir John Coke, 12/2 January 1634, SP 84/148/1. 39. Bishop’s Register (William Juxson), Guildhall Library, MS 9531/15. 40. Sir William Boswell to Sir John Coke, 12/2 January 1634, SP 84/148/1. 41. Boswell wrote that, in addition to the testimonials regarding his affairs in England, Davenport was expecting “his wife and family” (Sir William Boswell to Sir John Coke, 12/2 January 1634, SP 84/148/1). Later, Davenport referred to his “wife and family” having been with him in Amsterdam in the summer of 1634 (Davenport, Reply to Paget, 197). The only known child of John and Elizabeth was baptized in The Hague in July 1635, leaving unclear whom family referred to. It is unlikely that the couple had another child, as the surviving Davenport correspondence is complete enough chronologically that one would expect to find some reference to the loss of a child. This leaves the possibility that a kinsman or either John or Elizabeth lived with them at this time, or that it is simply a way to refer to the family household, including servants. 42. Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 (Stanford, CA, 2011), 47. Ha offers an analysis of the dispute between Davenport and Paget but exaggerates Paget’s position as an English Presbyterian and fails to take into account the role of the Dutch classis. 43. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 146. 44. This is asserted by Stearns, Congregationalism, and John B. Davenport, Davenport PhD. 45. Carter, English Church, 11–13. 46. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 119. 47. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 46. 48. John Paget, An Answer to the Unjust Complaints of William Best (Amsterdam, 1635), 47. 49. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 127–129 gives the text of the letter as translated from the Dutch and printed by Paget. In the text I have changed “parents and sureties” to “parents or sureties,” as Davenport insisted that this was the proper translation; Paget had altered it to make it more inclusive. 50. Paget, Answer, 47; Davenport, Reply to Paget, 181. 51. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 46. 52. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 5/15 January 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, fol. 171. The tract itself is very rare, with the only copy extant in England in the library of Merton College, a strange coincidence if nothing else, as that is where Davenport started

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Notes to Pages 123–128

his collegiate career and where Goffe received his BA. I thank Julian Reid, the archivist at Merton, for permission to examine and photograph the tract. 53. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 17 January 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, fol. 169. 54. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 46. 55. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 183–184. 56. Paget, Answer, 53–54. 57. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 185–186. 58. Paget, Answer, 54. 59. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 178. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 46. 60. Cotton Mather, Johannes in Eremo, 9. 61. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 48. 62. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 49. 63. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, BL, Boswell Papers, Add. MS 6394, fol. 181. 64. John Davenport to Sir William Boswell, 18 March 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fols. 196–197, in which he refers to an earlier letter in which he had complained about false reports being sent to the English authorities. 65. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 15/25 February 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fol. 181. 66. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 18/28 February 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fol. 185. 67. John Webster to Sir William Boswell, 17/27 February 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fol. 183. 68. John Davenport to Sir William Boswell, 18 March 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fol. 196–197. 69. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 28 February 1634 and 9 March 1634, both contain references to reports he had received from Paget: BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fols. 185, 187. 70. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 246; Stephen Goffe to Gilbert Sheldon, 13 February 1634, SP 16/260; Goffe wrote to Sheldon concerning plans to have him appointed to replace Forbes, which he clearly did not want to do. 71. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 9 March 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fol. 187. 72. Stephen Goffe to Sir William Boswell, 17 April, 1634, BL, Boswell Papers, Ad MS 6394, fol. 191. 73. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, quoting Acta Classica, 4:38–39. 74. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 16. 75. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 197–198. 76. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 197–198. 77. Paget, Answer, 58. 78. Paget, Answer, 58. 79. Records of the English Church, Amsterdam Archives, Collection 318, fol. 51. 80. Davenport, Reply to Paget, preface.



Notes to Pages 130–137

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Chapter 9: The Hague and Rotterdam 1. Hartlib Papers, 11/1/10A-B. 2. Raymond P. Stearns, The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter (Urbana, IL, 1954), 30. 3. H. A. van Ysselsteyn, The Port of Rotterdam, 3rd ed. (Rotterdam, 1908), 1–10. 4. Sir William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland, and Ireland, Remains Historical and Literary Published by the Chetham Society (1844), 1:6–7. 5. Brereton, Travels, 11. 6. Brereton, Travels, 10. 7. The identification of the meeting place as Sebastian’s chapel is found in “Transcript of the Journal of Daniel Bradford of Norwich, 1636–48,” Norwich Record Office, MC64/4, 508x8 (hereafter “Bradford Journal”). I thank Joel Halcomb for providing me with a copy of this transcript. 8. Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden, 1982), 162. 9. Bradford Journal. 10. Stephen Goffe in The Hague, 26 April [1633] to William Laud (?), SP 16/286/202. 11. A copy of the articles is to be found in the Boswell Papers, BL, Add Ms 6394, fol. 154. 12. Stephen Goffe in The Hague, 26 April [1633] to William Laud (?), SP 16/286/202. 13. Brereton, Travels, 6. 14. Quoted in Keith L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Urbana, IL, 1972), 188. 15. Sprunger, Ames, 221. 16. Sprunger, Ames, 227; see also Stearns, Strenuous Puritan. 17. Boswell to Coke from The Hague, 28/18 November 1633, SP 84/147/174. 18. Boswell referred to a “Mr. White of Gloucester or Worcester,” but I believe it to have been John White of Dorchester. I thank Tim Wales for his views on the matter. 19. Boswell Papers, BL Add. MS 6394, fol. 146. 20. Thomas Prince, A Chronological History of New England in the Form of Annals (Boston, 1736), 271. 21. Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 154. 22. John Paget to Boswell, 7 March 1635, Boswell Papers, BL, Add. MS 6394, fol. 199. 23. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 21 July 1635, Letters, 56. 24. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 226. 25. Samuel Eaton, Defence of Sundry Positions (1645), 84–85. Coffey, John Goodwin, 108–109, quotes another source, M.S. to A.S with a Plea for Liberty of Conscience (1644), 9–19, as claiming that “John Davenport had remarked ‘in his way to New England,’ a classical presbytery was ‘but thirteen Bishops, for one.’” 26. Brereton, Travels, 28. 27. Paget, in his Answer, 137, indicates that Davenport preached for Balmford at this time.

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Notes to Pages 137–142

28. Baptismal Records of the English Reformed Church at The Hague, National Archives, Kew, UK, RG 33. 29. Mary Anne Everett Green, revised by S. C. Lomas, Elizabeth, Electress Palatine and Queen of Bohemia (London, 1909), 355–356. 30. Green and Lomas, Elizabeth, 322. 31. Brereton, Travels, 28. 32. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 21 July 1635, Letters, 56. 33. CSP Domestic, 1635–1636, 82; 1637, 258–259. 34. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 15/25 December 1635, Letters, 62–63. The effort to force Balmford to conform to English practices was continued by Sir William Boswell, some of whose reports on his unsuccessful efforts can be found in Boswell to Laud, from The Hague, 20/10 March 1636/7, SP 84/152/93; Boswell to Laud, Ap 9, 1637, SP 84/152/112; and Boswell to Laud from The Hague, 30 March 1637, SP 84/152/116. 35. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 23. 36. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 21 July 1635, Letters, 56. 37. Green and Lomas, Elizabeth, 321. 38. Stearns, Strenuous Puritan, 87–88. 39. Raymond Phineas Stearns, Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands: The Rise and Fall of the English Congregational Classis, 1621–1635 (Chicago, 1940), 71. 40. Information on this colony, unless otherwise indicated, is drawn from Christopher Thompson, The Saybrook Company and the Significance of Its Colonizing Venture (Wivenoe, UK, 2007). I thank Christopher Thompson for our many discussions on the Saybrook venture and other matters of New England history. 41. For discussion of this trip, see Robert C. Black III, The Younger John Winthrop (New York, 1966), 77–90. 42. The phrase is from Christopher Thompson, who has done much to illuminate the story of the Saybrook enterprise. I thank Christopher Thompson for sharing his views with me. 43. Henry Jessey ( Jacie) to John Winthrop Jr., ca. February 1635, in WP 3:188–189. 44. Davenport to Thomas Temple, 1661, Letters, 190. 45. Stearns, Strenuous Puritan, 93, citing Lion Gardiner, Relation of the Pequot Wars (Hartford, CT, 1901), 5. 46. George Fenwick to John Winthrop Jr., 21 May 1636, in WP 3:261–262. 47. John Morrill has unraveled the story of Cromwell’s interest in New England in an unpublished paper, “The Puritan Choice in 1630: To Stay—Oliver Cromwell,” at the Millersville University of Pennsylvania conference, “The Worlds of John Winthrop: England and New England, 1588–1649,” September 17–18, 1999. 48. Stearns, Strenuous Puritan, 94. 49. Bradford Journal. 50. Bradford Journal. 51. John Cotton to a Minister in England, 3 December 1634, in Sargent Bush Jr., ed., The Correspondence of John Cotton (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 181–185. 52. Thomas Welde to former parishioners in Terling, Essex, June/July 1632, in Everett Emerson, ed., Letters from New England: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1628–1638 (Amherst, MA, 1976), 97. 53. George Beaumont to Sir William Boswell, 27 April 1636, in Boswell Papers, BL, Add Ms 6394, fol. 200.



Notes to Pages 142–150

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54. SP 16/351/100. I thank Kate Harvey for directing me to this manuscript. 55. Calder, New Haven, 29–30. Rowe had expressed his intention to emigrate in a letter to John Winthrop in 1636. He never did leave England, however, and became prominent figure in the events of England’s puritan revolution. 56. BL, Egerton MSS 2648, fol. 1; I thank Christopher Thompson for directing me to this source. See also Calder, New Haven, 29. 57. Bradford Journal. June seems a little late for the departure, but it may be that it was simply under that date that Bradford recorded a departure that may have taken place in the previous month. 58. The future Congregationalist spokesman Sidrach Simpson also joined the Rotterdam church in 1637 but probably not until after Davenport’s departure.

Chapter 10: Boston 1. Commission of Foreign Plantations to the Officers of the Port of London, 31 December 1634, in WP 3:180–181. 2. It is also possible that the Hector stopped in the Netherlands to pick up the clergyman. 3. There are a number of ships called Hector that are noted in the records of the period, including one whose master’s mate was called before the Massachusetts General Court for having said that colonists were rebels and traitors for not having the king’s colors flying at fort. The ship that carried Daniel Bradford from Yarmouth to Rotterdam was also called the Hector. It is possible that it was the same ship, owned by someone sympathetic to the puritan cause. We also know that the Earl of Warwick, who was a supporter of Davenport and well known to Eaton, owned a ship called the Hector (CSP Domestic: Charles I, 1627–28, 133–145). 4. CSP Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 1, 1574–1660, 243–245; and CSP Domestic: Charles I, 1636–7, 363–393. 5. CSP Domestic: Charles I, 1636–7, 442–457. 6. Francis Higginson to his friends in England, 24 July 1629, in Everett Emerson, ed., Letters from New England: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1628–1638 (Amherst, MA, 1976), 17. 7. Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649 (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 223. 8. Calder, New Haven, 32. 9. John Menta, The Quinnipiac: Cultural Conflict in Southern New England (New Haven, CT, 2003), 70–71. 10. John Winthrop, “Christian Charity,” in Winthrop Papers, 2:282–295. 11. My argument in this chapter is that the dynamic of the Boston church was changed more than that of other communities as a result of the new ideas and perspectives brought into the colony by those coming from an England that was becoming more polarized. Discussions of faith in the Boston church were a major contribution to the development of controversy. 12. Michael P. Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, NJ, 2002), 191. 13. Winship, Heretics, 192. 14. Winship, Heretics, 87–88.

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15. Winship, Heretics, 308n31, notes a letter in which Thomas Lechford asked Anne’s son Francis whether he still denied the eternal sonship of Christ. 16. Winship, Heretics, 191–192. 17. Winship, Heretics, 88–89. 18. Thomas Shepard to John Cotton, [between 1 February and 1 June 1636], in The Correspondence of John Cotton, ed. Sargent Bush (2001), 225–230. The phrase “everwatchful” is from Michael J. Colacurcio, Godly Letters: The Literature of the American Puritans (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), 176. 19. Shepard to Giles Firmin, quoted in Winship, Heretics, 236. 20. Peter quoted in Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York, 2003), 285. 21. Bremer, Winthrop, 286. 22. Johnson and Winthrop, quoted in Bremer, Winthrop, 286–287. 23. The only surviving manuscript copy of this account by Winthrop is in the Henry Dunster Notebook, Massachusetts Historical Society. A new edition will be printed in Winthrop Papers: Religious Writings, which will be part of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s online edition of the Winthrop Papers at http://www.masshist.org. 24. Bremer, Winthrop, 290. 25. Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (1910), 132. 26. Bremer, Winthrop, 291. 27. Winthrop’s Journal, 223. 28. Mather, Johannes in Eremo. 29. For a more detailed description of Boston in the early 1630s, see Bremer, Winthrop, 204–205. 30. Bremer, Winthrop, 247. 31. It can be argued that the preeminence of John Cotton in histories written about early New England is the result of the emphasis placed on him by his grandson Cotton Mather in his writings, and of the fact that many historians see New England as Boston writ large. Without minimizing the significance of Cotton and Thomas Hooker, neither had been involved in England with projects comparable to the feoffees or the circular letter to raise funds for the Palatinate refugees, and neither had been a figure in the London community. Arguably, Davenport on his arrival had a greater stature than either of his two most famous peers. 32. Winthrop’s Journal, 230. 33. This account is derived largely from Winship, Making Heretics, which is by far the most complete and insightful study of the controversy. 34. Robert Baillie’s account of Francis Higginson’s testimony, as quoted in Winship, Making Heretics, 160. 35. Anonymous writer quoted at length by Thomas Hutchinson in The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 1:61. The manuscript that Hutchinson had access to no longer exists. 36. Winthrop’s Journal, 235. 37. The following summary of the civil trials is drawn from Winship, Making Heretics, chap. 9. 38. Calder, New Haven, 45. 39. Reports quoted in Menta, Quinnipiac, 81. 40. Menta, Quinnipiac, 81–82.



Notes to Pages 160–167

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41. Letters, 66–68. 42. When published in 1643, neither work had an author identified on the title page, and the authorship of An Apology has sometimes been attributed to other authors. However, Thomas Lechford, the sometimes notary who was living in Boston at the time, recorded in his notebook: “I wrote two manuscripts for Mr. Davenport, one in answer to Mr. Bernard about the church covenant, etc. [An Apology], the other an answer to Mr.  Ball about the Common Prayer Book in England [Answer of the Elders]. Thomas Lechford, Notebook Kept by Thomas Lechford, Esq. Lawyer, in Boston Massachusetts Bay from June 27, 1638, to July 29, 1641 (Cambridge, MA, 1885), 2. 43. John Davenport, Answer of the Elders, 51, 53, 61, 62, 73, 75, 78. 44. John Davenport, An Apology, 5, 4, 15, 12, 21, 24, 36–37, 44–45. 45. Michael P. Winship, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson (Lawrence, KS, 2005), 124–125. 46. James F. Maclear has linked Hutchinson’s views to the mortalist heresy in “Anne Hutchinson and the Mortalist Heresy,” New England Quarterly 54 (1981), 74–103. Michael Winship has argued that the identification is not quite correct. 47. The comparison between Hutchinson’s views and those of Pordage has been pointed out by David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre–Civil War England (Stanford, CA, 2004), 442. 48. “A Report of the Trial of Anne Hutchinson before the Church in Boston,” in The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History, ed. David D. Hall (Middletown, CT, 1968), 358–361 (hereafter, “Trial”). 49. “Trial,” 363. 50. “Trial,” 362. 51. “Trial,” 364. 52. “Trial,” 364–365. 53. “Trial,” 366–367. 54. “Trial,” 358–359. 55. John Cotton, The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared, in Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 423. 56. Winship, Times and Trials, 129. 57. “Trial,” 386. 58. Quote from Winship, Times and Trials, 135. 59. Bruce Steiner, “Dissension at Quinnipiac: the Authorship and Setting of A Discourse about Civil Government in a New Plantation Whose Design is Religion,” New England Quarterly 54 (1981), 22. 60. Cotton, Way of Congregational Churches, 415.

Chapter 11: A New Heaven in a New Earth 1. Unless otherwise noted, descriptions of the landscape in this and the following paragraphs are drawn from Floyd M. Shumway and Richard Hegel, New Haven: A Topographical History (New Haven, CT, 1988), and Jelle Zellinga De Boer, Stories in Stone: How Geology Influenced Connecticut History and Culture (Middletown, CT, 2009). I thank James Campbell of the New Haven Museum for directing me to these sources. 2. John Menta, The Quinnipiac: Cultural Conflict in Southern New England, Yale University Publications in Anthropology (New Haven, CT, 2003), 86:17–18, 28.

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Notes to Pages 168–171

3. Menta, Quinnipiac, 85–86. 4. John Davenport, A Sermon Preach’d at the Election of the Governour (1670), 15. 5. Perry Miller, review of Isabel M. Calder’s The New Haven Colony (1934), New England Quarterly 8 (1935), 583, 584. 6. John Davenport, “Profession of Faith,” Letters, 68. 7. Brightman’s views and their influence on puritan thinkers is carefully presented in Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), esp. 198–236. Bozeman, however, has little to say about Davenport. Among other significant English millenarian theologians was Joseph Mede, who published a number of works on the last times, the most influential of which was the Clavis Apocalyptica (1627). For a general discussion of apocalyptic writings of the time, with particular focus on puritans, see Jeffrey K. Jue, “Puritan Millenarianism in Old and New England,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim (Cambridge, U.K., 2008), 259–276; Joy Gildorf, The Puritan Apocalypse: New England Eschatology in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1989). 8. Bozeman links some of these men and others to Brightman’s position in Primitivist Dimension, 216. 9. See Howard Hotson, “Anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism, Apocalypticism, and Millenarianism in Early Modern Europe: A Case Study and Some Methodological Reflections,” in Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, ed. Alistair Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory (South Bend, IN, 2009), 94, 114. Richard Cogley discusses aspects of the “Judeo-Centric” strand of puritanism in “The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Restoration of Israel in the ‘Judeo-Centric’ Strand of Puritan Millenarianism,” Church History 72 (2003), 304–332. 10. R. H. Popkin, “Some Aspects of Jewish-Christian Theological Exchanges in Holland and England, 1640–1700,” in Jewish Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Van Den Berg and Ernestine G. E. Van Der Wall (Dordrecht, 1988), 5–8, 24. 11. Ernestine G. E. Van Der Wall, “The Amsterdam Millenarian Petrus Serrarius (1600–1669) and the Anglo-Dutch Circle of Philo-Judaists,” in Van Den Berg and Van Der Wall, Jewish Christian Relations, 73–74. 12. Ernestine Van Der Wall, “Three Letters by Menasseh Ben Israel to John Durie: English Philo-Judaism and the Spes Israelis,” Nederlands Archief Voor Kerkeschiedensis 65 (1985), 48–49. 13. The most recent study of the conflict is Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years’ War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA, 2009). 14. Raymond Phineas Stearns, The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter (Urbana, IL, 1954), 62–66. 15. Gilsdorf, Puritan Apocalypse, 35–43. 16. For the dating of Cotton’s English sermons on the millennium and their context, see Jesper Rosenmeier, “‘Eaters and Non-Eaters’: John Cotton’s A Briefe Exposition of . . . Canticles (1642) in Light of Boston (Lincs.) Religious and Civil Conflicts, 1619–1622,” Early American Literature 36 (2001), 149–181. Robert Keayne recorded a 1640 sermon in Boston in which Cotton asserted, “The time is fulfilled, the Time of Christ’s coming, the time of the accomplishing of the prophecies concerning Christ Jesus. . . . The kingdom of heaven is at hand”; Congregational Communion, 128. 17. See Jeffrey A. Hammond, “The Bride in Redemptive Time: John Cotton and the Canticles Controversy,” New England Quarterly 56 (1983), 78–102; Rosenmeier, “‘Eaters and Non-Eaters.’”



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18. William Bridge’s Babylon’s Downfall (1641), Jeremiah Burroughes’s Moses His Choice (1641) and Thomas Goodwin’s Exposition upon the Revelation (1639) were sermons preached in the Netherlands. Another English puritan, John Archer, preached The Personal Reign of Jesus Christ upon Earth (1642) from a Dutch pulpit. See Congregational Communion, 128. 19. Mather, Magnalia, 1:331. 20. Proposals for Printing (by Subscription) an Exposition on the Whole Book of Canticles by the Late Reverend and Learned Divine John Davenport of New England (1687). This call for subscriptions was signed by Samuel Annesley and Edward Veal. The transmission of the manuscript to those individuals was likely the work of Increase Mather, who was a close ally of Davenport in the 1660s and who acquired Davenport’s papers after his death. Davenport and Increase shared an interest in the millennium, and Davenport had written the preface to Mather’s The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation (1669). Increase had studied at Trinity College, Dublin, in the late 1650s, where his brother Samuel and Edward Veal were fellows. After the Restoration, the third Mather brother, the London clergyman Nathaniel, arranged for the posthumous publication of Samuel Mather’s The Figures or Types of the Old Testament (1683), which contained views comparable to Davenport’s. Following Davenport’s death in 1670, Increase Mather likely sent his friend’s work on Canticles to his brother Nathaniel, who may have called on his close colleague Samuel Annesley as well as Veal for assistance. Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution (London, 1993), 363, mentions Davenport’s work as one of a surprising number of commentaries on Canticles that were written but not published at the time. 21. Mason Lowance, The Language of Canaan: Metaphor and Symbol in New England from the Puritans to the Transcendentalists (Cambridge, MA, 1980), esp. 72–88, places Davenport, along with the Mathers, in a conservative and Scripture-based tradition of biblical exegesis that rejected efforts to spiritualize the texts or draw inspiration from natural theology. It is likely that Davenport’s understanding of typology was very close to that of Samuel Mather. 22. See Reiner Smolinski, “Israel Redivius: The Eschatological Limits of Puritan Typology in New England,” New England Quarterly 63 (1990), 357–395, esp. 364. 23. Jeffrey Jue offers a useful discussion of puritan Old Testament hermeneutics in “Puritan Millenarianism,” 271. 24. Hooke quoted in Gilsdorf, Puritan Apocalypse, 77. 25. Mather, Magnalia, 1:324–325. 26. The authorship of the Discourse has been attributed to John Cotton by some scholars, but Bruce Steiner in “Dissension at Quinnipiac: The Authorship and Setting of A Discourse about Civil Government in a New Plantation Whose Design Is Religion,” New England Quarterly 54 (1981), 14–32, carefully and conclusively demonstrates Davenport’s authorship while acknowledging Cotton’s influence on his friend. 27. Davenport himself referred to Jonah as “a type of Christ” in The Knowledge of Christ Indispensably Required of all Men that Would be Saved (1653), 32. 28. John Davenport, An Apology, 2. 29. See Jue, “Puritan Millenarianism.” 30. Richard G. Olson, Science and Religion, 1450–1900: From Copernicus to Darwin (Westport, CT, 2004), 94. Samuel Hartlib sent an English translation of Andreae’s work to John Winthrop Jr. via Davenport in 1660 and suggested that Winthrop discuss it with

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Notes to Pages 174–177

Davenport, who was already familiar with the work; G. H. Turnbull, ed., “Some Correspondence of John Winthrop Jr. and Samuel Hartlib,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 72 (1957–1960), 48, 58. 31. See Johann Valentin Andreae, Christianopolis (1619), trans. and intro. Felix Emil Held (Oxford, 1916). 32. John Archer, “Puritan Town Planning in New Haven,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34 (1975), 144n38. 33. Jue, “Puritan Millenarianism,” 272. 34. See Jeffrey K. Jue, Heaven upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism (Dordrecht, 2006), chap. 9; Jue, “Puritan Millenarianism.” 35. Brightman, quoted in Bozeman, Primitivist Dimension, 203. 36. Robert Middlekauff writes that Davenport “hoped that the Church would attain the purity of the New Jerusalem before Christ’s Second Coming,” in The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728 (New York, 1971), 56. 37. Davenport, Anchor-hold (1661), 147. 38. Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut (New Haven, CT, 1818), 1:96. Trumbull, a Connecticut clergyman born less than a hundred years after the settlement of New Haven, had access to various sources that have disappeared as well as local traditions. The information on Prudden’s sermon is from Edward Lambert, History of the Colony of New Haven (New Haven, CT, 1838), 43–44. As was Trumbull, Lambert was drawing on manuscripts, printed sources, and local tradition. Although he cites Trumbull, he gives the text of Davenport’s sermon as Matthew 3:1: “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea.” 39. NHR, 1:12. 40. Davenport, Discourse, 5–6. 41. My analysis of the town plan has been heavily influenced by Archer, “Puritan Town Planning,” 140–149. I also thank Dr. Archer for personal communications regarding the subject. Erik Vogt’s “A New Heaven and a New Earth: The Origin and Meaning of the Nine-Square Plan,” in Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism, by Vincent Scully, Catherine Lynn, Erik Vogt, and Paul Goldberger (New Haven, CT, 2004), 37–51, builds on Archer’s insights and offers additional interpretive information. 42. Davenport, Power, 57. 43. Davenport, Power, 57. 44. Vogt, “New Heaven and New Earth,” 45. 45. James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now (New York, 2007), 520. 46. Goodwin quoted in T. M. Lawrence, “Thomas Goodwin,” ODNB. 47. Quoted in Gilsdorf, Apocalypse, 59–60. 48. Thomas Goodwin, Zeruubbabels Encouragement to Finish the Temple (1642), 53, 16, 32, 33, 45. 49. See Michael S. Horton, “Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Doctrine of Assurance: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Reformed Tradition, 1600–1680” (PhD dissertation, Oxford and Coventry University, 1966), 22–23. 50. Gerald Bonner, Saint Bede in the Tradition of Western Apocalyptic Commentary, ( Jarrow, UK, 1966); Arthur G. Holder, ed. And trans., Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool, UK, 1994).



Notes to Pages 177–182

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51. Jim Bennett and Scott Mandlebrote, The Garden, the Ark, the Tower, the Temple: Biblical Metaphors of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1988), 11. 52. See Jamie Lafra, City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (South Bend, IN, 2004). I thank Diarmaid MacCulloch for directing me to this work. 53. John Davenport, The Knowledge of Christ Indispensably Required of all Men that Would be Saved (1653), 21–22. 54. Archer, “Puritan Town Planning,” 147–148. 55. I thank Scott Mandelbrote for reviewing an early draft of this chapter, and for directing me to works such as the Geneva Bible and the Antwerp Polyglot that may have influenced Davenport. 56. Archer, “Puritan Town Planning,” 148–149; Jonathan Sheehan, “Temple and Tabernacle: The Place of Religion in Early Modern England,” in Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, ed. Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt (Chicago, 2000), 249–266. 57. A. K. Offenberg, “Jacob Judah Leon (1602–1675) and His Model of the Temple,” in Jewish Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, by J. Van Den Berg and Ernestine G. E. Van Der Wall (Dordrecht, 1988), 96–101; A. L. Shane, “Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon (Templo) of Amsterdam (1603–1675) and His Connections with England,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 25 (1977), 120–136; Popkin, “Theological Exchanges,” 8. 58. Dury to Hartlib, quoted in Ernestine G. E. Van Der Wall, “‘Without Partialitie Towards All Men’: John Dury on the Dutch Hebraist Adam Boreel,” in Van Den Berg and Van Der Wall, Jewish Christian Relations, 148. 59. Norris C. Andrews, “Davenport-Eaton and 52 Rods,” New Haven Colony Historical Society Journal, . . . , 11–12. 60. Vogt, 45–51. 61. Andrews, “52 Rods,” 9–11, elaborating on a point first made by Archer. 62. Andrews, “52 Rods,” 12.

Chapter 12: The Quinnipiac Jerusalem 1. NHR, 1:11–13. 2. Exodus 18:2 in the record of the meeting should be Exodus 18:21, as pointed out by David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids, MI, 2005), 399, that text being “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” The other texts referred to by Davenport were Deuteronomy 1:13 (“Take your wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you”), Deuteronomy 17:15 (“Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren thou shalt set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother”), and 1 Corinthians 6:1–7 (“1. Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to the law before the unjust, and not before the saints? 2. Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3. Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? 4. If then ye have judgments of

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things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. 5. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? 6. But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers”). 3. NHR 1:13–14. Bruce Steiner, in “Dissension at Quinnipiac: the Authorship and Setting of A Discourse about Civil Government in a New Plantation Whose Design is Religion,” New England Quarterly 54 (1981), 14–32, identifies Prudden as the dissenter. 4. NHR 1:14–15. 5. One of the purposes of such gatherings was to enable individuals who might not have known one another before coming to the new town to learn something of one another’s spiritual condition. See Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 132, where he discusses the process in the formation of the church in Dedham, Massachusetts. 6. NHR, 15–19. 7. Goodwin, quoted in Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (1976), 22. 8. On Cotton, see Michael G. Ditmore, “Preparation and Confession: Reconsidering Edmund S. Morgan’s Visible Saints,” New England Quarterly 67 (1994), 316; on Goodwin, see Michael S. Horton, “Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Doctrine of Assurance: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Reformed Tradition, 1600–1680” (PhD dissertation, Oxford and Coventry University, 1966), 33. 9. William Hubbard to Increase Mather, 29 June 1683, Boston Public Library, MS Am 1502, vol. 5, item no. 16. 10. Davenport, Power, 15–16. 11. Davenport, Anchor-hold, 35, 53, 67. 12. Cotton, quoted in E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, CT, 2003), 34. Holifield has an excellent brief discussion of this distinction in puritan thought, 33–34. 13. The Agreement of the Associated Ministers & Churches of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland (1656), 7. I thank Joel Halcomb for this reference. 14. Montague Notebook. 15. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 163, 1633, Letters, 39–40. 16. Charles Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (New York, 1986), 196–197. 17. Davenport, Power, 15–16. 18. This is pointed out in both David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England (Stanford, CA, 2004), 71, and Bozeman, Precisianist Strain, 183n1. 19. Horton, “Goodwin,” 143–144. 20. Davenport, Anchor-hold, 33–34. This point is made by Bozeman, Precisianist Strain, 143. 21. Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression (Cambridge, U.K., 1983), 92. 22. Alice Carter, The English Reformed Church in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (Amsterdam, 1964), 11–113.



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23. A copy of the articles is to be found in the Boswell Papers, BL, Add Ms 6394, fol. 154. 24. Davenport, An Apology, 17. 25. Davenport quoted in Mather, Magnalia, 1:328. 26. Davenport PhD, 120, citing the Davenport manuscript sermons from the late 1650s. 27. Davenport, Essay, 6. 28. Leonard Bacon, Thirteen Historical Discourses on . . . the First Church in New Haven (New Haven, CT, 1839), 40–41. Trumbull, History of Connecticut, 235. The exact date of the church formation is uncertain because the surviving New Haven church records do not begin with the formation of the church. The records of the church in Milford indicate that the congregation was formed on August 22, and it is believed that New Haven’s church was formed on the same day or a day immediately before or after August 22. 29. The estimate for New England as a whole is from David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, NC, 1972), 99–100. The estimate for New Haven is from Steiner, “Dissension,” 31–32. 30. NHR, 1:20–21. 31. Floyd M. Shumway and Richard Hegel, “New Haven: A Topographical History,” Journal of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 34 (Spring 1988), 11, 14. 32. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 28 September 1639, Letters, 75–77.

Chapter 13: Everyday Life in Mr. Davenport’s Town 1. “Autobiography of Michael Wigglesworth,” in History of the Colony of New Haven, by Edward E. Atwater (Meriden, CT, 1902), 532. 2. Floyd M. Shumway, “Early New Haven and Its Leadership” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1968), 33. 3. Discussion of the Eaton and Davenport homes is drawn from Norman M. Isham and Albert F. Brown, Early Connecticut Houses: An Historical and Architectural Study (Providence, RI, 1900), 97–98. 4. John Archer, “Puritan Town Planning in New Haven,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34 (1975), 147n58. 5. Rebecca Tannenbaum, “‘What is to be Done for these Fevers’: Elizabeth Davenport’s Medical Practice in New Haven Colony,” New England Quarterly 70 ( June 1997), 265–284. 6. NHR, 1:131. 7. NHR, 1:136. 8. NHR, 1:273. 9. NHR, 1:120. 10. NHR, 1:119. 11. NHR, 1:141. 12. John Menta, The Quinnipiac: Cultural Conflict in Southern New England (New Haven, CT, 2003), 106–107. 13. NHR, 1:167–169. 14. Menta, Quinnipiac, 107. 15. NHR, 1:132.

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16. NHR, 1:121. 17. NHR, 1:212. 18. NHR, 1:157. 19. NHR, 1:150. 20. NHR, 1:217. 21. NHR, 1:166, 167, 273. 22. NHR, 1:210. 23. Robert West Roetger, “Order and Disorder in Early Connecticut: New Haven, 1639–1701,” (PhD dissertation, University of New Hampshire, 1982), 57–60. 24. Roetger, “Order and Disorder,” 104. 25. New Haven’s Settling in New England and some Lawes for Government Published for the Use of that Colony (London, 1656), 32; for further discussion of parents’ responsibilities, see Robert West Roetger, “Order and Disorder in Early Connecticut: New Haven, 1639–1701,” (PhD dissertation, University of New Hampshire, 1982), 20–26. 26. Mather, Magnalia, 1:153–154. 27. Arnold Hunt, “The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640” (PhD dissertation, Cambridge University, 1998), 55. 28. Mather, Magnalia, 1:153–154. 29. Davenport quoted in Mather, Magnalia, 1:326. 30. Mather, Magnalia, 1:326. 31. NHR, 1:145. 32. NHR, 1:189, 227. 33. NHR, 1:358. 34. Atwater, New Haven, 248–250. 35. The description of the typical New England church service is drawn from Thomas Lechford, Plain Dealing; or, News from New England, ed. J. Hammond Trumbull (Boston, 1867). 36. ATR, 46. 37. ATR, 47–48. 38. Charles W. Sorensen, “Response to Crisis: An Analysis of New Haven, 1638– 1665” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1973), 21–22. 39. Hunt, “Hearing,” 56–59. 40. ATR, 46, citing church records. 41. Walter W. Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1601–1676 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010), 56–64. For more on these interactions, see H. Hotson, Johann Heinrich Alsted, 1588–1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation and Universal Reform (Oxford, 2000), and Paradise Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism (Dordrecht, 2001). 42. Hooke, quoted in Gilsdorf, Puritan Apocalypse, 77. 43. Comenius, quoted in Woodward, Prospero’s America, 61. 44. NHR, 1:210. 45. NHR, 1:62. 46. NHR, 1:210. 47. There is no clear evidence of how Cheever taught Latin. Over the years, he developed a text, and after his death an edition was published with his name attached. Even if that text was effectively his, there would be no evidence that his methods were the same at his death as they had been many years before in New Haven. Davenport’s interest in



Notes to Pages 203–211

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Comenius’s ideas certainly suggests that he would have wished to see the reformer’s ideas incorporated in the New Haven school, and his appointment as one of the supervisors of the enterprise would have given him an authority to insist on it. 48. John Ward Dean, ed., Memoir of Michael Wigglesworth (Albany, NY, 1871), 137. 49. NHR, 1:149. 50. NHR, 1:404. 51. Hartlib to Davenport, Hartlib Papers, 7/35/1A-2B. Woodward correctly points out that it was Davenport, not Winthrop Jr., who was the recipient of this letter (Woodward, Prospero’s America, 192n236). 52. Walter William Woodward, “Prospero’s America: John Winthrop Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture (1601–1676)” (PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut, 2001), 170–172. 53. Atwater, New Haven, 271–272. 54. Atwater, New Haven, 273.

Chapter 14: From Town to Colony 1. Bruce Steiner, “Dissension at Quinnipiac: the Authorship and Setting of A Discourse about Civil Government in a New Plantation Whose Design is Religion,” New England Quarterly 54 (1981), 25. 2. Guilford records quoted in Atwater, New Haven, 169. 3. Atwater, New Haven, 164. 4. Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), 79–80. 5. Richard Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 287–288. 6. Atwater, New Haven, 81–82. 7. Floyd M. Shumway, “Early New Haven and Its Leadership” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1968), 52, 54. 8. Atwater, New Haven, 171–173. 9. Atwater, New Haven, 174–175. 10. NHR, 1:112–119; see also Shumway, “Leadership,” 63. 11. NHR 1:87. 12. Atwater, New Haven, 180–181. On the New England Confederation, see Harry M. Ward, The United Colonies of New England (New York, 1961). 13. NHR, 1:136–137. 14. Elizabeth Van Beek, “Piety and Profit: English Puritans and the Shaping of a Godly Marketplace in the New Haven Colony” (PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 1993), 296–297. 15. Adriaen van der Donck, “A Representation of New Netherland,” in Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York, 1909), 311. 16. Van der Donck, “Representation,” 316. 17. Van Beek, 300–303; see also Steven H. Ward, “A Nest of Vipers: The Expansionist Policies of the New Haven Puritans from 1637 to 1667,” New Haven Colony Historical Society 31 (1984), 3–12. 18. NHR, 1:149–150. 19. NHR, 1:130.

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Notes to Pages 211–217

20. Gail Sussman Marcus, “‘Due Execution of the General Rules of Righteousnesse’: Criminal Procedure in New Haven Town and Colony, 1638–1658,” in Saints and Revolutionaries, ed. David D. Hall, John M. Murrin, and Thad W. Tate (New York, 1984), 101. 21. Atwater, New Haven, 411–412. 22. Charles W. Sorensen, “Response to Crisis: An Analysis of New Haven, 1638– 1665” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1973), 50. 23. Information on the legal system, unless otherwise noted, is drawn from Marcus, “Criminal Procedure,” 99–237. 24. Cornelia Dayton, Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), 25. 25. John M. Murrin, “Magistrates, Sinners, and a Precarious Liberty: Trial by Jury in Seventeenth-Century New England,” in Hall, Murrin, and Tate, Saints and Revolutionaries, 176. 26. Dayton, Bar, 30. 27. Marcus, “Criminal Procedure,” 120. 28. For a discussion of the role of execution sermons in early New England, see Scott D. Seay, Hanging between Heaven and Hell: Capital Crime, Execution Preaching, and Theology in Early New England (DeKalb, IL, 2009). 29. NHR, 1:153. 30. John Menta, The Quinnipiac: Cultural Conflict in Southern New England (New Haven, CT, 2003), 96–97. 31. NHR, 1:28–29. 32. NHR, 1:47. 33. NHR, 1:58. 34. NHR, 1:46–47. 35. NHR, 1:133. 36. Robert West Roetger, “Order and Disorder in Early Connecticut: New Haven, 1639–1701” (PhD dissertation, University of New Hampshire, 1982), 227, indicates twentynine in the first decade, three in the following decade, and twenty-five in the third, but missing records for part of the 1650s have to be accounted for. 37. Roetger, “Order and Disorder,” 208. 38. Roetger, “Order and Disorder,” 206, 228. 39. NHR, 1:51. 40. NHR, 1:174–176. 41. Dayton, Bar, 30–31. 42. Dayton, Bar, 173. 43. Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York, 1996), 336. 44. NHR, 1:435. 45. Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 20. 46. ATR, 124–125. 47. Norton, Founding Mothers, 341, citing another court case found in the manuscript records at the Connecticut Historical Society that was deemed inappropriate to print in the nineteenth-century publication of those records. 48. ATR, 182. 49. WJ, 629.



Notes to Pages 217–233

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50. Roetger, “Order and Disorder,” 162–163, citing unpublished colony records. 51. Information in this and the following paragraph is drawn from the records of Spencer’s trial in NHR, 1:62–73 52. WJ, 385, 374. See John Canup, “‘The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into’: Bestiality and the Wilderness of Human Nature in Seventeenth-Century New England,” American Antiquarian Society Proceedings 98 (1988), 113–134. 53. NHR, 1:295–296. 54. Roetger, “Order and Disorder,” 228.

Chapter 15: Cracks in the Foundation 1. Richard Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 570. 2. The timing doesn’t allow for Anne Eaton to have first encountered Lady Moody while in Massachusetts in 1637. Given that the records of Eaton’s church trial suggests a relationship before 1644, meeting in London seems the most likely possibility. 3. Anne Sheehan, “Lady Deborah Moody,” American National Biograph, http:// www.anb.org. 4. WJ, 462–463. John Endecott was less charitable than Winthrop, referring to Moody as “a dangerous woman”; WJ, 462n79. 5. Rev. Newman Smyth, “Mrs. Eaton’s Trial (in 1644): as it appears upon the records of the First Church of New Haven,” Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 5 (1894), 135. 6. “Trial,” 135. 7. “Trial,” 135–136. 8. “Trial,” 136–137. 9. “Trial,” 138–143. 10. “Trial,” 144–145. 11. “Trial,” 145–148. 12. NHR, 1:269. 13. See Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York, 1996), 165–180; Lillian Handlin, “Dissent in a Small Community,” New England Quarterly 58 (1985), 193–220; and Mary Maples Dunn, “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period,” American Quarterly 30 (1978), 587. 14. NHR, 1:242. 15. Details on the charges and trial in this and the following paragraphs are drawn from NHR, 1:242–257. 16. The sentences are discussed in Handlin, “Dissent,” 212. 17. “The Trial of Ezekiel Cheever,” in Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society (1860), 1:22–51, on which my treatment is based. 18. John Davenport to John Cotton, 6 May 1650, in The Correspondence of John Cotton, ed. Sargent Bush Jr. (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 436–439. 19. Samuel Stone to John Cotton, 16 September 1650, in Bush, Correspondence, 443–446. If the New Haven elders did offer a written answer to Cheever, it has not been discovered. While clearly stating that such a “second writing [that] is the church’s reply

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Notes to Pages 233–238

to Mr. Cheever his answer to the charges” did exist, elsewhere in the same letter Stone writes, “The refusing to answer his papers seemeth rather to harden him.” 20. Franklin Parker, “Ezekiel Cheever: New England Colonial Teacher,” Peabody Journal of Education 37 (1960), 355–360. This article contains a number of errors but, surprisingly, is the only treatment of Cheever’s career. 21. NHR, 1:270. 22. Floyd M. Shumway, “Early New Haven and Its Leadership” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1968), 69. 23. Shumway, “Leadership,” 69–70. 24. NHR, 1:358. 25. Theophilus Eaton to John Winthrop, 26 November 1647, in the appendix to NHR, 1:517–518. The letter is not included in the published edition of Winthrop Papers. 26. For discussion of this, see Charles W. Sorensen, “Response to Crisis: An Analysis of New Haven, 1638–1665” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1973), 67–68. 27. NHR, 1:195. 28. NHR, 1:160. 29. NHR, 1:183. 30. NHR, 1:189. 31. NHR, 1:425. 32. NHR, 1:184–185; see also Shumway, “Leadership,” 69. 33. See Sorensen, “Response,” 101–103. 34. NHR, 1:279. 35. NHR, 1:279–280. 36. ATR, 1:434–435. 37. ATR, 2:65–71. 38. ATR, 2:228. These cases are discussed in John M. Murrin, “Magistrates, Sinners, and a Precarious Liberty: Trial by Jury in Seventeenth-Century New England,” in Saints and Revolutionaries, ed. David D. Hall, John M. Murrin, and Thad W. Tate (New York, 1984), 181.

Chapter 16: Beyond New Haven 1. Hooke quoted in Congregational Communion, 128. 2. Cobbett and Hooke quoted in Congregational Communion, 144. 3. Thomas Hutchinson, History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Boston, 1936), 1:100. For a discussion of the group who signed the letter, see Stephen Foster, “The Presbyterian Independents Exorcised: A Ghost Story for Historians,” Past & Present 44 (1969), 52–75. 4. “The Root and Branch Petition (1640),” in Documents Illustrative of English Church History, ed. Henry Gee and William John Hardy (New York, 1896), 537–545. 5. “The Trial of William Laud,” Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, vol. 3, 1639–1640, 1365–1381. 6. “Declaration of the Houses on Church Reform,” in The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, 3rd ed., ed. Samuel Rawson Gardner (Oxford, 1906), 247. 7. “The Nineteen Propositions,” in Gardner, Constitutional Documents, 252; the eighth proposition deals with the reform of the church.



Notes to Pages 239–245

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8. Hutchinson, History, 100–101. 9. WJ, 403. 10. Hutchinson, History, 101. 11. WJ, 404. 12. WJ, 404. 13. Congregational Communion, 129. 14. John Haynes to John Winthrop, WP, 4:418. 15. Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, “Reforming the Reformation: Theological Debate at the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652” (University of Cambridge, PhD dissertation, 2004), offers the authoritative edition of the debates of the assembly. 16. For a fuller discussion of the Dissenting Brethren, see Congregational Communion, esp. chap. 6. See also Hunter Powell, “The Dissenting Brethren and the Power of the Keys, 1640–1644” (PhD dissertation, Cambridge University, 2011), which offers numerous new and valuable insights. 17. Cotton accompanying his explanation for not coming with this tract is asserted by Benjamin Hanbury, Historical Memorials Relating to the Independents or Congregationalists (London, 1841), 2:155. 18. Sargent Bush Jr., “Thomas Hooker and the Westminster Assembly,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 29 (1972), 291–300. 19. The quote is from the title page of An Apology. 20. John Davenport to John Cotton, 6 May 1650, Letters, 83–86. 21. Connecticut Records, 1:99. 22. See William De Loss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston, 1895), and Richard Gildrie, “The Ceremonial Puritan Days of Humiliation and Thanksgiving,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 136 (1982), 3–16. 23. These numbers are from Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven, CT, 2007), app. 4. This study is the most comprehensive study of New Englanders who returned to England in the decades of the 1630s and 1640s. 24. Francis. J. Bremer, Puritan Crisis: New England and the English Civil Wars, 1630– 1670 (New York, 1989), 238. 25. Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York, 2003), 335. 26. Hardman More, Pilgrims, app. 2. 27. Francis J. Bremer, “The New Haven Colony and Oliver Cromwell,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 38 (1973), 69. 28. Hartlib Papers 6/4/149A-150B. 29. John Davenport to Lady Vere, 13 November 1647, Letters, 81–83. 30. Foster, “Presbyterian Independents,” 70. 31. The starting point for understanding why no further attempt to gain a charter was undertaken is the fact that the colonists believed that authorization by the Saybrook proprietors under the terms of the Warwick patent was sufficient to protect their rights. This is the same reason the Connecticut authorities did not feel the need to seek a charter from Parliament, though the connections that Connecticut’s leaders had with key English figures would have made the approval of such a request highly probable. The formation of the New England Confederation offered validation of both colonies’ legitimacy in the eyes of the Massachusetts and Plymouth authorities, as well as of each other. Both

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Notes to Pages 246–250

of these claims to New Haven’s validity as a colony would be offered in her defense when Connecticut sought to incorporate New Haven into her bounds in the early 1660s. 32. Elizabeth Van Beek, “Piety and Profit: English Puritans and the Shaping of a Godly Marketplace in the New Haven Colony” (PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 1993), 306–307, referring to Ronald Cohen, “The Hartford Treaty of 1650,” New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 53 (1969), 311–332. 33. See Cohen, “Hartford Treaty.” 34. Calder, New Haven, 190–193. 35. Calder, New Haven, 194–195. 36. ATR, 1:181. 37. CSP Colonial, America and West Indies, addenda 1653, vol. 9, 87–88; see also CSPD Interregnum, 1653–54, 179–228. 38. Henry F. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England (1901), 1:246–249, has some correspondence between Leete and Desborough. 39. William Hooke to Oliver Cromwell, 3 November 1653, A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, ed. by Thomas Birch (1742), 1:564–565. 40. Calder, New Haven, 198–199. 41. Cromwell to the Governors of the English Colonies in America, in Thurloe, State Papers, 1:731–732. 42. Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Imagination in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), 39. 43. John Leverett’s record of a meeting held at Charlestown, June 17, 1654, in Thurloe, State Papers, 1:418. 44. Robert Sedgwick to the Lord Protector, 1 July 1654, in Thurloe, State Papers, 1:417. 45. Francis J. Bremer, First Founders: American Puritans and Puritans in an Atlantic World (Hanover, NH, 2012), 216–217. 46. Calder, New Haven, 202–205. 47. Theophilus Eaton to John Winthrop Jr., 24 July 1654, in WP, 6:409–410. 48. Emmanuel Downing to John Winthrop Jr., 24 December 1651, in WP, 6:97. 49. Chandler Robbins, A History of the Second Church, or Old North, in Boston (Boston, 1852), 4–6. 50. In 1651 a case of slander was entered in the town court against a Goodwife Cooper by Richard Haughton, a Bostonian who had visited New Haven at the time of the invitation. Haughton contended that when he had discussed the invitation with Cooper, he had explained that the members of the new church were tradesmen and seamen. Fastening on the reference to seamen, Cooper had declared that those who had issued the invitation were “drunkards which set their hand to that letter.” ATR, 1:86. 51. Robert Dunlop, ed., Ireland under the Commonwealth, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1913), 2:450–451. I thank John Morrill for bringing this source to my attention. 52. ATR, 1:97–98, 100. 53. ATR, 1, 157–158. 54. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 10 March 1655, Letters, 100–103; Davenport’s postscript, which contains Shoyes’s report, is in Latin—either because the doctor wrote it in Latin or because Davenport didn’t want the details known by someone who might read the letter. I have used the translation prepared by Calder. 55. See John M. Forrester, ed. and trans., The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) (Philadelphia, 2003), esp. chap. 2.



Notes to Pages 250–257

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56. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 20 July 1660, Letters, 166–168. 57. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 20 August 1653, Letters, 87. 58. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 24 July 1654, Letters, 89–93. 59. Theophilus Eaton to John Winthrop Jr., 24 July 1654, in WP, 6:409–410. 60. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 24 July 1654, Letters, 91. 61. Kevin P. Siena, Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor: London’s “Foul Wards” 1600–1800 (2004) is the standard work. I thank Dr. Siena and Norman Gevitz for discussions of Davenport’s medical condition. Dr. Robert C. Anderson, who is editing John Winthrop’s medical notebooks for the Massachusetts Historical Society, provided me with copies of the entries that indicate what Winthrop prescribed for Davenport, including guaiacum. 62. John Jr. was born in The Hague, just before the Davenports settled briefly in Rotterdam, at which point John reported that he first began to experience his symptoms. The couple had no other children, and despite all the evidence of their close relationship, there is no evidence that Elizabeth ever conceived again. 63. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 24 July 1654, Letters, 91. 64. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 19 September 1654, Letters, 96. Calder suggests that this is a reference to a work by Andreas Languis. 65. Calder, New Haven, 211. 66. Calder, New Haven, 212, where Cromwell is quoted. 67. John Cotton to Oliver Cromwell, 28 July 1651, in Bush, Correspondence of John Cotton, 458–464. 68. Congregational Communion, 177–179. 69. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 10 March 1655, Letters, 100–101. 70. CSP, Colonial, 1:431. 71. ATR, 1:278. 72. Susan Dwyer Amussen, Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640–1700 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 35. 73. NHR, 2:180.

Chapter 17: Defending Congregationalism and Baptism 1. “A Report of the Trial of Anne Hutchinson before the Church in Boston,” in The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History, ed. David D. Hall (Middletown, CT, 1968), 359. 2. David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, NC, 1972), 110–111. 3. WJ, 476. 4. Richard Mather, Reply to Rutherford (1647), quoted in Walker, Creeds, 137n3. 5. Walker, Creeds, 138. 6. WJ, 608–609. 7. The Child petition is discussed in Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York, 2003), 365–369. 8. This discussion of the Cambridge Assembly, except where noted, is drawn from Walker, Creeds, chap. 10. 9. Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut (New Haven, CT, 1818), 1:289.

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Notes to Pages 257–262

10. Calder, New Haven, 102, citing Plymouth Colony Records, 9:81. 11. Hall, Faithful Shepherd, 98. 12. Davenport, Another Essay, 15. 13. Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 (Stanford, CA, 2011), 106, 112. 14. Mather, Magnalia, 2:238–239. 15. Hall, Faithful Shepherd, 113. 16. Stone, quoted in Paul R. Lucas, Valley of Discord: Church and Society along the Connecticut River, 1636–1725 (Hanover, NH, 1976), 36. Lucas argues (36–37, 43–44) that Stone also wished to treat any formal profession of faith as sufficient for membership, rather than what Lucas acknowledges was Hooker’s requirement of a sincere profession that was evidence of spiritual regeneration. I am not convinced that the evidence justifies making that distinction. 17. Richard Crowder, No Featherbed to Heaven: A Biography of Michael Wigglesworth, 1631–1705 (East Lansing, MI, 1962), 53–60. 18. Quoted by Mather, Magnalia, 1:437. 19. Paul Lucas, Valley of Discord, 44, contends that in the dispute over membership, William Goodwin and the dissidents called for a public narration of conversion, but the sources he cites do not support this, and I have not found any evidence of this. It is likely that Lucas, like many others, was assigning to Goodwin the position that most scholars have seen as the norm in New England, as explained by Morgan. 20. Robert Charles Anderson, Great Migration Begins, 1630–1633 (Boston, 1995), 2:793. Anderson has only been able to pin the marriage down to having occurred between 1654 and 1670. 21. “Mr. Stone’s Acknowledgment and Statement of his Position,” in “Controversy in the Hartford Church,” Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society (1870), 2:71. The manuscripts detailing the controversy, which I originally perused in the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Library, are published in this collection. 22. George Leon Walker, History of the First Church in Hartford, 1633–1883 (Hartford, CT, 1884), 155–156, where he quotes the statement of the dissidents. 23. “Reply of the Withdrawers,” in “Controversy,” 54–55. 24. Trumbull, History of Connecticut, 299. The order is to be found in Colonial Connecticut Records, 1:281. 25. “Controversy,” 54–55. 26. Walker, Hartford Church, 156. The fact that both sides agreed on representatives from the New Haven and Connecticut churches would tend to reinforce Hooker’s claim in Survey of the Summe that the churches of the two colonies were in accord on issues of church governance. 27. “Testimony of Higginson,” in “Controversy,” 94, 95. 28. “Mr. Stone’s Resignation,” in “Controversy,” 58–59. 29. “Ministers in Massachusetts to Capt. John Cullick and Elder William Goodwin,” in “Controversy,” 59–63. 30. “Churches in Massachusetts to the Church in Hartford,” in “Controversy,” 64–68. 31. “Withdrawers to the Church,” in “Controversy,” 68–70. 32. Colonial Connecticut Records, 1:290–291. 33. “The Diaries of John Hull,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1857), 3:180.



Notes to Pages 262–273

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34. “Withdrawers to Governor Eaton and the Reverend John Davenport,” in “Controversy,” 83. 35. NHR, 2:195–198. 36. John Davenport, “Rev. Mr. Davenport’s Answers to the 21 Questions,” John Davenport Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, 2–10. This manuscript is discussed in Davenport PhD, 139–143. 37. Notes on Davenport’s sermons in John Hull’s notebook of sermons by John Norton and John Davenport 1657–1658, Boston Public Library MS q. H.25.34. I thank Kimberly Reynolds, curator of manuscripts at the Boston Public Library, for her assistance. 38. “Mr. Stone’s Letter from the Bay,” in “Controversy,” 73–76. 39. Connecticut Colony Records, 1:312. 40. Walker, Hartford Church, 165. 41. Quoted in “Controversy,” 78n. 42. “Complaint of Nathaniel Barding and Others,” in “Controversy,” 79–80. 43. “John Davenport to the Church at Wethersfield,” in “Controversy,” 88–93. 44. “John Davenport to the Church at Wethersfield,” in “Controversy,” 88–93. 45. Connecticut Colony Records, 1:320–321. 46. Connecticut Colony Records, 1:333–334. 47. Walker, Hartford Church, 172–174. 48. My discussion of English contacts between Congregationalists and Baptists, including quotes, is drawn from Congregational Communion, 194–198. 49. Quoted in William G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630–1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 1:21. 50. Francis J. Bremer, “Henry Dunster,” ODNB. 51. Quote from McLoughlin, Dissent, 1:18. 52. Massachusetts Records, 2:85; also see John G. Palfrey, History of New England, 5 vols. (1890–1894), 2:346–348. 53. Stephen Winthrop to John Winthrop Jr., 1 March 1645, WP, 5:13. 54. WJ, 611–612. 55. WJ, 629. 56. Middlesex County Court Records, quoted in McLoughlin, Dissent, 1:17. 57. See Larry H. Ingle, First among Friends (1994). 58. For Naylor, see Leo Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus (1996). 59. Thomas Welde, Richard Prideaux, Samuel Hammond, William Cole, and William Durant, The Perfect Pharisee, under Monkish Holiness Opposing the Fundamental Principles of the Doctrine of the Gospel . . . manifesting himself in the generation of men called Quakers (1653), 18, 41, 44, 45. 60. Quoted in Palfrey, History, 2:463. 61. “Hull Diary” 178. 62. NHR, 2:217. 63. “Hull Diary,” 182. 64. [Humfrey Norton], New England’s Ensigne: It Being the Account of Cruelty, the Professors Pride, and the Articles of Their Faith (London, 1659), 50. 65. ATR, 1:339–343. 66. Norton, New England’s Ensign, 50.

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Notes to Pages 274–283

67. Frederick B. Tolles, “A Quaker’s Curse—Humphrey Norton to John Endecott, 1658,” Huntington Library Quarterly 14 (1951), 415–421, quote at 416n6. 68. Tolles, “Curse,” 417. 69. NHR, 2:233–234. 70. NHR, 2:238–241. 71. Palfrey, History, 2:467–469. 72. “Hull Diary,” 189. 73. “Hull Diary,” 189. 74. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 6 November 1659, Letters, 147–150. 75. NHR, 2:363. 76. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 6 November 1659, Letters, 147–150.

Chapter 18: The End of the New Haven Colony 1. Hunter Powell’s 2008 Cambridge MPhil thesis on the Savoy Conference and Platform (“The Last Confession: A Background Study of the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order”) provides an excellent analysis of that subject. See also Congregational Communion, 200–201. 2. Copies of letters sent to Dury by Massachusetts ministers, 19 September 1659, Hartlib Papers, 40/6/1A-4B. 3. A Copy of the Letter Returned by the Ministers of New-England to Mr. John Dury (Cambridge, MA, 1664), 2. 4. John Dury and the Ministers of the New Haven Colony to John Dury, Letters, 175n. 5. John Davenport to John Dury, 25 June 1660, Hartlib Papers, 6/5/1A-2B. This is a letter not included in Calder’s collection of Davenport’s letters. 6. The account is from Edward E. Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven (Meriden, CT, 1902), 414, who drew on accounts by Cotton Mather and others. 7. Mather, Magnalia, 1:152–153. 8. William Hooke to John Winthrop Jr., 30 March 1659, Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society, transcript provided by Mark Peterson. 9. Bremer, Congregational Communion, 202. 10. William Hooke to John Winthrop Jr., 30 March 1659, Winthrop Papers MSS; Congregational Communion, 203. 11. William Hooke to John Winthrop Jr., 30 March 1659, Winthrop Papers MSS, transcript provided by Mark Peterson. 12. John Winthrop Jr., quoted in Francis J. Bremer, Puritan Crisis: New England and the English Civil Wars, 1630–1670 (New York, 1989), 333. 13. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 28 July 1659, Letters, 138. 14. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 5 August 1659, Letters, 138–141. 15. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 29 March 1660, Letters, 152–153. 16. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 13 April 1660, Letters, 156–157. 17. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 1 August 1660, Letters, 169–171. 18. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 11 August 1660, Letters, 172–173. 19. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 17 September 1660, Letters, 176–179. 20. See Christopher Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals (Manchester, U.K., 2001).



Notes to Pages 283–292

399

21. Roger Thompson, “Daniel Gookin,” ODNB. 22. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 11 August 1660, Letters, 174. 23. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, John Endecott (Boston, 1936), 258. 24. Report of John Crowne, quoted in Mayo, Endecott, 259. 25. Davenport, Anchor-hold, 187–231. 26. NHR, 2:217. 27. Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728 (New York, 1971), 143–144; Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather (Middletown, CT, 1988), 172–173. Writing on behalf of his father in the 1660s, John Davenport Jr. shared many such providences with John Winthrop Jr. in his correspondence with the Connecticut governor; Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 28. Details on the pursuit of the regicides is primarily drawn from Lemuel A. Welles, The History of the Regicides in New England (New York, 1927). 29. Quoted in Welles, Regicides, 59. 30. Information on Temple is drawn from the entries on him in the ODNB and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca. 31. John Davenport to Thomas Temple, 19 August 1661, Letters, 190–194. 32. CSP Colonial, America & West Indies, 1661–1668, no. 102. 33. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1853–1854), vol. 4, pt. 2, 32–33. 34. CSP Colonial, America & West Indies, 1661–1668, no. 162. 35. MHSC, 3rd ser., 1:52–53. 36. Connecticut Colony Records, 1:367–370. 37. NHR, 2:402. Trumbull, History of Connecticut, 241, viewed this as a reflection of “a spirit of republicanism.” 38. NHR, 2:419–423. 39. Calder, New Haven, 217–219. 40. Connecticut’s letter is printed in NHR, 2:409n. 41. Fenwick had identified Theophilus Eaton as having represented the interests of the proprietors in New England before his arrival. In a letter concerning his efforts to sell his interests in the Saybrook colony to Connecticut (in 1643), Fenwick wrote, “I spoke with Mr. Eaton who was trusted in the business before I came over, & who had an offer of it to them before I came, who told me to use that own term that the offer was contemptible & so he treated no more with them” (BL, Egerton 2648—I thank Christopher Thompson for this reference). What Fenwick sold to Connecticut did not include the lands that were part of the New Haven colony. It can be argued that this is because he recognized that just as he had asserted his right to Saybrook, Eaton had the proprietors’ implicit grant of New Haven. 42. Floyd M. Shumway, “Early New Haven and Its Leadership” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1968), 77. 43. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 3 May 1658, Letters, 121–123. 44. Welles, Regicides, 42–43. 45. Welles, Regicides, 51–52. 46. In Richard Baxter’s Reliquiae Baxterianiae is a letter from John Norton to Baxter asking Baxter (chaplain briefly to Charles II) to intercede with the king for Leete:

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Notes to Pages 292–298

“­ Reverend and dear sir, Though you are unknown to me by face, yet not only your labors, but also your special assistance in a time of need unto the promoting the welfare of this poor country, certified unto us by Captain Leverett (upon which account our General Court thought good to return unto you their thanks in a letter which I hope before this is received) have made your name both known and precious to us in these parts, the occasion of these is in the behalf of one Mr. William Leete”; see Welles, Regicide, 61. News of this got back to Whalley and Goffe; Welles, Regicide, 63. 47. Davenport’s denial that Leete was acting in an official capacity is set forth in John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 22 June 1663, Letters, 218. 48. Leete to John Winthrop Jr., 6 August 1661, and further letters 25 June 1663 and 20 July 1663, MHSC, 4th ser., 7:549, 552. 49. All that we have of the Winthrop-Davenport correspondence is found in the manuscripts of the Winthrop Papers, most of which were gathered together in the nineteenth century by Robert Charles Winthrop, who donated the bulk of them to the Massachusetts Historical Society. There are a few surprising gaps in the collection, including Winthrop’s letters to Davenport during the charter mission and any letters of Wait Still Winthrop during the period when he served as a member of the Court of Oyer and Terminer for the Salem witchcraft trials. 50. John Winthrop Jr. to John Davenport, 17 February 1661, in MHSC, 4th ser., 8:183–184. 51. Copy of a letter found in Davenport’s possessions by an unknown author, dated 17 June 1662, in MHSC, 4th ser., 8:186–187. 52. Mr. Rutherford to John Davenport, 1 July 1662, in MHSC, 4th ser., 8:189–190. 53. See Sydney James, John Clarke and His Legacies: Religion and Law in Colonial Rhode Island, 1638–1750 (University Park, PA, 1999). 54. Trumbull, History of Connecticut, 251. 55. Declaration printed in Trumbull, History of Connecticut, 252. 56. John Davenport and others to the commissioners of Connecticut, 17 October 1662, Letters, 202–203. 57. ATR, 2:13. 58. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 22 June 1663, Letters, 216–219. 59. NHR, 2:467n. 60. NHR, 2:470. 61. Freemen of the New Haven Colony to the General Assembly of Connecticut, Letters, 204–207. 62. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 22 June 1663, in Letters, 217. 63. The information in this and the subsequent paragraph is contained in John Winthrop to John Mason, 4 March 1663, MHSC, 5th ser., 8:77–80. The negotiations are discussed in Robert C. Black, The Younger John Winthrop (New York, 1966), 236–238. 64. Quoted in Black, Younger John Winthrop, 238. 65. Committee of the New Haven Colony to Connecticut, 20 March 1663, Letters, 209–210. 66. NHR, 2:480–483. 67. Instructions quoted in NHR, 2:491n. 68. Connecticut Colony Records, 1:415. 69. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 22 June 1663, Letters, 216–219. 70. Calder, New Haven, 239–240.



Notes to Pages 299–308

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71. The General Court of the New Haven Colony to the General Assembly of Connecticut, 9 March 1664, Letters, 224–240. 72. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., endorsed 22 March 1664, Letters, 241–242. 73. Calder, New Haven, 240–241. 74. CSP Colonial, America & West Indies, 1661–1668, no. 370. 75. CSP Colonial, America & West Indies, 1661–1668, no. 711. 76. CSP Colonial, America & West Indies, 1661–1668, no. 715. 77. “The Diaries of John Hull,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society 3 (1857), 212 (hereafter, “Hull Diary”). 78. Black, Younger John Winthrop, 263–278. 79. Calder, New Haven, 249–253. 80. John Winthrop Jr. to Richard Nicolls, 15 July 1667, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 81. ATR, 213–214; 241–242; NHR, 2:141–142. 82. Thomas Browne to John Winthrop Jr., 10 March 1658, quoted in Calder, New Haven, 138. 83. Quoted in Calder, New Haven, 138–139. 84. NHR, 2:301. 85. See Edward Paul Rindler, “The Migration from the New Haven Colony to Newark, East New Jersey: A Study of Puritan Values and Behavior, 1630–1720” (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1977).

Chapter 19: The Fight Continues 1. Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton, NJ, 1969), 29, 32. 2. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 42. 3. John Cotton’s widow had married Richard Mather following her husband’s death, so Maria was also Increase Mather’s stepsister. 4. Eleazar Mather to John Davenport, 4 July 1662, Mather Papers, MHSC, 8:192. 5. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 48. 6. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 46–53. 7. [Increase Mather], “To the Reader,” Another Essay, n.p. 8. The manuscript of the “Vindication” and the “Third Essay” are in the Davenport manuscripts at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. 9. Davenport, “Vindication,” 16. 10. Quoted in Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York, 2003), 289. 11. John Davenport, preface to Increase Mathers’s Mystery of Israel’s Salvation (1669), i–iii. 12. Davenport, “Vindication,” 4–5. 13. [Increase Mather], “To the Reader,” in Davenport, Another Essay, n.p. The cover page of the treatise does not indicate who the author of the preface was, but a copy in England has Mather’s name written in a contemporary hand, and it would make sense for Mather, who helped ready the work for the press, to have added a preface. 14. Davenport, Another Essay, 4–5.

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Notes to Pages 308–315

15. Davenport, Another Essay, 44. 16. Davenport, “Third Essay,” 106, 107. 17. [Increase Mather], “To the Reader,” in Davenport, Another Essay, n.p. 18. Davenport, Another Essay, 11–12. 19. Davenport, “Third Essay,” 25. 20. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 60. 21. Davenport, Another Essay, 34. 22. John Davenport, “A Reply to the 7 Propositions Concluded by the Synod Sitting at Boston, June 10, 1662,” American Antiquarian Society, MSS folio vols. D, “John Davenport Papers.” 23. Davenport, Another Essay, 34–35. 24. John Davenport, Sermons Preached at New Haven, 1656–1658, Davenport Notebook, 72. 25. Davenport, Another Essay, 23. 26. [Increase Mather], “To the Reader,” in Davenport, Another Essay, n.p. 27. Congregational Communion, 229. 28. Hall, Increase Mather, 141. 29. Davenport PhD, 154. 30. Davenport, “Third Essay,” 156–158. 31. Davenport, Another Essay, 7. 32. Davenport, “Third Essay,” 156–158. 33. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 226. 34. For a discussion of this trend, see Paul R. Lucas, Valley of Discord: Church and Society along the Connecticut River, 1636–1725 (Hanover, NH, 1976). 35. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 76n1. 36. A detailed discussion of the debates is to be found in Pope, Half-Way Covenant. 37. Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 176. 38. Norton, quoted in Foster, Long Argument, 195–196. 39. Quoted in Foster, Long Argument, 202.

Chapter 20: Boston Divided 1. Richard D. Pierce, ed., Records of the First Church in Boston (Boston, 1961), 39:xviii. 2. Those members who remained in Charlestown found it difficult to attend services during the winter months, and in 1632 they were allowed to form their own church. 3. Increase Mather to John Davenport, 2 June 1662, in Mather Papers, MHSC, 4th ser., 8:189. 4. John Endecott and the General Court to John Owen, 20 October 1663, in The Correspondence of John Owen, ed. Peter Toon (Cambridge, U.K., 1970), 135–136. 5. “The Diaries of John Hull,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1857), 3:209–210. 6. Peter Toon, God’s Stateman: The Life and Work of John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI, 1971), 124. 7. “Hull Diary,” 221.



Notes to Pages 315–322

403

8. Boston Church Records, 62. 9. Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton, NJ, 1969), 20–21. 10. Boston Church Records, 55–56. 11. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 35–36, where Hull is quoted. 12. Pope, Half-Way Covenant, 36. 13. Wilson quoted in Nathaniel Morton, New England’s Memorial (Boston, 1669), 183–184. This dispute in the church is discussed in James F. Cooper Jr., Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts (New York, 1999), 98–101. 14. Walker, Creeds, 171–174. 15. Richard C. Simmons, “The Founding of the Third Church in Boston,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 26 (April 1969), 242n5. 16. E. Brooks Holifield, “On Toleration in Massachusetts,” Church History 38 ( June 1969), 191–192. 17. Holifield, “Toleration,” 192–194. 18. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., undated but between 10 December 1668 and 6 April 1669, Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Stephen Foster points to Davenport’s toleration of Baptists in The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 204. 19. “Hull Diary,” 199. 20. John Norton, Sion the Out Cast Healed of Her Wounds, 10–11, quoted in Simmon’s “Third Church,” 244n7. 21. Humphrey Davie to John Davenport, n.d., Mather Papers, MHSC, 4th ser., 8:204. 22. Joseph B. Felt, The Ecclesiastical History of New England (Boston, 1862), 2:421. 23. Boston Church Records, 1:62. 24. Penn to New Haven, 28 September 1667, printed in Hamilton Hill, The Early History of the Old South Church, Boston (Boston, 1891), 14–15. 25. Floyd M. Shumway, “Early New Haven and Its Leadership” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1968), 88. 26. Quoted in Atwater, New Haven, 527. 27. John Davenport to the First Church Boston, 8 October 1667, Letters, 269–270. 28. John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 4 August 1658, Letters, 126–127. 29. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 11 September 1665, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 30. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 12 September 1665, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 31. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 3 January 1668, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 32. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 22 January 1668, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 33. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 22 January 1668, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 34. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 12 December 1668, in Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 35. John Davenport, Answer of the Elders, 75. 36. Davenport, Reply to Paget, 109.

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Notes to Pages 322–332

37. Cooper, Tenacious of Their Liberties. 38. WJ, 404. 39. John Davenport to the First Church Boston, 8 October 1667, Letters, 269–270. 40. Letter of the dissenting brethren printed in Hill, South Church, 14. 41. Cooper, Tenacious of Their Liberties, 101. 42. John Davenport to the First Church Boston, 28 October 1667, Letters, 271–273. 43. John Davenport to the First Church Boston, 28 October 1667, Letters, 271–273. 44. Penn to New Haven, 28 September 1667, printed in Hill, South Church, 14–15. 45. “Reasons of Dissent,” in Hill, South Church, 16. 46. New Haven Church to the Boston church, 28 October 1667, printed in Hill, South Church, 19–20. 47. John Davenport to the First Church Boston, 28 October 1667, Letters, 271–273. 48. John Davenport to the First Church Boston, 28 October 1667, Letters, 271–273. 49. ATR, 2:218. 50. ATR, 2:230–235. 51. “Hull Diary,” 226–227. 52. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 23. 53. Notes of these sermons, by an unidentified note taker, are in a larger notebook by someone (perhaps a Harvard student) regularly in attendance at the church. Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 2356: First Church (Cambridge, MA) Sermon Papers, container 4. The notes on Davenport’s sermons on Psalms 90:12 are found on pp. 165–170 (May 7), 188–194 (May 21), and 216–222 ( June 4). I thank Winfried Hergst and Meredith Neuman for pointing me to this notebook. 54. Davenport’s sermons on Acts 16:24 are found in Harvard University, MS Am 2356: First Church (Cambridge, MA) Sermon Papers, container 4, pp. 281–288. 55. John Davenport to John Davenport Jr., 23 December 1660, Letters, 186–188. This is discussed by Rebecca Tannenbaum, The Healer’s Calling: Women and Medicine in Early New England (Ithaca, NY, 2002). 56. See Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1885), 2:xlii–xliii; Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston, 1873), 53–55. 57. Because Calder, Letters, reprints Davenport’s contributions to the controversy as she found them in Scottow’s account given by Hill, I have used Hill (Calder’s source) as mine. 58. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 23–24. 59. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 24. 60. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 25–26, which includes the advice of the council. 61. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 27–28. 62. Nicholas Street to First Church Boston, 25 August 1668, in Hill, South Church, 30–31. 63. Street to Boston elders, 28 August 1667, in Hill, South Church, 20. 64. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 31. 65. Nicholas Street to First Church Boston, 12 October 1668, in Hill, South Church, 34–36. 66. Nicholas Street to First Church Boston, 12 October 1668, in Hill, South Church, 36. 67. Boston Church Records, 62.



Notes to Pages 332–343

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68. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 36–37. 69. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 37. 70. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 37–38. 71. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 39–40. 72. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 41. 73. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 10 December 1668, Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. No one has previously cited the letters of John Davenport Jr. on these events. They are among the unpublished Winthrop Papers and offer a different perspective on the events. 74. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., undated but between 10 December 1668 and 6 April 1669, Winthrop Papers MSS. 75. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 46–47. 76. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 49. 77. Petition printed in Hill, South Church, 50–51. 78. Quoted in Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 54. 79. Petition printed in Hill, South Church, 51. 80. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 73–74. 81. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 52–53. 82. Letters by the dissenters and by Allin and Eliot in Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 53–55. 83. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 56–57. 84. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 16 April 1669, Winthrop Papers MSS. 85. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 58–62. 86. Stephen Foster states, “Throughout his career Richard was the foil of John Davenport.” The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 162. 87. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 16 April 1669, Winthrop Papers MSS. 88. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 63. 89. Findings of the council are in Hill, South Church, 63–67. 90. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 69. 91. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 75–76. 92. Statements published in Hill, South Church, 77, 79. 93. Statement of John Davenport, James Allen, and James Penn, Letters, 280–281. 94. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 80. John Davenport Jr. noted the meeting and the fact that Thatcher preached in a letter to John Winthrop Jr., 24 December 1669, Winthrop Papers MSS.

Chapter 21: The Last Struggle 1. Davenport, Election Sermon, 11, 15, 12, 13, 26. 2. The August letter is discussed and cited above. The June meeting of First Church, including Davenport’s statements, are from Scottow’s account in Hamilton Hill, The Early History of the Old South Church, Boston (Boston, 1891), 81. 3. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 81–82. 4. Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 83–84. 5. Letter in Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 85–87.

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Notes to Pages 343–349

6. Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather (Middletown, CT, 1988), 79–81. 7. Report of the seventeen ministers in Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 84–87. 8. Letter in Scottow’s account in Hill, South Church, 88–89. 9. The letter of the elders does not seem to have survived, but it was available to Thomas Hutchinson, who described it in this fashion when he wrote his The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay (1765), ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 237. 10. Boston Church Records, 1:63, 5–9, 63. 11. Letter from seven magistrates to the elders of Boston First Church, 17 September 1669, printed in Hill, South Church, 145. I have not been able to find a copy of Bourne’s letter or any other discussion of this incident. 12. Louise Breen discusses Bourne and his views on toleration in Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630–1692 (New York, 2001), 114–117. 13. The debate is discussed and a transcript published in William G. McLoughlin, Soul Liberty: The Baptists’ Struggle in New England, 1630–1833 (Hanover, NH, 1991), chap. 2. 14. For the English letter, see Francis J. Bremer, “When? Who? Why? Re-evaluating a 17th Century Source,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 99 (1987), 63–75. 15. Richard D. Pierce, ed., Records of the First Church in Boston (Boston, 1961), 1:64. 16. Michael Winship, “John Oxenbridge,” in ODNB. 17. Boston Church Records, 1:64. 18. Wilberforce Eames, in Early New England Catechisms: A Bibliographical Account of Some Catechisms Published before the Year 1800 for Use in New England (Worcester, MA, 1898), 98, indicated that while no copy survives, it was referred to in the appendix to a 1701 edition of the Cambridge Platform that read: “The Reverend Mr. John Davenport, in his Catechism, Printed Anno 1669 for the use of the first Church in Boston, of which he was then pastor, shows his concurrence with the Platform of Church Discipline in matters relating to Church Government.” 19. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 28 March 1670, Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 20. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 28 March 1670, Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 21. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 28 March 1670, Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 22. John Davenport Jr. to John Winthrop Jr., 28 March 1670, Winthrop Papers MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society. 23. William Jones to John Winthrop Jr., 4 April 1670, Winthrop Papers MSS. 24. John Winthrop Jr. to Richard Nicolls, 24 September 1670, Winthrop Papers MSS. 25. Massachusetts State Archives, Massachusetts Archives Collection, 10:287. 26. Massachusetts State Archives, Massachusetts Archives Collection, 10:286. 27. Quoted in Hutchinson, History, 232. 28. Quoted in Hutchinson, History, 233, where the list of signatories is given.



Notes to Pages 349–353

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29. Hutchinson, History, 234. 30. Leverett’s career and views are examined in Francis J. Bremer, First Founders: American Puritans and Puritans in the Atlantic World (Hanover, NH, 2012).

Epilogue 1. Mather, Magnalia, 325. 2. Samuel Hartlib to John Winthrop Jr., 16 March 1660, quoted in G. H. Turnbull, ed., “Some Correspondence of John Winthrop Jr. and Samuel Hartlib,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 72 (1957–60), 40, 41, 47. 3. Magnalia, 329. 4. Winthrop Papers, 2:295.

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Index

Italic page numbers indicate material in figures. anti-Arminian riots, 153 antinomianism, 67, 81, 152, 163 Anti-Synodalia Scripta Americana (Davenport), 307 anti-Trinitarianism, 150 antitypes, 173 Apocalypsis Apocalypseos (Brighton), 169 Apologetical Narration (Dissenting Brethren), 244 An Apologetical Reply . . . (Davenport), 136, 311 Apologists, 240 An Apology of the Churches in New England (Davenport), 160, 173, 189, 241 Appello Caesarem (Montagu), 64, 66 “Application of Redemption” (Davenport), 184–185 archbishop of Canterbury, 52, 58, 65 Archer, John, 96 Ark of the Covenant, 177, 179, 183 Armada, Spanish, 45, 90 Arminianism, 64, 66, 69, 84, 106, 268 Arminius, Jacobus, 113 Aspinall, William, 157 Astwood, John, 252 atheism, 217 Atkinson, Luke, 235 Atkinson, Theodore, 317 Atwater, Joshua, 159, 168, 210 Austin, Anne, 271–272

Abbott, George, 58, 65–66, 91, 105 Abbott, Maurice, 58, 75, 94 Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 184 Acts and Monuments of the Christian Religion (Foxe), 92 Adam, God’s image in, 149 Ainsworth, Henry, 113, 115 Airay, Henry, 34 Aldersey, Samuel, 94 Alexander, William, 207 Algonquian Indians/Quinnipiac tribe, 159, 167–168, 192, 214 Allen, James, 315, 319, 332, 336–337 Allerton, Isaac, 204 Allin, John, 307, 332, 344–345 Alsted, Johann Heinrich, 169, 173 America: as puritan refuge, 93–94, 168; and typology, 175–176 Ames, William, 92, 112, 130, 133, 135, 170 Amsterdam. See Netherlands Anabaptists, 268–269 Ancient Brethren, 113–115 Andreae, Johann Valentin, 173–174 Andrewes, Lancelot, 84 Andrews, William, 142 Anglo-Dutch War, first, 245–248 Animadversions upon the Anti-Synodalia Americana (Allin), 307 Another Essay for the Investigation of the Truth (Davenport), 306–308 An Answer of the Elders (Davenport), 160, 171, 241

Bachelor, Samuel, 116 Ball, Thomas, 70, 72

409

410

Index

Balmford, Samuel, 86, 118, 137–138, 374n27 Bancroft, Richard, 48 baptism of infants: administering to all infants, 77, 119, 188; Boston Synods on, 262–264, 305, 312; limiting to children of church members, 117, 124, 200, 263; limiting to children of observant Christians, 119, 122, 161, 188; morality of per se, 204, 221–222, 267–269, 273, 309; in place of circumcision, 222, 309; status of those baptized as children, 257, 261, 263, 308–310; use of cross in, 70–72 Baptists: Anabaptists, 268–269; General Baptists, 268; Massachusetts General Court crackdowns against, 268–269, 344–345; Particular Baptists, 267; rejection of educated ministry, 268; toleration for, 267, 269, 309, 317–318 Barkely, Thomas, 131 Barnaby, Winifred, 12 Barnardiston, Nathaniel, 239 Barnardiston, Thomas, 94 Barrington, Joan, 242 Barrington, Thomas, 239 Bassett, Robert, 234 battler, Davenport’s Oxford status as, 27–28 Baxter, Richard, 292 Bay Colony. See Massachusetts Bay Company/ Colony Baynes, Paul, 25 Beacon Hill, 154 Bede, the Venerable, 35, 177 Beguinage, 114–115, 127–129 Belgic Confession of Faith, 115 Bell, Bamfield, 234 Bellingham, Richard, 271, 329, 338 Ben Israel, Menasseh, 111–112, 170 Benn, William, 94 Bernard, Richard, 25 bestiality, 217–219 Beza, Theodore, 41–42 Biblia Polygotta (ed. Montano), 179 Bishop, Henry, 235 bishops, 24, 52, 66–67, 71–72, 84, 102. See also Laud, William Bishops’ Wars, 237 blasphemy, 228, 271 Blinman, Richard, 242 Block, Adrian, 167 Block Island, 147 Bodley, Thomas, 27 Bohemian Revolt, 83–84, 170 Book of Common Prayer: liturgy of, 33; sacramental rites per, 56; Three Articles and, 48

“Book of Discipline,” 10 Boreel, Adam, 180 Boston: Anne Hutchinson church trial, 162–165, 188, 254, 349; Anne Hutchinson civil trial, 157–158, 349; challenge to John Cotton’s teachings, 150–152, 156–157, 166; Davenport’s 1637 arrival, 154; Davenport’s 1668 return, 326–327; General Court actions, 151–158; John Winthrop’s leadership, 145–148, 153, 155–157, 314; layout of town, 154–155, 326–327; population of, 149, 154–155, 326; Synod of 1657, 262–264, 305; Synod of 1662, 305, 312, 334–335, 348–350. See also Davenport, John—in Boston (1637) Boswell, William, 55; ambassador to Netherlands, 104, 116; attempts to discredit Davenport, 119–121, 123; campaign to enforce conformity, 115–116; correspondence with Paget, 135; Davenport meeting with and follow-up letter, 125–126, 129; report on Rotterdam covenant, 133 Bourne, Nehemiah, 344–345 Bowes, Anne, 36–37 Bowes, Isabel, 24–25, 37, 68 Bowes, Radalph, 48 Boyle, Robert, 293 Boynton, Matthew, 139–140 Bradford, Daniel, 140–141 Bradford, John, 82 Bradford, William, 187, 304 Bradstreet, Anne, 50 Bradstreet, Simon, 319 A Brand Taken Out of the Fire . . . (Cooper), 20–21 Branford, 207, 303 Breda Declaration, 281 Breedon, Thomas, 284, 327 Brent, Nathaniel, 142 Brereton, William, 110–111, 119, 130–131, 293 Brewster, Lucy, 225–228 Brewster, Nathaniel, 204, 242 Bridge, William, 140, 143, 171, 239–240, 277–278 A Brief Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer (Hooker), 241 A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles (Cotton), 171 Bright, Francis, 82, 95 Brightman, Thomas, 169, 174 Brill, Netherlands, 112 Bromfield, William, 215 Brooke, Lord, 238



Index

Browne, John, 236 Browne, Robert, 113 Browne, Thomas, 302 Browning, Henry, 142 Brownism/John Browne, 57 Bucer, Martin, 308 Buckingham, Duke of, 68, 88 Bulkeley, Peter, 163, 305 Burden, Anne, 272 Burroughes, Jeremiah, 171, 239–240, 267 Burton, Henry, 106 Calamy, Edmund, 240 Calandrini, Cesar, 86–87 Calvinism, 41; in Church of England under George Abbott, 65–66; George Walker/Anthony Wotton dispute over, 66–67; in New Haven statement of beliefs, 184; predestination doctrine, 41, 45, 84, 120, 184 Cambridge Platform, 278, 316 Canticles, 169, 171 Carr, Robert, 300 Carte, George, 48 Carter, William, 240 Cartwright, George, 300 Cartwright, Thomas, 92, 112, 160 Caryl, Joseph, 240, 277–278 Castellion, Sebastien, 178 Catholicism, 20–22, 148 Cavalier Parliament, 282 Cawdrey, Robert, 24–25 celibacy, 49 Charles I: ascends to throne, 83; crackdown on lecturers, 96; execution of, 243, 248, 282; and Ireland, 93; March 1628 parliamentary assembly, 88; pro-Catholic tendencies, 84; war with Parliament, 237–239, 243 Charles II: Connecticut recognizes, 290; halting of Quaker executions, 276; Massachusetts recognizes, 289; New Haven recognizes, 290; pardon promised, 282; returns to England, 281 Charlestown, Massachusetts, 95 Chauncey, Charles, 278, 305 Cheever, Ezekiel, 183, 203, 228–233, 259, 388n47 Chilbald, William, 74 Child, Robert, 256 “Christian Charity” sermon (Winthrop), 140 Christianopolis (Andreae), 173–174 The Christian’s Daily Walk (Scudder), 82, 91 church membership: and authority of elders, 335; Congregationalism vs. Presbyterianism on, 254–257; in Connecticut, 298; Daven-

411

port on, 308; in English Church of Amsterdam, 121; General Court on, 257; of godly immigrants, 256; and Half-Way Covenant, 189, 263–264, 267, 305–313, 327; Hartford Church controversy, 258–262, 264–267; meaning of Matthew 16:19, 254; parish vs. gathered models, 256; Presbyterian open membership, 254–255, 311; requiring baptism only, 259, 263; requiring “meet trial” for fitness, 131, 189; requiring professions of faith, 183, 185, 187, 191, 308; requiring testimony of other members, 182–183, 188; Synod on, 305; for those recognized as elect/godly, 187, 254, 325; and validity of Church of England, 256; and voting, 313. See also baptism of infants circumcision and baptism, 222, 309 civil society, origins of, 89 Clarendon, Earl of, 299–300 Clark, James, 142 Clark, Thomas, 317 Clarke, Hester, 236 Clarke, James, 217 Clarke, John, 294, 344 Clarke, Samuel, 60 classis of Amsterdam on English Church pastorship: authority of classis, 113, 115, 116; negotiations with John Davenport, 120, 123–129, 135, 188, 311; rejection of Thomas Hooker, 117–118; rejection of Thomas Weld, 118 clergy: and inerrancy, 312; preaching ministry, 9, 22, 24, 44, 65, 346; puritans and educated, 63, 268, 313; Quaker rejection of professional clergy, 270–271; as voice/ instruments of God, 43–44, 352 clerical conferences, 148–149 Cobbet, Thomas, 266, 268–269 Coggeshall, John, 151, 157 Comenius, Jan Amos, 90–91, 174, 202–204, 279, 308 comets, 286 commandments, 102, 372n4 Commission of Foreign Plantations, 144 Committee for Plantations, 299–300 Como, David, 370n21 companionate marriage, 49–50 Confession of Faith, 257 conformity: Balmford and, 137; Davenport and authority of classis, 129; Davenport at St. Lawrence, 56; Davenport on persuading father and uncle, 22–23; Davenport transition regarding, 69–70, 100–108, 162, 353; Francis Bright and, 95;

412

Index

conformity (continued) George Abbott and, 65–66; James I and, 66; John King and, 66; in London, 52; for sake of unity, 2, 25; Smith/Leighton challenge to Davenport on, 68–70, 95, 97, 100; testimony on Davenport’s, 62; William Laud and, 96–97, 115–116, 138–139, 144. See also baptism of infants; kneeling for sacrament congregational authority/Congregationalism, 106–107, 110, 115, 117, 313 Connecticut: acknowledging Charles II, 290; founding of, 139–143; General Court on Hartford church dispute, 260–267; hostilities with Dutch, 246–248; incorporation of New Haven, 291–301, 313; Southampton accepting jurisdiction of, 207 consociationalism, 306–307, 310–311, 335–337, 349, 353 Convention Parliament, 281 conversion narratives, 185–186, 259 Conway, Sir Edward, 24, 59–63, 93 Cooke, Richard, 319 Cooper, Thomas, 20–22, 25, 69 Copeland, Patrick, 57 A Cordial of Comfort (Chibald), 74 Cotton, John: and Anne Hutchinson trial, 164–165; A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles, 171; church covenant of, 133; on Cromwell’s Caribbean interests, 252; and Davenport, 102, 145, 155–156, 232, 325, 351; death of, 304, 314, 329, 347; decision not to move to New Haven, 166; decision to leave England, 93, 101–102; defender of infant baptism, 269; extolling New England, 141, 168; at First Church of Boston, 314; on Free Grace controversy, 307; Hartlib on, 91; Long Parliament request for return of, 238–239; millenarian views of, 169, 171–173; no conversion narrative for, 186; sermons of, 148; Shepard’s challenge to teachings of, 150–152; supporting self-governing churches, 133, 139; and synod on errors, 156–157; on understanding of faith, 186; on West Indies as Euphrates, 252 Covenant, Ark of the, 177, 179, 183 covenant, New Haven’s plantation, 175, 181, 211 covenant-based congregations: Davenport and, 161–162, 324, 342; New Haven, 161–162, 175, 183, 185, 263; Rotterdam, 131–135, 141; Second Church of Boston, 249. See also church membership covenant of works, 150–152, 184

Coventry, England, 18; daily life in, 13–15; the Davenport family in, 11–12, 15–17, 22–23; map by John Speed, 12; plague outbreaks in, 17; political world of, 15–17; puritan community in, 21–25; school and church in, 17–24; the town and its history, 5–11 Craddock, Matthew, 95 Crane, Jasper, 142 Crane, Robert, 94 Crashawe, William, 74 Crisp, James, 118, 120 Cromwell, Oliver: conflict with Netherlands and New Netherland, 245–248; and Congregationalists, 244, 277; death of, 279; on discerning “root of the matter” in people, 187; emigration plans of, 140; forming of state church, 277; Irish Rebellion, 249; recruiting New Haven resettlement, 252; rule of, 242–244; Savoy meeting and declaration, 277–278; Whalley family connection to, 49 Cromwell, Richard, 280–281 cross: and baptism ceremony, 71–72; of St. George, 148 Cullick, John, 260, 302 Danforth, Samuel, 266 Daniel, Book of, 169 Darrell, John, 25 Davenport, Barnabas (brother of JD), 26 Davenport, Christopher (brother of JD), 23 Davenport, Christopher (Father Sancta Clara, nephew of JD), 26, 31, 33, 107–108, 283 Davenport, Christopher (uncle of JD), 11; complying with kneeling order, 22–23; financial support of JD, 12, 28; mayor of Coventry, 11, 16; portrait mistakenly identified as, 23 Davenport, Edward, 11 Davenport, Elizabeth (née Whaller/Whalley), 48–49, 110, 195, 282, 320 Davenport, Henry (father of JD), 11–13, 16, 22–23, 360n35 Davenport, John —early life: birth and baptism, 5, 11–12; relations with father, siblings, 12, 19–21, 46; early religious education, 19–21, 46; knowledge of Latin, 19–21, 46; at Oxford University, 26–35, 32, 62–65; at Hilton Castle, 35–42, 39, 56; ordination, 35, 43, 48, 56; marriage to Elizabeth, 48, 49–50 —in london: suspension for unlicensed lecturing, 53; curate and lecturer at St. Michael, 53–54; lecturer at St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate, 54–55; curate at St. Lawrence



Index

Jewry, 55–57; teaching at St. Martin in the Fields, 43–45, 54; dispute over St. Stephen’s rectorship, 57–63; as rector of St. Stephen’s, 64–72, 76; return to Oxford, disputation, 64–65; awarded bachelor of divinity degree, 65; London plague, 72–75; fundraising for refugees of Thirty Years’ War, 86; organizing Feofees for Impropriations, 85–86; raising relief funds, 86–87, 91; “dangerous sickness” of, 87; founding of Massachusetts Bay Company, 94–96, 100; High Commission reprimand, 87, 89; member of Virginia Company, 55, 56–57, 94; signing of Instrumentum Theologorum Anglorum, 91; accusations against regarding sacraments, 97–98, 101, 104–105; Heylyn’s charges, 98–99; feofee dissolved by Exchequer, 99; Ockley conference, 100–103; trip to Bath, 103, 187; charges by Court of High Commission, 106, 120; meeting with vestry, resignation, 106–107, 322, 343–344 —in netherlands: on decision to leave England, 102–103, 106–107; escape to Netherlands, 109; contact with millenarians, 170–171; assisting at English Church, 118– 120; Elizabeth arriving in Amsterdam, 121; dispute over baptism, 121–123; attempts to discredit, 119–120, 123; negotiations over copastorship, 124–127; withdrawing name from consideration, 127; attempts to suppress A Just Complaint tract, 128; move to Rotterdam, 128–129; exchange of tracts with Paget, 128, 135–136, 162; copastorship with Hugh Peter, 130, 188–189; stay at The Hague, 136–138; serious illness, 136, 138, 250; preaching to Queen Elizabeth, 137; returning to Rotterdam, 138; ordered to conform to Church of England, 138–139; decision to emigrate, 141–142; Amsterdam Church and, 118–128 —in boston (1637): voyage to Boston, 144–145; arrival, 154–156, 380n31; appealing for unity, 155–158; offers of land, 158; answering English criticisms, 160–162; participating in Hutchinson church trial, 162–165 —in new haven: arrival, 166–168, 194; organization of church and government, 181–185; ordained as pastor, 191; as acting ruling elder, 201; typical worship service, 199–201; and Anne Eaton excommunication, 221–225, 233; Cheever case, 232–233; accusations of favoritism toward, 234–235; servants charged with fornication, 236; and

413

requests to return to England, 238–239, 322; inviting Hooke to co-pastor, 239; declining Second Church of Boston offer, 249, 319, 323; flare-up of illness, 249–252; considering return to England, 250–251, 323; declining Ireland offer, 249, 319, 323; plans for college, 301–302; statements regarding Hartford controversy, 265–266; and Norton court proceedings, 273–274; on news from England, 281–282; harboring of fugitives Whalley and Goffe, 282–284, 286–290, 288; correspondence with Winthrop Jr., 295; correspondence with Eleazar Mather, 306; further illness, 320. See also New Haven Colony —at first church of boston: invitation to pastorate, 313; resistance from New Haven Church, 321–326; visit to Boston, 325–330; blaming Satan for dissenters, 330; admission as church member, 332; ordination over objection of dissenters, 333; charges of editing/forging of letters, 342–345; beginning of ministry, 346–347; final illness and death, 347–348; library of, 194; epilogue, 351 —publications, sermons, and doctrinal statements: on Acts 24:16, 104–105, 327–328; on Adam and original sin, 184; Another Essay for the Investigation of the Truth, 306–308; An Answer of the Elders, 241; An Answer of the Elders, 160, 171; anti-Catholic rhetoric, 43–45, 80; on antinomianism, 81; Anti-Synodalia Scripta Americana, 307; An Apologetical Reply . . ., 136, 311; An Apology of the Churches in New England, 160, 173, 189, 241; “Application of Redemption,” 184–185; on asking permission to resign (Col. 4:17), 106, 321–322; on assurance of salvation ( Job 19:25), 80; on authority of bishops and synods, 71, 136, 262, 310–311, 335, 341; on authority of laity, 72; on baptism, 77, 80, 119, 121–122; on bells in worship, 71, 76; on bodily resurrection, 163–164; on church covenant, 161–162; on churchly admonition (Matt. 18), 164; on church membership, 308; on church unity, 156, 157, 278–279; on conformity, 22–23, 162; on congregational authority, 254–255, 276, 307, 321–322; on Congregational principles, 352; on conscience (Acts 24:16), 104–105, 327–328; on consociationalism, 307, 310–311, 335; on criticism of his sermons, 89; Discourse About Civil Government . . ., 172–175,

414 —publications (continued) 299, 319; disputation at Oxford, 64–65; on efficacy of Christ’s blood (1 John 1:7), 81; on ejaculatory prayer, 198–199; on the elect, 187; on English Church and Catholic Church, 162; An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, 286; on evidences as treasure, 188; on excommunication of Hutchinson, 165; on godly rulers (Deut. 1:13, 17:15, Exod. 18:21, 1 Cor. 6:1–7), 182, 191, 385n2; on “great alterations,” 313; on Half-Way Covenant, 189, 263, 307–310; on his calling, 44; on ideal church (Rev. 21:15), 176; on immortality of the soul, 163; on infant baptism, 269; on inspiration of Scriptures, 168–169; on John Cotton, 325; The Knowledge of Christ, 172; letter to Boston Church (Zech. 8:19), 325–326; on limiting baptism, 124–125, 161, 188; millenarian views of, 169–174, 241, 245, 281; on ministers as God’s instruments, 352; on mortification and humiliation (1 Tim. 1:9), 79; on the nature of the church, 185; on New Haven, 174–180, 192, 322, 324–325; on Platform of Church Discipline, 258; The Power of Congregational Churches, 241, 256, 349; on the preaching ministry, 346–347; on predestination, 42; prefatory letter to Scudder sermon, 82; on pride and humility, 78; The Profession of the Faith, 183–185, 190, 241; Protestation Made and Published, 135–136; on Ps. 90:12, 327–328; on puritanism charges, 61–63; on Quaker martyrdom, 275–276; on restricted membership, 255, 258; on right confession (1 John 1), 79; on Separatism, 132–133; sermon delivery style of, 56; sermon for peace (Rom. 14:9), 127–128; sermon of Aug. 1637 for unity (1 Cor. 1:10), 156; sermon of Jan. 17, 1669, 334; sermon of June 1628 on Protestant cause, 87–88; sermon of June 1629 on war and military service, 89–90; sermon of Sept. 1637 on unity (Phil. 3:16), 157; sermon on arrival at New Haven (Matt. 4:1), 175; sermon on Election Day 1669, 339–342, 340, 349; sermon on “God’s Call to His People,” 346; sermon on Half-Way Covenant (Luke 13:7–9), 263–264; sermon on Restoration (Isa. 16:3–4), 284–286; sermon on separating from evil (2 Cor. 6), 140–141; sermon on separatism, 100–101; sermon on Thirty Years’ War, 90; sermons at Cambridge, 327–328; sermons at Hilton, 43–48, 56; sermons at St. Botolph’s, 54; ser-

Index mons in London, 53–57, 78–81; sermons on English civil war, 241; sermons on salvation, 79–80; on set liturgy, 160–161; on sin, 46; on Solomon building temple, 176; swearing in Eaton as magistrate (Deut. 1:16–17), 191; on synods, 71, 136, 262, 310–311, 335, 341; on temple as type of Christ, 177; on true faith, 186–189; on wearing of surplice, 70; on who should receive Lord’s Supper, 46–47, 76–77 Davenport, John Jr. ( JD son), 328–329; 1660 illness, 328–329; under care of Mary Vere, 142, 192, 198; correspondence with Davie, 318; description of father’s ordination, 333; edited letter to Boston Church, 332, 342; at father’s deathbed, 347; on his parents’ health, 320; marriage to Abigail Pierson, 303, 328–329; in New England, 198 Davenport, Margaret, 11 Davenport, Winifred (née Barnaby), 12 Davie, Humphrey, 318–319 Davis, John, 215 Davis, Nicholas, 275 Davis, William, 329 Decker, Bernhard, 87 Declaration of Faith and Order (Savoy Declaration), 277–278 Dedham church, 315, 332, 336–337, 344–345 Defoe, Daniel, 73–74 Delaware Company, 209–210, 235, 246, 248, 292 Dennison, Stephen, 67 Dent, Arthur, 42–43 Denton, Richard, 207, 242 Desborough, Samuel, 206, 242, 247 The Destruction of Jerusalem (play), 15 Deus, Natura, Gratia (Christopher Davenport), 108 Digby, Kenelm, 293 Digitus Dei (Peter), 170 “Directions to Preachers” ( James I), 79, 84 Discourse About Civil Government . . . (Davenport), 172–175, 299, 319 Dissenting Brethren, 240, 244, 306 Dixon, Jeremy, 142 Dod, John, 25 Domestical Duties (Gouge), 50 Donne, John, 57 Doolittle, Sarah, 216, 236 Dorchester, Massachusetts, 135, 305, 312, 315, 330, 332 Dorchester Adventurers, 93–94, 134 double predestination, 41 Downing, Emmanuel, 269



Index

drinking and drunkenness, 215 Dudley, Thomas, 153, 304, 314 Duggard, Thomas, 81 Dunster, Henry, 204, 268 Dury, John: Davenport praise for, 279; declining Massachusetts Bay pastorship, 95; The Earnest Breathings of Foreign Protestants, 278; millenarian and utopian thought of, 169–170, 173; promotion of Christian unity, 90–91, 101, 278; on Templo, 180; working for readmission of Jews to England, 111 Dutch Reformed Church, 113–114 Dyer, Mary, 149, 155, 272, 275–276 Dyer, William, 149, 155 Earl of Warwick, 139, 210, 238 The Earnest Breathings of Foreign Protestants (Dury), 278 “eating/digesting” the message, 202 Eaton, Anne, 220–221, 226, 249, 256, 269, 279 Eaton, Richard, 20 Eaton, Samuel, 20, 142, 191, 242, 271 Eaton, Theophilus, 75–76, 142; acquiring land for Southampton, 207; arrival in Boston, 154; conflict with New Netherland, 246–248; daily life of, 193–194, 198; on Davenport’s health, 250–251, 323; death of, 279, 304; on discontent within colony, 234; elected governor of New Haven colony, 208; English departure approved, 144; exploratory trip to Quinnipiac, 159; meeting on colonial confederation, 207–208; meeting on Jamaica relocation, 252–253; member of Council for New England, 94; and New Haven church formation, 182–183; and New Haven College, 204, 302; as New Haven magistrate, 191; rumors of leaving New Haven, 249; on women’s testimony, 216 Eaton Socon, 48–49 Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede), 35 Edward VI, 8 elect: Christ as redeemer only of, 41–42; Davenport on, 187; identifying the, 80, 121, 150, 165, 184–187 Election Day sermons, 339–342, 340, 346, 349 Eliot, John, 163, 333, 336 Elizabeth I, 8 Elizabeth Stuart (Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia), 17, 59; donations to Coventry, 19; living at The Hague, 86, 118; married

415

to Frederick of the Palatinate, 86; need for guard at Coventry, 20–21; refusal to endorse Lambeth Articles, 93; relationship with Archbishop Laud, 137 Elsey, Nicholas, 142 Endecott, John: aiding fugitives Whalley and Goffe, 284, 287; County Court action against Witter, 268; and Dorchester Company, 94–96; on the elect, 187; jailing of Quakers, 271–272, 274; in Pequot War, 147 English Church abolished, 238 English Church in Amsterdam: and Ancient Brethren, 115; Balmford’s call blocked, 118; Davenport’s call blocked, 119–128, 136, 283; founding of, 114, 114; Hooker’s call blocked, 101, 117–118; Weld’s call blocked, 118 English Church in Rotterdam, 130–132, 138 English Church in The Hague, 137 English Company of Merchant Adventurers, 90 English Congregational Synod, 115 epidemics: among Native Americans, 147; plague, 46, 72–75; as signs from God, 286 An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (Davenport), 286 Etherington, John, 67 Everill, James, 334 An Exposition of the Principles of Religion (Hooker), 241 An Exquisite Commentary upon the Revelation of Saint John (Forbes), 171 Ezekiel’s vision of temple, 176–177 Fairfax, Thomas, 243 Familism, 67, 163–164 family as little commonwealth, 50 Family of Love/familism, 150 Fancy, William, 227 Fenn, Benjamin, 290 Fenn, Humphrey, 9–10, 19–20, 25 Fenwick, George, 140, 205, 207, 242, 399n41 Feoffees for Impropriations, 85–86, 98–99, 100, 103 Fernel, Jean, 250–251 Field, John, 52 Fiennes, William: and Connecticut, 139, 143, 146; decision not to emigrate, 158; and “Nineteen Propositions,” 238; in Parliament, 210; surviving Restoration purge, 282 Finch, Abraham, 214 First Church of Boston: choice of Oxen­ bridge as assistant pastor, 345; church councils, 330, 332–338, 343–344;

416

Index

First Church of Boston (continued) Davenport’s service at, 346–347; death of John Wilson, 315; disputes over Half-Way Covenant, 315–316; disputes over reconciliation with crown, 318–319; disputes over toleration, 317–318, 344–345; dissent to Davenport call, 324–327, 329–330, 337; founding of, 314; and John Cotton, 314; John Norton pastorship, 314, 316–317; support of Baptist Nehemiah Bourne, 344–345; votes on dissenters, 330–311, 335 Fisher, Mary, 271–272 Fitch, James Flushing, Netherlands, 112 Forbes, John: death of, 130; English Congregational School, 115; and Merchant Adventurers Church, 112, 126–127, 130, 138; reorganization of Rotterdam congregation, 132; support of Davenport, 117–118, 126–127; visit to Sweden, 170 Forbes, Patrick, 171 Forced Loan of 1627, 88–89 fornication, 216 Forrett, James, 207 Fort Hill, 154 Foster, Stephen, 135 Fox, George, 270, 272 Foxcroft, George, 94 Foxe, John, 92, 162 Foxley, Thomas, 85 Franckland, Thomas, 215 Fugill, Thomas, 191, 207, 226–227 Galway, Ireland, 252 Gardiner, Lion, 140, 147 Gataker, Thomas, 66–67, 106 gathered membership style, 256 General Baptists, 268 German, Samuel, 58 German Reformation, 153 Germany, God’s vengeance on, 176 Gilbert, Matthew, 191, 287 Glover, Henry, 201, 234 Godiva, Lady, 7–8, 22 A Godly and Fruitful Sermon Against Idolatry (White), 48 godparents, 200 Goffe, Stephen, 115–116; attempts to discredit Davenport, 104, 120, 123, 125–126; on Hugh Peter, 131 Goffe, William, 116; at army debates at Putney, 283; and Cromwell, 242–243; fleeing king’s officers, 286–290, 288; and Nehemiah Bourne, 345

Goodman, Godfrey, 108 Good News from Holland (Peter), 170 Goodwin, Christopher, 269 Goodwin, John, 373n19 Goodwin, Thomas: correspondence with Davenport, 70; infant baptism debate, 267; millenarianism of, 170–171; at Ockley meeting, 101–102; preaching at opening of Parliament, 280; return to England, 239–240; and Savoy Declaration, 277–278; signing Instrumentum Theologorum Anglorum, 91; surviving Restoration purge, 282; on work of conversion, 185–186, 188–191; Zeruubbabels Encouragement to Finish the Temple, 176–177 Goodwin, William, 259, 302 Goodyear, Stephen, 209, 291 Gookin, Daniel, 283 Gosson, Stephen, 54 Gouge, William, 50, 66–67, 85–86, 91, 96 Great Ship, 210–211, 235, 240–241, 245, 256 Greenhill, William, 240, 277–278 Gregson, Thomas, 195, 207, 210, 245 Grubb, Thomas, 317 Guilford, 206–208, 298 Gunpowder Plot, 20, 45 Gurdon, Brampton, 91 Gustavus Adolphus, 170 The Hague, 17, 136–138 Half-Way Covenant: in alignment with Baptist toleration, 345–346, 349; Davenport on, 189, 263–264, 307–310; disagreements among clergy over, 311–313; First Church Boston, 315–318, 327, 330, 332; synod on, 305–306 Hall, Francis, 142 Hall, Job, 227 Hampden, John, 139 Hampton Court Conference, 83 Harland, Robert, 53 Harley, Robert, 24, 81 Harrison, Thomas, 282 Hartford Church, 258–262, 264–267 Hartlib, Samuel: Davenport and, 173, 194, 244, 279, 351; and international Protestantism, 87, 90–91; philo-Semitism of, 111; as promoter of Comenius, 91, 174, 202–204; Winthrop and, 292–293 Harvard College, 203–204 Harwood, Edward hat service, 270 Haughton, Richard, 394n50 Haynes, Hezekiah, 242



Index

Haynes, John, 240, 304 hazing at Oxford, 30 The Heart of New England Rent (Norton), 317 Hector (ship), 144–145, 379n3 Helwys, Thomas, 25 Henrietta Maria, 84, 107 Henry VIII, 6, 8, 26, 35 Heselrige, Arthur, 140 Heylyn, Peter, 28, 98–99 Heylyn, Rowland, 85, 99 Hibbins, William, 241 Hicks, John, 47–48 Higginson, Francis, 95–96, 242 Higginson, John, 206, 261 High Commission: and Davenport, 87–89, 96, 106, 125, 187; and John Cotton, 101; requiring of ex officio oaths, 213; and Samuel Balmford, 137; and Thomas Hooker, 117 Hildersham, Arthur, 25 Hill, Robert, 142 Hilton, Anne Bowes, 36–37 Hilton Castle, 39; attitude toward Reformation, 35–37; congregation at, 40–41; the estate, 38–40; Hilton family, 35–38; religious strife after Davenport’s departure, 47–48 Hingham, Massachusetts, 255–256 Hispaniola, 252 Hogg, Thomas, 218 Holliman, Ezekiel, 267 holy days, observation of, 115 Holyoake, Francis, 21–22 Holy Spirit, doctrine regarding, 150–152 homosexuality, 217 Hood, Timothy, 82, 97–98 Hooke, Jane Whalley, 49, 242–243, 282–283 Hooke, William: Cheever trial, 231–232; on Cromwell’s death, 280; letters to Cromwell, 247; meetings over Connecticut annexation, 296, 298; move to New Haven, 238; New England’s Tears for Old England’s Fears, 237–238; possible family connection with Davenport, 49; return to England, 248–249; Savoy Declaration, 278; support for Long Parliament, 237–238; views on millennial themes, 172, 202 Hooker, Thomas: assisting in New Haven ordination, 191; death of, 258, 304; escape to Amsterdam, 117; refusal to subscribe to Three Articles, 101–102, 129; requested to return to England, 238–241; on “saving knowledge,” 188; A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, 240–241, 256 Hopkins, Ann Yale, 220–221 Hopkins, Edward, 142, 154, 301–302, 304

417

Hopkins Trust, 326 Hubbard, William, 186 Hughes, Lewis, 106 Hull, John: on Davenport’s arrival in Boston, 326; on First Church and Half-Way Covenant, 316; meeting with Davenport, 329; on mustering against Dutch, 300; and Quakers, 271–272, 275, 317; supporting of John Owen, 315 “Humble Petition,” 140 Humfrey, John, 91, 94, 139 Humfrey, Laurence, 28 Hutchinson, Anne: beliefs of, 149–152, 155; church trial of, 162–165, 188, 254, 349; civil trial of, 157–158, 349; excommunication of, 165; as precursor to Quakers, 271; Presbyterian drift in response to, 255 Hutchinson, Edward, 164, 315–317, 336, 345 hypocrisy, Davenport on, 104–105 hypothetical universalism, 45 illness, Davenport’s: “dangerous sickness” in London, 87; final illness and death, 347–348; in Netherlands, 136, 138, 250; in New Haven, 249–252, 320 “illustrious providences,” 286 impotence, 251–252 Indian Hill, 168 Indians: alliance with Dutch, 246–248; as lost tribes of Israel, 111; Manunkatuck tribe, 206; Mattabesek tribe, 192; Mohawk tribe, 147; Mohegan tribe, 146, 196; name for Davenport, 351; Narragansett tribe, 146, 196, 246–248; Pequot tribe, 146–147, 153, 159, 196, 214; Quinnipiac tribe, 159, 167–168, 192, 214 inner light, Quakerism and, 270–271 Instrumentum Theologorum Anglorum, 91 international Protestantism, 2, 82, 90–91, 308 Ireland: as emigration option, 93, 252; Irish Rebellion, 249; war orphans to New England, 242 Israel: Indians as lost tribes of, 111; and Middle Advent, 169; as type for millennial church, 172–180, 346 Ives, William, 142 Jacob, Henry, 68, 100, 112, 133, 135 Jamaica, 252–253 James, Thomas, 242 James, William, 38 James I: accession, 16–17; “Directions to Preachers,” 79, 84; and Ireland, 93; rejection of puritan reforms, 25, 59, 83–84

418 Jessey, Henry, 139, 140, 169–170, 267 Jewish population in Netherlands, 111–112, 170, 180 Johnson, Francis, 112–113 Johnson, Isaac, 314 Jones, John, 282 Jones, William, 284, 347 Jordan, Thomas, 247 Judges’ Cave, 287, 288 A Just Complaint Against an Unjust Doer (Best et al.), 128, 129, 135–136 Keayne, Robert, 78, 81, 155, 327 Kellond, Thomas, 284, 286–287, 290, 292 The Keys of the Kingdom (Cotton), 240 Kiffin, William, 73, 81, 267 King, John (bishop of London), 66–67 King James Bible, 30 Kirby, Francis, 106 Kirk, Thomas, 284, 286–287, 290, 292 kneeling for sacrament: Davenport on kneeling for sacrament, 22–23, 56, 65, 125–126; Davenport’s evolving views on, 70–71, 77; Hood challenge to Davenport over, 97–98; Leighton challenge to Davenport over, 68–69; Richard Sibbes on kneeling for sacrament, 67 Knightley, Richard, 91 The Knowledge of Christ (Davenport), 172 Knowles, John, 277–278 Lambert, Richard, 214 Lamberton, George, 207, 209–210 Lambeth Articles, 93 Lane, Samuel, 29 Langdon, Thomas, 234 Lathrop, John, 100, 133 Latin, Davenport’s knowledge of, 19, 30 Laud, William: crackdown on lecturers, 96–97; as crypto-Catholic, 65; on Davenport as dangerous, 107; Davenport concerns regarding, 94, 125; driving puritans abroad, 92; encouragement of Heylyn’s charges against Davenport, 98–99; enforcing conformity on congregations in Netherlands, 115–116; hearing Hood’s complaints against Davenport, 97; and High Commission charges against Davenport, 87–89, 96, 106, 187; impeachment of, 107, 108, 238; increasing influence at court, 101; indirect contacts with Davenport, 105–106; “terrifying menaces” against Davenport, 128 Lawrence, Henry, 140 lay authority, 110, 255

Index Lea, Robert, 195 Leach, Miriam, 225–227 Ledra, George, 276 Leete, William, 206, 247, 287, 291–295 Leighton, Alexander, 68–70, 97, 100 Leon (Templo), Jacob Judah, 111–112, 178, 180 Lever, Thomas, 9, 10 Leverett, John: blocking Increase Mather’s initiatives, 350; erecting of South Battery, 327; letter to Dedham church, 344; meeting with dissenters, 334; New Netherland conflict, 246–248; rejection of Third Church founding, 338; toleration for Baptists, 318 Leverett, Thomas, 151 Leveridge, William, 302 Lilburne, George, 47 London, 51–53. See also Davenport, John—in London London Artillery Company sermon, 89 London Separatists, 100–101 London Trained Bands, 89 Long Parliament, 237–238, 244, 281 Lord’s Supper: Davenport accused of administering to nonmembers, 97; Davenport on who should receive, 46–47, 76–77; Davenport’s nonparticipation in, 101, 104–105. See also kneeling for sacrament Lynn, Massachusetts, 268 Magdalen College, 31–34, 32, 38, 98 “magisterium of coral,” 320 Maherne, Thomas, 192 malaria, 138 Malbon, Richard, 142, 235 Malbon, Samuel, 242 Manunkatuck tribe, 206 Marian persecutions, 52 marriage and sex, doctrines on, 49–50 marriage ceremony, 119 Mary Tudor, 8, 92 Mason, John, 147, 296, 298 Massachusetts Bay Company/Colony: 1646 Cambridge Assembly, 256–258; church councils regarding First Church, 330, 336– 337, 343–344; as covenanted congregation, 134; as destination for puritans, 139–140; dispute over power of church councils, 332, 334–338; hostilities with Dutch and Indians, 246–248; initial choice of ministers, 134–135; magistrates and congregational authority, 338, 339; population of, 145; selfgovernance in, 145 Massachusetts General Court: 1657 Boston Synod, 262–264, 305; 1662 Boston Synod,



Index

305, 312, 334–335, 348–350; acts against Quakers, 271–272, 317; and charges against First Church, 330–337, 339, 342–345; clergy response to, 348–349; conflict between deputies and magistrates, 341, 348; crackdown against Baptists, 268–269; failure of vote on healing differences, 348; Norton and Bradstreet made agents to the crown, 319; replacement of thirty deputies, 349 masturbation, 217 Mather, Cotton: Comenius and college plans, 204; Davenport’s spiritual demeanor, 199; description of Davenport’s work ethic, 56; on John Cotton and Davenport, 154; millenarian sermons of, 171–172; on Theophilus Eaton, 279 Mather, Eleazar, 305 Mather, Increase, 186, 305–308, 343, 350 Mather, Nathaniel, 310 Mather, Richard, 255, 259, 305, 312, 336 Mather, Samuel, 249 Mattabesek tribe, 192 Matthews, Frances, 38 Maverick, Samuel, 135 Mayo, John, 306 Mede, Joseph, 174 Medulla Theologica (Ames), 133 Melyn, Isaac, 236 Mencken, H. L., 1 Merchant Adventurers, 90, 112, 127 “mere membership,” 308–310 “mere professors,” 40 Merry’s Point battery, 326 Merton College, Davenport at, 27–31, 87 Mew, Ellis, 217 Miantinomo, 196 Middle Advent, 2, 169, 171–172, 202, 284, 352–353 Milford, 205, 207–208 military service, rationale for, 89–90 millenarian beliefs, 169–174 Miller, Perry, 168 ministers/ministry: and inerrancy, 312; preaching ministry, 9, 22, 24, 44, 65, 346; puritans and educated, 63, 268, 313; Quaker rejection of professional clergy, 270–271; as voice/instruments of God, 43–44, 352 Mitchell, Jonathan, 259, 266, 305, 327 “Model of Christian Charity” (Winthrop), 172 Mohawk tribe, 147 Mohegan tribe, 146, 196 Mokum, 111

419

Momauguin, 159, 168, 192, 214 Monck, George, 280–281 Monowese, 192 Montagu, Edward, 61, 78–79, 296 Montagu, Henry, 78 Montagu, Richard, 64, 66, 84 Montaigne, George, 59, 61–63, 66 Montano, Benito Arias, 179 Moody, Deborah, 221, 269 Moore (Mrs.), 225–227 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 1 mortalism, 163 Munster riots, 153 Mystic Fort massacre, 146–147, 153, 159, 196, 214 Narragansett tribe, 146, 196, 246–248 Nash, John, 252–253 native Americans. See Indians Navigation Acts, 319 Naylor, James, 270–271, 283 Neile, Richard, 22–23, 84 Nepaupuck, 214 Netherlands, 60, 83; Amsterdam Church and Davenport’s call, 110–114, 114, 118–128; as emigration option for puritans, 93–94; English church in, 114–120; The Hague, 125–127, 136–138; Jewish population in, 111–112, 170, 180; millenarianism in, 169–171; Rotterdam, 130–134, 138, 141; and Thirty Years’ War, 109–110 Newbury, Massachusetts, 255–256 New England Company, 94 New England’s Tears for Old England’s Fears (Hooke), 237–238 New England Way, 239–241, 254, 276, 321 New Haven Colony: building the first homes, 193–194; climate and geography, 167–168, 192; confederation of New Haven colony, 205–208; Davenport’s arrival, 175; Davenport’s departure, 324–326, 331–332; disciplinary actions, 201; everyday life in, 193–204; formal organization of church, 181–185, 191; fur trade depletion and poor harvests, 209; incorporation by Connecticut, 292–295, 301, 313, 393–394n31; land and agriculture, 197; law codes, 211–213, 299 (See also New Haven General Court); map of, 179; marginalization of nonmembers, 233–234; meeting house, 199; migrations/relocations from, 246, 248, 252–253, 299, 303, 320; New Netherlands disputes, 209–210, 245–246; New Sweden disputes, 209–210; plans for college in, 204, 301–302;

420

Index

New Haven Colony (continued) plantation covenant, 175, 181, 211; Quaker trials, 273–275; relations with native tribes, 196; requirements for church membership, 185–191; responsibilities of household heads, 197–198; royal commissioners’ visit, 300–301; schooling in, 203–204, 302; structure of civil order, 191–192; Sunday worship services, 199–201; tolerance of Baptists, 269; town plan and temple, 175–180, 192; Yale College, 302 New Haven General Court: 1654 digest of laws approved, 211–213; drinking and drunkenness, 215; no oaths, 213; no trial by jury, 212; public trials, 212; servants’ time of service, 215; sexual offenses, 216–219; trials and punishments, 214–216; trials as public education, 213–214; witnesses, 212–213 New Jerusalem typology, 111, 154, 174–180, 254, 353 Newman, Francis, 287, 291, 305 Newman, Robert, 181, 183, 191, 201, 205, 231–233 New Model Army, 243, 282 New Netherland colony, 146, 209, 290–291 New Sweden, 209, 248 Newtown, Massachusetts, 153 Newtown church, 150, 153, 156–157, 159 Nicolls, Richard, 300 Night Watch (Rembrandt), 111 nine-square plan, 175–176, 179 No Crown for a Christian Martyr (wrongly attributed to Davenport), 123, 126 Norton, Humphrey, 272–274 Norton, John: at 1662 synod, 305; account of Ockley meeting, 102; for civil involvement in religious affairs, 349; for conciliation with crown, 318–319; copastoring at First Church of Boston, 314, 316–317; death of, 314; on Dury’s project, 278; and Half-Way Covenant, 314; interceding for Leete, 292; meetings with dissenters, 262, 266; sermon against Quakers disrupted, 274; supporter of Half-Way Covenant, 263 Noy, William, 98 Noyse, James, 255–256, 258 Nye, Philip: and Baptist churches, 267; Hartlib on, 91; in Massachusetts Bay Company, 96; member of Dissenting Brethren, 240; at Ockley meeting, 101–102; at Oxford with Davenport, 34; in Restoration purge, 282; return to England, 239; and Savoy Declaration, 277–278; warrant for apprehension, 106

oaths, swearing of, 213 Offspring, Charles, 85 Offwood, Stephen, 117, 125 Oldham, John, 147 Old Testament prophecies, 170 Oliver, James, 317, 319 original sin, 42 origins of civil society, 89 Overall, John, 48 Owen, John, 277, 280, 314–315 Oxenbridge, John, 313, 345–347 Oxford University: city of Oxford, 26–27; life at, 28–29; Magdalen Hall, 31–34, 32; Merton College, 27, 29–31; puritan orientation of, 33 Oyster Point, 168 Paget, John: An Answer to the Unjust Complaints . . ., 135–136; attempts to discredit Davenport, 120, 123, 125–129; baptism issue, 119, 257; against congregationalism, 116; Davenport sharing duties with, 119–120; opposition to Separatists, 115–116; pastorship of English Church in Amsterdam, 114; power of the clergy issue, 258; search for copastorship position with, 101, 117–119 Paine, William, 234 Palmer, George, 64 pansophism, 202 The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Shepard), 151 parish-style membership, 256 Parker, Thomas, 255–256 Particular Baptists, 267 Pearce, Mark, 203 Peck, Jeremiah, 302 Penn, James: accused of editing and forgery of letters, 341–343; call for vote on Davenport, 333; calling of council on censure of dissenters, 330, 335; and charges against Richard Mather, 336–337; fielding demands of church and withdrawers, 330–337; penning of First Church Boston letter to New Haven, 319, 324; receipt of Street’s letter, 331 Pequot tribe, 146–147, 153, 159, 196, 214 The Perfect Pharisee (Welde), 271 Perkins, William, 41–42 personal spiritual narratives, 185–191 Peter, Hugh: association with feoffees group, 85; and Baptist churches, 267; at Boston General Court meeting, 151; Davenport recommendation of, 57; decision against American emigration, 95; Digitus Dei, or

Good News from Holland, 170; execution of, 282, 289, 305; listening to Davenport’s preaching, 81; and pay dispute over replacing Potts, 117; recommendations for land to settle, 158–159; reorganizing of Rotterdam church, 131–133, 162, 188–189; returning to England, 241–242; at Rotterdam, 109, 127–128, 130–131; and Savoy Declaration, 277–278 Petition of Right, 88 Phillips, George, 269 Phillips, John, 240 Physiologia (Fernel), 250 Pierson, Abigail, 303, 347 Pierson, Abraham, 207, 302–303 Pilgrimage of Grace, 36 Pilgrims, 112 plague, 46, 72–75 Plain, William, 217, 230 plantation covenant, New Haven, 175, 181, 211 Platform of Church Discipline (Cambridge Assembly), 258 Plymouth Colony, 112, 146 Pordage, John, 163 postmillenarianism, 169 Potter, William, 219 Potts, Thomas, 116–117 The Power of Congregational Churches (Davenport), 241, 256, 349 Precisians, 33 predestination, 41, 45, 84, 120, 184 prefiguration, 173 Presbyterianism compared to Congregationalism, 240, 254–255, 310, 313 Preston, John, 42, 66–68, 185, 236 Preston, Joseph, 216 Prideaux, John, 64, 86, 98 Printz, Johann, 210 The Profession of the Faith (Davenport), 183–185, 190, 241 prophesying, 9 prostitution, 327 Protestantism: and companionate marriage, 49–50; exhortations to unity, 21–22; Henry VIII’s break with Rome, 8; international Protestantism, 2, 82, 90–91, 308; in London, 52 Protestation Made and Published (Davenport), 135–136 Prudden, Peter, 166, 175, 182, 205, 261 Prynne, William, 85 puritanism/puritans: and companionate marriage, 49–50; and conformity doctrine,

Index

421

21–25; conversion narratives, 185; in Coventry, 21–25; Davenport and, 61–63, 107, 168; decisions to emigrate, 92–94; and educated ministry, 63, 268; emphasis on sermons, 22; general principles of, 8–9; in London, 52; moderate puritanism, 67–68; in Netherlands, 112–113; in New England, 148, 168–174; and receiving of sacrament, 46–47, 185; vandalism by, 22 Putney debates, 283 Pym, John, 139, 242 Pynchon, William, 208 Quakerism, 269–276 The Quakers Confuted (Eaton), 271 Quinnipiac tribe, 159, 167–168, 192, 214 Rainsborough, Thomas, 246, 345 Rainsford, Edward, 317 rape, 216–217 recusants, 37, 45 Rembrandt, 111 resurrection of the body, 163–164 Revelation, book of, 169–170, 176–177, 283 Reynolds, John, 28 Rhode Island, 293–294 Rich, Nathaniel, 139 Rich, Robert, 57 Richardson, Alexander, 54 Ritor, Andrew, 221–222 Robinson, Henry, 36–37 Robinson, John, 114 Robinson, William, 275 Rogers, Ezekiel, 206 Rogers, Nathaniel, 304 Rogers, Richard, 42 Roodeberg, 167 “root of the matter,” 187 Rothwell, Richard, 37 Rotterdam, 130–131 Row, Thomas, 137 Rowe, Nathaniel, 142 Rowe, Owen, 94 Rowley, 206 Roxbury church, 305, 315, 330, 332–333, 336 Rump Parliament, 280 Russell, John, 265–267, 287, 348 Russell, Lucy, 59 Rutherford, Henry, 293 Saints Anchor Hold (Davenport), 172, 285, 286 Salem, Massachusetts, 95 Salomons Pest-House (attr. Davenport), 75 Salter, William, 317

422

Index

Saltonstall, Richard, 91, 94, 139 salvation, the nature of, 21; Davenport’s disputation at Oxford, 64–65; Davenport’s sermons on, 79–80; predestination doctrines, 41–43, 184 Sancta Clara, Father (Davenport, Christopher), 26, 31, 33, 107–108, 283 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 57 Sassacus, 147, 214 Savage, Thomas, 341 Savile, Henry, 27, 29–31, 87 “saving knowledge,” 188 Savoy Declaration, 277–278, 280, 308 Saybrook, 140, 147–148, 158, 205 Saye and Sele, Lord (William Fiennes): and Connecticut, 139, 143, 146; decision not to emigrate, 158; and “Nineteen Propositions,” 238; in Parliament, 210; surviving Restoration purge, 282 Scobell, Henry, 277 Scott, John, 296 Scottow, Joshua, 329, 332 Scripture, divine inspiration of, 183–184 Scrooby Separatists, 114 Scudder, Henry, 82, 91 Second Coming, 169, 172 second commandment, 102, 372n4 Sedgwick, Obadiah, 86, 170 Sedgwick, Robert, 247–248, 253 Seeley, Robert, 214 “self-willed saint,” 312 Separatists movement, 100–101, 113–114 A Sermon of Obedience (Holyoake), 21–22 sermons. See Davenport, John— publications, sermons, and doctrinal statements Serrarius, Petrus, 170 sexual desire, doctrines on, 49–50, 216 sexual offenses, 216–219, 327 Shaumpishuh, 206 Shawmut Peninsula, 314 Shepard, Thomas: accusations against Cotton, 150–151, 165; assembly on errors, 156; and church trial of Hutchinson, 158, 163, 165–166; conversion narrative of, 186; death of, 259, 304; support of infant baptism, 269; youthful sins of, 304 A Short and Fruitful Treatise . . . (Cawdrey), 24 Shoyes (Chais), Dr., 249 Sibbes, Richard, 66–68, 85–86, 91, 97 Simpson, Sidrach, 91, 106, 239–240 Sion College, 77 Skelton, Samuel, 95–96 Smith, George, 142 Smith, Ralph, 68, 95, 100

Smith, Richard, 16 Smith, Sir Thomas, 57 Smith, William, 55 Smyth, John, 25, 113–114 social gospel, 20 sodomy, 217 Solomon’s temple, 176 Somers Island Company, 56 Song of Solomon (Canticles), 169, 171 soul, immortality of, 163 South Battery, 327 Southold, 207, 297 Speculum belli sacri (Leighton), 68 Spencer, George, 217–218 Spurstowe, William, 238 Stamford, 207 St. Antholin’s parish, 85 Starr, Comfort, 277–278 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 153 St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate, 54–55 Stevenson, Marmaduke, 275 Stiles, Ezra, 194 St. John, Oliver, 239 St. Lawrence Jewry, 55–57 St. Martin in the Fields parish, 54 St. Mary Aldermanbury, 53 St. Michael’s parish, 53 Stoddard, Anthony, 316 Stone, Samuel: announcement of Connecticut charter, 294; and Cheever trial, 232; dispute over power of church officers, 258–262, 264–267; at organization of New Haven church, 191 Stoughton, Israel, 159 Stowe, John, 53 stranger churches, 52 Street, Nicholas: accusations of editing and forging of letters, 342–343; on Connecticut annexation of New Haven, 295, 299; critique of Half-Way Covenant, 306; on Davenport’s claim of permission to leave, 322; letters on New Haven’s position on Davenport, 331, 342–343; on New Haven’s treatment of Davenport, 344 St. Stephen’s Coleman Street, 57–58, 88–89, 133 Stuyvesant, Peter, 245–246, 248, 290–291, 299–300 Sunday Sabbath, 105 superstitious conscience, 105 surplice, wearing of, 70, 96–97 A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (Hooker), 240–241, 256 Sydenham, Edward, 59, 60

Synod of Dort (1619), 66, 80, 83–84 synods: 1637 Newtown synod, 156–159, 255; 1646 synod on orthodox faith, 256–257; 1657 Boston, 263–265, 305; 1662 Boston, 305–307, 310–312, 314, 317, 333–337, 348–350; authority of, 71, 117, 135–136, 255, 316–317; and classis system, 113; Davenport on, 136, 262, 310–311, 335, 341; definition of, 255; English Congregational Synod, 115; New England Confederation, 262–263; Norton on, 317, 318; Wilson on, 316 Table Alphabetical . . . (Cawdrey), 24 Talbot, John, 260 Taylor, Thomas, 86, 91 temple, Old Testament, 176–180 Temple, Thomas, 275, 288–289, 333, 346 Templo, Jacob Judah Leon, 111–112, 178, 180 terrorism, religiously-inspired, 152–153 Thatcher, Thomas, 338 Third Church of Boston, 338, 339, 341, 343–344, 348 Thirty-Nine Articles, 48, 63 Thirty Years’ War, 83; Davenport’s pro-intervention sermon, 90; and millenarianism, 170–171; Netherlands unsafe due to, 113; relief funds for victims of, 55, 86 Thomas, John Jr., 236 Thompson, Robert, 296 Thorpe, Nathaniel, 232 Thorpe, William, 228 “Those Misunderstood Puritans” (Morison), 1 Three Articles, 48 Tomkins, Michael, 287 torture, use of, 213 Travers, Walter, 112 Treat, Robert, 287 A Treatise of the Vanity of Childish-Baptism (Ritor), 221–222 trials as public education, 213 Trimount, 154 Trinity, the, 184 The True Constitution of a Particular Visible Church (Cotton), 240 Turner, Nathaniel, 192 Turner, Thomas, 65 two-witness rule, 201, 212–213, 229–232 Tyndale, William, 33, 92 Tyng, Edward, 319, 338 typology, 173–176 Uncas, 196 Underhill, John, 147, 159

Index

423

United Colonies, 247–248; on collecting “illustrious providences,” 286; meeting (1646), 257; New Haven as separate colony in, 291, 295, 296; prohibition against Quakers, 272, 274–275 unity, exhortations to, 21–22, 46 universal education reform, 91 Usher, Hezekiah, 317 Ussher, James, 93 utopianism, 91, 173–177 Vane, Henry, 140, 149–153, 155–156, 245, 289 venereal disease, 251 Vere, Horace: death of, 136; military career, 24, 60, 86, 170; ordering use of Book of Common Prayer, 116; support for puritans, 112, 118 Vere, Mary: caring for Elizabeth’s daughter, 137, 142; caring for John Davenport Jr., 142, 192, 198; Davenport correspondence with, 87–89, 103, 118, 136–138, 244–245; support for reform clergy, 60–61, 93 Vicar, John, 85 Villalpandus, Juan Bautista, 179 Virginia Company, 55, 56–57, 94 Vossius, Gerhard, 120, 125, 128 Wakeman, John, 217 Walker, George, 66–67 Walker, Robert, 317 Wallington, Nehemiah, 50, 66 war, rationale for, 89–90 Ward, George, 142, 235 Ward, John, 143 Ward, Lawrence, 142 Ward, Samuel, 92–93 Warham, John, 135 Warwick, Earl, 94 Warwick patent, 146, 291, 299, 393–394n31 The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared (Cotton), 240 Wearmouth, monastery of, 35 weather extremes as God’s wrath, 46 Webster, John, 120, 126, 260 Welde, Thomas, 118, 141, 163, 241–242, 271 Wells, Thomas, 260 Wepowaug, 205 “Western Design,” 252 Westminster Assembly, 257, 277 Wethersfield, Connecticut, 207, 264–266 Whalley, Edward, 242, 282–284, 286–287, 345 Whalley, Elizabeth, 48–49, 110, 195, 282, 320

424 Wharton, Richard, 327 Wheelwright, John, 151–153, 156–158, 322 Whitaker, Henry, 110, 120, 128 White, Edmund, 94 White, John, 93–95, 133–135 White, Thomas, 77 White family, 48–49 Whitefield, Henry, 91, 101, 217, 242 Whitefield, Nathaniel, 242, 296 White Mountain, battle of, 83 Whitfield, Henry, 205 Whitgift, John, 48 Wigglesworth, Edward, 207 Wigglesworth, Michael, 193, 203–204, 216, 259–260 wilderness in Biblical typology, 175 Wilkes, William, 215 Wilkinson, John, 33 Williams, John, 101 Williams, Roger, 149, 161, 213, 245, 252, 267 Williamson, John, 82 Wilson, John, 148, 155; and congregational authority, 133; death of, 315; on Dury’s project, 278; and First Church of Boston founding, 314; and Free Grace controversy, 307, 316; and Half-Way Covenant, 316; and Hutchinson issue, 164; opposed by Cotton supporters, 152; on sins of the times, 316; supporting Quaker banishment, 317 Winslow, Edward, 246, 304 Winthrop, John: Boston under, 145–148, 153, 155–157; conversion narrative of, 186; and correspondence with wife, 50; on Davenport, 153, 156; death of, 304; on false news reports, 281; and First Church of Boston founding, 314; in first wave of migration,

Index 95–96, 139–140; lay sermon on Christian charity, 353; “Model of Christian Charity,” 172; objection to John Wheelwright’s call, 322; youthful sins of, 304 Winthrop, John Jr.: advisor to Nicolls on New Netherland, 300; and church of Hartford, 266; close relationship with Davenport, 292; and Comenius, 204; and Connecticut annexation of New Haven, 292–299; correspondence with Davenport, 292, 295, 298–299; on Davenport’s final illness, 347–348; establishing of Saybrook settlement, 140, 146; meeting with New Haven spokesmen, 296; persuading Nicolls of Davenport’s innocence, 301; providing medical advice for Davenport, 195, 250, 320; and Quakers, 272 Winthrop, Steven, 268–269 Winthrop, William, 52 withdrawers, Hartford, 258–262, 264–267 Witter, William, 268–269 women: education of, 3; Quakers and equality of, 270; testimony of, 216; voting on pastor, 132; and wearing of veils, 148 Wood, Anthony, 31 Woodward, Walt, 204 works, doctrine on, 45 Worrall, Thomas, 54, 62, 77 Wotton, Anthony, 66–67 Wren, Matthew, 138–139 Wright, Lawrence, 251 Wright, William, 48–49 Wroth, Thomas, 75, 81, 94 Youngs, John, 207 Zeruubbabels Encouragement to Finish the Temple (Goodwin), 176–177