John Wilson (Puritan minister)
John Wilson (c. 1588 – 1667) was a Puritan clergyman in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the minister of the First Church of Boston from its beginnings in Charlestown in 1630 until his death in 1667. He is most noted for being a minister at odds with Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy from 1636 to 1638, and for being an attending minister during the execution of Mary Dyer in 1660.
For other people, see John Wilson.
John Wilson
c. 1588
August 7, 1667 (aged 78–79)
B.A. 1609/10: King's College, Cambridge
M.A. 1613: Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Clergyman
Elizabeth Mansfield
Edmund, John, Elizabeth, Mary
Reverend William Wilson and Isabel Woodhull
Born into a prominent English family from Sudbury in Suffolk, his father was the chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus held a high position in the Anglican Church. Young Wilson was sent to school at Eton for four years, and then attended the university at King's College, Cambridge, where he received his B.A. in 1610. From there he studied law briefly, and then studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he received an M.A. in 1613. Following his ordination, he was the chaplain for some prominent families for a few years, before being installed as pastor in his home town of Sudbury. Over the next ten years, he was dismissed and then reinstated on several occasions, because of his strong Puritan sentiments which contradicted the practices of the established church.
As with many other Puritan divines, Wilson came to New England, and sailed with his friend John Winthrop and the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. He was the first minister of the settlers, who established themselves in Charlestown, but soon crossed the Charles River into Boston. Wilson was an encouragement to the early settlers during the very trying initial years of colonization. He made two return trips to England during his early days in Boston, the first time to persuade his wife to come, after she initially refused to make the trip, and the second time to transact some business. Upon his second return to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Anne Hutchinson was first exposed to his preaching, and found an unhappy difference between his theology and that of her mentor, John Cotton, who was the other Boston minister. The theologically astute, sharp-minded, and outspoken Hutchinson, who had been hosting large groups of followers in her home, began to criticize Wilson, and the divide erupted into the Antinomian Controversy. Hutchinson was eventually tried and banished from the colony, as was her brother-in-law, Reverend John Wheelwright.
Following the controversy, Wilson and Cotton were able to work together to heal the divisions within the Boston church, but after Cotton's death, more controversy befell Boston as the Quakers began to infiltrate the orthodox colony with their evangelists. Greatly opposed to their theology, Wilson supported the actions taken against them, and supervised the execution of his former parishioner, Mary Dyer in 1660. He died in 1667, the longest-lived of the early ministers in the Boston area, and his passing was lamented by those who knew him and worked with him, but he is also remembered for the roles he played in the persecution of those who did not embrace the Puritan orthodoxy.
Later years[edit]
Hutchinson left the colony within a week of her excommunication, and following this conclusion of the Antinomian Controversy, Wilson worked with Cotton to reunite the Boston church.[9] Following Cotton's death in 1652, his position was filled, following four years of campaigning, by John Norton from Ipswich. Norton held this position until his death in 1663.[54]
Wilson was an early advocate of the conversion of Indians to Christianity, and acted on this belief by taking the orphaned son of Wonohaquaham, a local sagamore into his home to educate.[9] In 1647 he visited the "praying Indians" of Nonantum, and noticed that they had built a house of worship that Wilson described as appearing "like the workmanship of an English housewright."[55] During the 1650s and 1660s, in order to boost declining membership in the Boston church, Wilson supported a ruling known as the Half-Way Covenant, allowing parishioners to be brought into the church without having had a conversion experience.[9]
In 1656, Wilson and John Norton were the two ministers of the Boston church when the widow Ann Hibbins was convicted of witchcraft by the General Court and executed in Boston. Hibbins' husband died in 1654, and the unhappy widow was first tried the next year following complaints of her neighbors about her behavior. Details of the event are lacking, because the great Boston journalist, John Winthrop was dead, and the next generations of note takers, Increase Mather and Cotton Mather had not yet emerged. A 1684 letter, however, survives, written by a Reverend Beach in Jamaica to Increase Mather in New England. In the letter Beach stated that he, Wilson and others were guests at Norton's table when Norton made the statement that the only reason Hibbins was executed was because she had more wit than her neighbors, thus implying her innocence. The sentiments of Wilson are not specifically expressed in the letter, though several writers have inferred that his sentiments were the same as Norton's.[56]
Family[edit]
Wilson's wife, Elizabeth, was a sister of Anne Mansfield, the wife of the wealthy Captain Robert Keayne of Boston, who made a bequest to Elizabeth in his 1656 will.[22] With his wife, Wilson had four known children, the oldest of whom, Edmund, returned to England, married, and had children. Their next child, John Jr., attended Harvard College in 1642 and married Sarah Hooker, the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Hooker. The Wilsons then had two daughters, the older of whom, Elizabeth, married Reverend Ezekiel Rogers of Rowley, and then died while pregnant with their first child.[22] The younger daughter, Mary, who was born in Boston on 12 September 1633, married first Reverend Samuel Danforth, and following his death she married Joseph Rock.[22]