John Wheelwright Rev.

  Events

• American Puritan clergyman John Wheelwright  studied at Cambridge and was vicar (1623–33) of Bilsby. After he was suspended by Archbishop Laud on a charge of nonconformity, he emigrated to New England in 1636.

 While pastor of a Puritan church at Mt. Wollaston (now Quincy), Mass., he alienated himself from the parent church in Boston by publicly defending the views of Anne Hutchinson, his sister-in-law. The General Court in Boston banished him from the colony in 1638, whereupon he formed a settlement at Exeter, New Hampshire. He purchased territory for the settlement from local Indian Sagamores, and in doing so acquired one of the most favorable sites for a village in the coastal region of New Hampshire.

When the new town was claimed as within the limits of Massachusetts, the minister, with part of the church he had established, moved in 1643 to Wells, Maine. The next year, upon his acknowledging some error on his own part, the sentence of banishment was withdrawn. He held a pastorate in Hampton, New Hampshire.

 After visiting England, he returned to America; his last pastorate, from 1662, was at Salisbury.

John married Mary Storre about 1621 in Bilsby, Lincolnshire, England.