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Related Genealogy |
With the intention of preparing him for the bar, his family furnished him with a liberal education. He attended the university of Oxford first and then attended the Inns of Court. (A prestigious finishing school for gentlemen). According to Cotton Mather, Henry Whitfield became a Christian in early life and was ordained to be a preacher. He entered the Christian ministry in the Church of England in 1618 (1616 according to Foster's Alumni Qxonienses.) and enjoyed "the rich living of Ockley" in the county of Surrey, in the diocese of Winchester. He married Dorothy Sheaffer, daughter of a Kentish clergyman, and settled into the quiet, gracious life of an English Vicar. Rev. Whitfield was a conformist of the established church of England for twenty years. By the 1630's, however, his home became a haven for pious nonconformists in their time of troubles and persecutions. John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and John Davenport were among the prominent clergy and future leaders of The Great Migration who found refuge and concealment in his comfortable home. The reigning church hierarchy of Charles I, specifically Archbishop William Laud, did not look favorably on the views and activities of these clergymen. In 1637, when Henry Whitfield refused to read The Book of Sports and follow the new liturgy, he was censured by Laud and other High Churchmen of the High Commission Court. It was said that Henry Whitfield's courteous manners, attainments as a scholar, purity, gentleness, and eloquence as a preacher made him eminent in an age of great men. According to Cotton Mather, "his doctrines were enlightened and evangelical so that his labors were blessed not only to his own people, but throughout all the surrounding country where people flocked to hear him." He continued preaching as he had before, arousing the ire of The High Churchmen one again. Rather than face another censure, in 1638 Whitfield resigned his position as Vicar of Ockley Church and became an itinerant preacher traveling to parts of southern England. Like many of the charismatic ministers of the time, he formed a "Clerical company" and gathered around him 25 families of young people, largely farmers of Surrey or Kent, to make plans to emigrate to the New World as his congregation. Rev. John Davenport, a friend of Whitfield's, had emigrated and founded New Haven colony in 1638. Another college friend, George Fenwick, was a grantee of the Warwick Patent and had helped found the Saybrook colony in 1635. These two colonies, forty miles from each other in Connecticut, encouraged Whitfield to consider the welcoming prospect of southern New England. The trans-Atlantic voyage
as well as the founding and settlement of Guilford is covered in
the Guilford section of this site. (The photograph below is of the
Whitfield House in Guilford.) After eleven years of service to the community he founded, Henry Whitfield returned to England. The contemporary historian Hubbard wrote, "After sundry years continuance in the country he found it too difficult for him, partly from the sharpness of air, he having a weake body, and partly from the toughness of those employments wherein his livelihood was sought...he at length took his departure about the 25th of August, 1650, in a small vessle bound for Boston, where he expected to take a ship to London. The whole town accompanied him to the shore and took their farewell of their pastor with tears and lamentations." He left behind his wife Dorothy and some of his ten children. It may be that Whitfield returned in what was called "The Counter-Migration" to enjoy a welcoming religious and political climate. Charles I and William Laud had been beheaded. The Cavaliers had been routed on all fronts by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. The Puritans had the upper hand in the revolutionary government which was to engage several constitutional experiments over the next few years. Back in England, Henry Whitfield became involved in fundraising for Indian missions and joined the corporation for the Puritan Missionary Society. There were, in parts of New England, communities of "Praying Indians" who had been converted to Christianity. Henry Whitfield reported on the progress of evangelical efforts to the Puritan Parliament and asked for government support. In 1652, he published "Strength out of weakness, or a glorious manifestation of the further progress of the Gospell among the Indians in New England: Held forth in sundry letters from divers ministersand others to the corporation established by Parliament for promoting the Gospell among the heathen in New England and to particular members thereof, since the last treatise to that effect." Whitfield took a parish in the Diocese of Winchester and appears to have resumed his former life as a quiet English Vicar. He remained there until his death on September 17, 1657. He is buried in Winchester Cathedral. |
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Henry
Whitfield was born in 1597, and was descended from an old and well-known
English family which had long been distinguished in the south of
England both in church and in state. He was the younger son of Thomas
Whitfield Esq., an eminent lawyer in the courts of Westminster.
His mother was Mildred Manning, daughter of Henry Manning, Esq.
of Greenwich in the county of Kent.