John Wheelwright

John Wheelwright
Reverend John Wheelwright, c.1677
Born	c. 1592 Saleby, Lincolnshire, England
Died	15 November 1679 Salisbury, Massachusetts
Resting place	Colonial Burying Ground, Salisbury
Education	Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, B.A. 1614/5; M.A. 1618
Occupation	Clergyman
Spouse(s)	(1) Mary Storre (2) Mary Hutchinson
Children	(1st wife): John, Thomas, William, Susannah; (2nd wife): Katherine, Mary, Elizabeth, Mary, Samuel, Rebecca, Hannah, Sarah
Parent(s)	Robert Wheelwright

John Wheelwright (c.1592–1679), was a Puritan clergyman in England and America, and was most noted for being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Antinomian Controversy, and for subsequently establishing the town of Exeter, New Hampshire. Born in Lincolnshire, England, he was raised in a family with substantial means, and received both a B.A. and M.A. at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he was a noted athlete and where Oliver Cromwell was a college friend. Ordained in 1619, he became the vicar of the church in Bilsby, Lincolnshire, and held this position for ten years until removed for simony.

Leaving for New England in 1636, he was warmly welcomed in Boston, where his brother-in-law's wife, Anne Hutchinson, was beginning to attract negative attention for her religious outspokenness. Soon he and Hutchinson, as adherents of Reverend John Cotton's "covenant of grace" theology, accused the majority of the colony's ministers and magistrates of espousing a "covenant of works". As the pitch of this controversy reached a peak, both Hutchinson and Wheelwright were banished from the colony. Wheelwright went north with a group of followers during the harsh winter of 1637–1638, and in April 1638 established the town of Exeter in what would become the Province of New Hampshire. Wheelwright's stay in Exeter lasted only a few years, because Massachusetts activated an earlier claim on the lands there, forcing the banished Wheelwright to leave. He went further east, to Wells, Maine, where he was living when his order of banishment was retracted, though it was done in a way that still placed guilt upon him. From Wells he returned to Massachusetts to preach at Hampton (later part of the Province of New Hampshire), where in 1654 his parishioners helped him get the complete vindication that he sought from the Massachusetts Court for the events of 17 years earlier.