Robert Child (agriculturalist)

Robert Child (1613–1654) was an English physician, agriculturalist and alchemist. A recent view is that his approach to agriculture belongs to the early ideas on political economy.

The son of John Child of Northfleet in Kent he was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He then attended the universities of Leiden and Padua, taking a medical degree at Leiden in 1635, and his M.D. at Padua in 1638.

Child did not practise medicine as a new graduate. In 1638 he travelled to New England, where his first stay lasted to 1641. There he came to know John Winthrop the younger, and a supporter of his ironworks project. Residing in Watertown, he joined the Nashaway Company, who were interested in iron ore; but left to go back to England.

Moore writes that, during the period from 1641, Child worked in England using good contacts, trying to make New England self-sufficient in iron. He also travelled widely in continental Europe, meeting the alchemist Pierre Jean Fabre.

On Child's return to New England in 1645, he was active in running the Saugus ironworks. He took an interest in the fur trade; he was also prospecting for a vineyard, but became involved in local politics and religious matters. This second visit ended in his departure in 1647, forced out as a Presbyterian.

Child had taken part in agitation against the dominant Independents (congregationalists) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, becoming the leader of the dissident Remonstrant group, who took their name from the "Remonstrance and Humble Petition" he wrote. Scholars disagree on its aims, but they included extending the Long Parliament's control across the Atlantic. The group of seven signatories included also Samuel Maverick (the others being Thomas Burton, lawyer at Hingham, John Dand, Thomas Fowle, John Smith and David Yale).

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