Thomas Blake (minister)

Thomas Blake
Born	circa 1597 Staffordshire
Died	June 1657 Tamworth, Staffordshire
Nationality	English
Education	Christ Church, Oxford
Occupation	Parish priest, preacher and controversialist
Years active	1620-1657
Spouse(s)	Jane
Children	None
Religion	Puritan
Church	Church of England
Ordained	24 December 1620
Writings	Birth Privilege, or the Right of Infants to Baptism (1644), Vindiciae Foederis, a Treatise of the Covenant of God with Mankind (1653), Infant Baptism maintain'd in its Latitude (1653), The Covenant Sealed, or a Treatise of the Sacrament of both Covenants (1655), etc.
Offices held	Vicar of Tamworth with Glascote and Hopwas, Vicar of Alkmund's, Shrewsbury

Thomas Blake (1597?-1657) was an English Puritan clergyman and controversialist of moderate Presbyterian sympathies. He worked in Tamworth, Staffordshire and in Shrewsbury, from which he was ejected over the Engagement controversy. He disputed in print with Richard Baxter over admission to baptism and the Lords Supper.

Blake was a native of Staffordshire. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 25 October 1616, aged nineteen, or perhaps in his nineteenth year. The uncertainty gives a birth date somewhere between 1596 and 1598. He proceeded to B.A. on 5 May 1620 and M. A. on 21 February 1623.

Wood wrote that after his degrees and ordination, Blake had "some petit employment in the church bestowed on him." William Lamont, a recent biographer of Blake makes clear this was in the Tamworth area, on the border between Staffordshire and Warwickshire. The Clergy of the Church of England database has entries showing his progress within the Church. He was ordained a priest well before he finished his university education by Thomas Morton, the Bishop of Lichfield on Christmas Eve, 1620, at Eccleshall, probably at Eccleshall Castle, an episcopal residence in Staffordshire. Although close to James VI and I, Morton was sympathetic to Puritan perspectives. It must also have been he who licensed Blake to preach on 3 August 1627, as he was still Bishop of Lichfield at that time. An entry in the 1639 Liber Cleri or record book of a canonical visitation under Bishop Robert Wright confirms that Blake was then the curate, generally at that time meaning the incumbent, of Tamworth with Glascote and Hopwas.

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