Thomas Doolittle

Thomas Doolittle (1632?–1707) was an English nonconformist minister, tutor and author.

Doolittle was the third son of Anthony Doolittle, a glover, and was born at Kidderminster in 1632 or the latter half of 1631. While at the grammar school of his native town he heard Richard Baxter preach as lecturer (appointed 5 April 1641) the sermons later published as ‘The Saint's Everlasting Rest’ (1653). These discourses produced a conversion. Placed with a country attorney, he objected to copying writings on Sunday, and went home determined not to follow the law. Baxter encouraged him to enter the ministry.

He was admitted as a sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, on 7 June 1649, then aged 17. His tutor was William Moses, later ejected from the mastership of Pembroke. Doolittle graduated M.A. at Cambridge. Leaving the university for London he became popular as a preacher, and in preference to other candidates was chosen (1653) as their pastor by the parishioners of St. Alphage, London Wall. The living is described as sequestered in William Rastrick's list as quoted by Samuel Palmer, but James Halsey, D.D., the deprived rector, had been dead twelve or thirteen years. Doolittle received presbyterian ordination.

On the passing of the Uniformity Act 1662 he thought it his duty to be a nonconformist, though he was poor. He moved to Moorfields and opened a boarding-school, which succeeded. He took a larger house in Bunhill Fields, where he was assisted by Thomas Vincent, ejected from St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street.

In the plague year of 1665 Doolittle and his pupils moved to Woodford Bridge, near Chigwell, close to Epping Forest, Vincent remaining behind. Returning to London in 1666, Doolittle was one of the nonconformist ministers who, in defiance of the law, erected preaching-places when churches were lying in ruins after the Great Fire. His first meeting-house (probably a wooden structure) was in Bunhill Fields, and here he was undisturbed. But when he transferred his congregation to a large and substantial building which he had erected in Mugwell (now Monkwell) Street, the authorities set the law in motion against him.

...
Wikipedia