William Kiffen

William Kiffin (1616–1701), sometimes spelled William Kiffen, was a seventeenth-century English Baptist minister. He was also a successful merchant in the woollen trade.

He was born in London early in 1616. His family appears to have been of Welsh descent. Both his parents died of the plague which broke out in June 1625. His father left property which was invested by some relatives in their business; on their failure little was saved. Kiffin was apprenticed in 1629 to John Lilburne, then a brewer (note: this probably is inaccurate; Liliburne was the same age as Kiffin; he was also not a brewer until 1641ish); he left Lilburne in 1631, and seems to have been apprenticed to a glover (Kiffin became a Freeman of the Leathersellers' Company on 10 July 1638, having served an apprenticeship to John Smith, thought to have been a glover by trade). In 1631 Kiffin attended the sermons of many puritan divines, including John Davenport and Lewis du Moulin, but attached himself next year to John Goodwin the independent. He joined a religious society of apprentices, and became (1638) a member of the separatist congregation gathered in Southwark by Henry Jacob and then ministered to by John Lothrop. Kiffin preached occasionally. In 1641-2, during the ministry of Henry Jessey, he and others became Baptists, but he remained a member of Jessey's church till 1644.

Early in 1641 he was arrested at a Southwark conventicle and committed by Judge Mallet to the White Lion prison, bail being refused. Mallet was himself committed to the Tower in the following July, whereupon Kiffin obtained his release. On 17 October 1642 he was one of four Baptist disputants encountered at Southwark by Daniel Featley.

In 1643 Kiffin began business in woollen cloth on his own account with Holland. He became rich. In 1647 he was parliamentary assessor of taxes for Middlesex. In 1649 he made good use of the five weeks' grace before the coming into force of restrictions upon the import of foreign goods. In 1652, on the outbreak of the first Anglo–Dutch War, he gained money and privileges by furnishing requisites for the English fleet. Meanwhile he was pursuing his religious labours. His name heads in 1644 the signatories to a confession of faith drawn up by seven churches "commonly (but unjustly) called anabaptists." Josiah Ricraft, a presbyterian merchant, attacked him (1646) as "the grand ringleader" of the baptists. Thomas Edwards assailed him in 1646 as a "mountebank," and as adopting the "atheistical" practice of unction for this recovery of the sick. Kiffin had offered in vain (15 Nov. 1644) to discuss matters publicly with Edwards in his church (St. Botolph's, Aldgate). He joined Hanserd Knollys in a public disputation (1646) at Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, with John Bryan, D.D., and Obadiah Grew, D.D. In January 1649 parliament, in response to a petition from Ipswich, gave him liberty to preach in any part of Suffolk, where he travelled with Thomas Patience, his assistant.

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