John Wheelwright
John Wheelwright was an English Puritan clergyman known 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 graduated from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1619, he became the vicar of Bilsby, Lincolnshire, until he was removed for simony.
Leaving for New England in 1636, he was 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 accused the majority of the colony's ministers and magistrates of espousing a "covenant of works". As this controversy reached a peak, 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 He went further east, to Wells, Maine, where he was living when his order of banishment was retracted. He returned to Massachusetts to preach at Hampton, 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.
In 1655 Wheelwright moved back to England with his family, and preached near his home in Lincolnshire. While in England he was entertained by two of his powerful friends, Oliver Cromwell, who had become Lord Protector, and Sir Henry Vane, who occupied key positions in the government. Following Cromwell's death, the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 and Vane's execution, Wheelwright returned to New England to become the minister in Salisbury, Massachusetts, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was characterized as being contentious and unbending, but also forgiving, energetic and courageous. His sincere piety was never called into question, even by those whose opinions differed greatly from his.
Early life
John Wheelwright, born about 1592, was the son of Robert Wheelwright of Cumberworth and Saleby in Lincolnshire, England. When his father died in 1612, Wheelwright administered the estate, and was also the heir to some property in Lincolnshire. His grandfather, also named John Wheelwright, died in 1611 at Mumby.File:Sidney Sussex College Chapel, Cambridge.jpg|thumb|At Sidney Sussex, Wheelwright studied alongside Oliver Cromwell whose head is buried near the college chapel
In 1611, Wheelwright entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge which shared its Puritan ethos with the other newly established Cambridge college: Emmanuel. Entering as a sizar, Wheelwright received his B.A. in 1614/5 and his M.A. in 1618. At Cambridge, Wheelwright had noteworthy athletic abilities, and the American Puritan, Cotton Mather, wrote, "when Wheelwright was a young spark at the University he was noted for more than an ordinary stroke at wrestling". At Sidney Sussex, Wheelwright first met his life-long friend Oliver Cromwell and fellow Lincolnshire man Rev. William Skepper who, like Wheelwright, would leave England to 'find freedom' at the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Both Wheelwright and Skepper shared a friend in fellow Puritan and Cambridge contemporary John Cotton.
Wheelwright was ordained a deacon on 19 December 1619, and the following day was ordained a priest in the Church of England. On 8 November 1621 he married Mary Storre, the daughter of Thomas Storre, who was the vicar of Bilsby. In April 1623, following the death of his father-in-law, Wheelwright was instituted as the vicar of Bilsby. His first wife died in 1629, and was buried in Bilsby on 18 May. He soon thereafter married Mary Hutchinson, a daughter of Edward Hutchinson of Alford, and a sister of William Hutchinson, whose wife was Anne Hutchinson.
After nearly ten years as vicar, Wheelwright was suspended in 1633 following his attempt to sell his Bilsby ministry back to its patron to get funds to travel to New England. He was convicted of simony, and removed from office. After his removal from Bilsby he was likely in Laceby in June 1633 where his daughter Elizabeth was baptized. He then preached at Belleau, Lincolnshire, but was soon silenced by the Church authorities for his Puritan opinions. Wheelwright left England in 1636 with his second wife, her mother Susanna Hutchinson, and his five living children.
Massachusetts
Wheelwright arrived in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony on 26 May 1636, and was admitted to the First Church in Boston on 12 June 1636, with his wife, Mary, and her mother, Susanna Hutchinson. During the year of his arrival, several of the Puritan ministers of Massachusetts had taken notice of the religious gatherings that his relative by marriage, Anne Hutchinson, had been holding at her house, and they also began having questions about the preaching of John Cotton whose Boston parishioners seemed to them to be harboring some theologically unsound opinions. Wheelwright was a strong advocate of Cotton's theology, as was Hutchinson, but their views differed from those of the majority of the colony's ministers, and they soon became embroiled in a major clash over this issue.Theological views
After his arrival in New England, Wheelwright preached primarily to the Boston settlers who owned land at Mount Wollaston, still considered a part of Boston at the time, but located about ten miles south of the Boston meetinghouse. Within months, someone had alerted magistrate John Winthrop, a lay person in the Boston church, that Wheelwright was harboring familist and antinomian doctrines. Familism, the theology of the Family of Love, involved one's perfect union with God under the Holy Spirit, coupled with freedom from both sin, and the responsibility for it. Antinomianism, or being freed from moral law under the covenant of grace, was a form of familism. Most of the New England Puritan ministers were adamantly opposed to these theological doctrines, seeing them as the cause of the violent and bloody ravages of the anabaptists in Germany during the Münster Rebellion of the 1530s. When confronted with accusations of familism, Wheelwright denied preaching such a doctrine. While Winthrop and many of the colony's ministers may have viewed Wheelwright as a familist, Cotton saw him as an orthodox minister.Antinomian Controversy
As early as spring 1636 the minister of Newtown, Thomas Shepard, began a correspondence with Boston minister John Cotton, and in his letters Shepard notified Cotton of his concern about Cotton's theology, and of some strange opinions circulating among the members of the Boston church. Cotton, who advocated that God's free grace was the only path to salvation, differed from all of the colony's other ministers, who felt that sanctification was a necessary ingredient to salvation. When Wheelwright arrived in the colony, he became a firm ally of Cotton in these theological differences. Opinions that were first shared in private correspondence soon began to find their way into Shepard's sermons to his Newtown congregation. This "pulpit aggression" did not go unnoticed by Wheelwright, and soon his own sermons began taking a critical view of the "covenant of works" being preached by Shepard.File:Anne Hutchinson on Trial.jpg|thumb|left|Anne Hutchinson, related to Wheelwright by marriage, was one of the first to be blamed for the colony's difficulties during the Antinomian Controversy.
Theological tension was mounting in the colony, but it wasn't until October 1636 when it became noticeable enough for Winthrop to record an entry in his journal. On or shortly after 21 October 1636 he noted the rising disunity, but instead of pointing fingers at one of the godly ministers, he instead put the blame on Wheelwright's sister-in-law, writing, "One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church at Boston, a woman of a ready wit and a bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: 1. That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person. 2. That no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification".
Late in October the colony's ministers confronted the question of religious opinions directly and had a "conference in private" with Cotton, Hutchinson, and Wheelwright. The outcome of this meeting was favorable, and the parties were in agreement. Cotton, whose theology rested on a covenant of grace, gave satisfaction to the other ministers that sanctification did help in finding grace in the eyes of God, and Wheelwright agreed as well. However, the effects of the conference were short-lived, because a majority of the members of the Boston church, Cotton's parishioners, held the free grace ideas strongly, and they wanted Wheelwright to become the church's second pastor behind Cotton. The church already had another pastor, Reverend John Wilson, who was unsympathetic to the free grace advocates. Wilson was a friend of Winthrop, who was a layman in the church, and it was Winthrop who took advantage of a rule requiring unanimity in a church vote to thwart Wheelwright's appointment. Though Winthrop "thought reverendly" of Wheelwright's talents and piety, he felt that he was "apt to raise doubtful disputations he could not consent to choose him to that place". This was Winthrop's way of suggesting that Wheelwright maintained familist doctrines.
In December 1636 the ministers met once again, but this meeting did not produce agreement, and Cotton warned about the question of sanctification becoming essentially a covenant of works. When questioned directly, Hutchinson accused the other ministers of preaching works and not grace, but did this only in private. These theological differences had begun to take their toll in the political aspects of the colony, and Massachusetts' governor, Henry Vane the Younger, a strong advocate of free grace, announced his resignation to a special session of the deputies. While citing urgent matters back in England as being his reason for stepping down, when prodded, he broke down, blurting out his concern that God's judgment would "come upon us for these differences and dissensions". The members of the Boston church successfully induced Vane to withdraw his resignation, while the General Court began to debate who was responsible for the colony's troubles. The General Court, like the remainder of the colony, was deeply divided, and called for a general fast to take place on 19 January in hopes that such repentance would restore peace.