| Notes |
- From Wikipedia (accessed 4 Jan 2024):
John Wilson [...] was a Puritan clergyman in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the minister of the First Church of Boston from its beginnings in Charlestown in 1630 until his death in 1667. He is most noted for being a minister at odds with Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy from 1636 to 1638, and for being an attending minister during the execution of Mary Dyer in 1660.
Born into a prominent English family from Sudbury in Suffolk, his father was the chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus held a high position in the Anglican Church. Young Wilson was sent to school at Eton for four years, and then attended the university at King's College, Cambridge, where he received his B.A. in 1610. From there he studied law briefly, and then studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he received an M.A. in 1613. Following his ordination, he was the chaplain for some prominent families for a few years, before being installed as pastor in his home town of Sudbury. Over the next ten years, he was dismissed and then reinstated on several occasions, because of his strong Puritan sentiments which contradicted the practices of the established church.
As with many other Puritan divines, Wilson came to New England, and sailed with his friend John Winthrop and the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. He was the first minister of the settlers, who established themselves in Charlestown, but soon crossed the Charles River into Boston. Wilson was an encouragement to the early settlers during the very trying initial years of colonization. He made two return trips to England during his early days in Boston, the first time to persuade his wife to come, after she initially refused to make the trip, and the second time to transact some business. Upon his second return to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Anne Hutchinson was first exposed to his preaching, and found an unhappy difference between his theology and that of her mentor, John Cotton, who was the other Boston minister. The theologically astute, sharp-minded, and outspoken Hutchinson, who had been hosting large groups of followers in her home, began to criticize Wilson, and the divide erupted into the Antinomian Controversy. Hutchinson was eventually tried and banished from the colony, as was her brother-in-law, Reverend John Wheelwright.
Following the controversy, Wilson and Cotton were able to work together to heal the divisions within the Boston church, but after Cotton's death, more controversy befell Boston as the Quakers began to infiltrate the orthodox colony with their evangelists. Greatly opposed to their theology, Wilson supported the actions taken against them, and supervised the execution of his former parishioner, Mary Dyer in 1660. He died in 1667, the longest-lived of the early ministers in the Boston area, and his passing was lamented by those who knew him and worked with him, but he is also remembered for the roles he played in the persecution of those who did not embrace the Puritan orthodoxy.
From Robert Charles Anderson, John C. Brandon, and Paul C. Reed, "The Ancestry of the Royally-Descended Mansfields of the Massachusetts Bay" (citation details below):
Rev. John Wilson's career is covered in detail in such sources as The Great Migration Begins and The Dictionary of American Biography, but his interaction with the Puritan gentry of England has been minimized in these accounts, and it may be interesting to mention it here. The DAB, quoting Mather, states that, early in his career, he "served as chaplain in several 'Honourable and Religious Families,' among them that of Henry Leigh." Henry Leigh was the third husband of Ruth (Hampden) (Oglethorp) Scudamore, Lady Scudamore by virtue of her marriage to Sir Philip Scudamore. She seems to have lived at Henley-on-Thames in the period during which Wilson served as her chaplain. When he admonished the men in Lady Scudamore's household for their frivolous speech on the Sabbath,Mr. Leigh, the lady's husband, was very angry; whereof when the lady advised Mr. Wilson, wishing him to say something that might satisfie him [Leigh], he replied, 'Good madam, I know not wherein I have given any just offence; and therefore I know of no satisfaction that I owe: your ladyship has invited me to preach the good word of God among you; and so I have endeavoured according to my ability: now such discourse as this, on the Lord's day, is profane and dis- orderly: if your husband like me not, I will be gone. When the lady informed her husband how peremptory Mr. Wilson was in this matter, he mended his countenance and carriage; and the effect of this reproof was, that unsuitable discourse, on the Lord's day, was cured among them. Mather mentions other members of the aristocracy in contact with Wilson. When Wilson was prevented from receiving his M.A. degree,...he repaired unto his father, at whose house there happened then to be present the Countess of Bedford's chief gentleman, who had business with the Earl of Northampton, the Chancellor of the university. And this noble person, upon the information which that gentleman gave him of the matter, presently wrote a letter to the Vice-chancellor, on behalf of our young Wilson; whereupon he received his degree ... Later, in trouble for his Puritanism, "Mr. Wilson obtained from the truly noble Earl of Warwick, to sign a letter, which the Earl bid himself to draw up, unto the Bishop, on his behalf; by the operation of which letter, his liberty for the exercise of his ministry was again procured." Irvonwy Morgan argues that John's brother, Dr. Edmund Wilson, may have owed his advancement -- in some degree -- to the patronage of Sir Horatio and Lady Mary Vere, who were strong Puritans.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Abt 1591 - 1667 (~ 76 years)
[3, 4] 
Siblings