William Pynchon

Abt 1590 - 1662  (~ 71 years)

• Name	William Pynchon  [1]
  Birth	Abt 26 Dec 1590	Essex, England   [2]
  Gender	Male
  Alternate birth	26 Dec 1590	Springfield, Essex, England   [3]
  Alternate birth	Abt 27 Dec 1590	Springfield, Essex, England   [4, 5]
  Death	29 Oct 1662	Wraysbury, Buckinghamshire, England   [2, 4, 5]
  Person ID	I19425	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of DDB
  Last Modified	4 Sep 2021

  
  

  Father	John Pinchon,   b. Abt 1565   d. 4 Sep 1610, Springfield, Essex, England (Age ~ 45 years)
  Mother	Frances Brett,   b. of Terling, Essex, England
  Family ID	F11728	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Anne Andrew   d. Between 1630 and 1631, Roxbury, Suffolk, Massachusetts
  Marriage	Abt 1618  [2, 4, 5]
  Children	1. John Pynchon,   b. Abt 1620   d. 17 Jan 1703, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts (Age ~ 83 years) + 2. Mary Pynchon,   b. Abt 1622   d. 25 Oct 1657 (Age ~ 35 years)
  Family ID	F11717	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	4 Sep 2021

  
  

• Notes

  The chief founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, he named it after his native village in Essex. From Hale, House and Related Families (citation details below): Mr. Pynchon was one of the Patentees of the Charter granted by King Charles I to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 18 Mar. 1628/9. He came to America in Governor Winthrop's Fleet in 1630, from Springfield, England, and settled in Roxbury, Mass. He was Assistant to Massachusetts Bay, 1629 to 1636 inclusive, and Treasurer, 1632-3. He was one of the original proprietors of Springfield, Mass., in 1636, and was one of the Commissioners appointed in March, 1636, by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay to govern the Connecticut River settlements. He was Magistrate of Connecticut Colony, 1636 and 1638, while Springfield belonged in that jurisdiction, and thereafter was again Assistant to Massachusetts Bay, 1643 to 1650 inclusive. He was governing Commissioner of Springfield, 1636 to 1651. In 1650 he published in England The Meritorious Price of Christ's Redemption which was so disapproved by the Massachusetts authorities that they deposed him from the magistracy and publicly burned the book in Boston by order of the Court. Mr. Pynchon rejected the Calvinistic doctrine of the atonement which was then orthodox theology with the New England clergy. The entire text of the controversial book was republished in full in Burt's History of Springfield (Vol. 1, pp. 89-121). Doubtless Mr. Pynchon was surprised that his book created such a furor and that it was savagely attacked. Turning over his large Springfield holdings to his son John, he returned in 1652 to England, where he bought a comfortable property at Wraysbury, Buckinghamshire. Here he divided his remaining years between his business affairs and polemic writing and, in 1655, published an answer to Rev. Mr. Norton's printed objections to his book. From Robert Charles Anderson (citation details below): Once back in England, William Pynchon continued his career as a controversialist, publishing two more such pamphlets--The Jewes Synagogue (London, 1652) and A Treatise of the Sabbath (London, 1654)--in addition to works of a less controversial nature. No evidence survives that indicates that William Pynchon attended either Oxford or Cambridge, but he was certainly well educated, probably at one of the better English grammar schools and perhaps also at one of the Inns of Court, as he was skilled in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and was also familiar with the law.

  
  

• Sources

  [S142] Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families by Douglas Richardson. Salt Lake City, 2013. [S5932] Robert Charles Anderson, "The Literary Pedigree of the Author Thomas Pynchon." New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 146:165, 2015. [S1617] Abandoning America: Life-Stories from Early New England by Susan Hardman Moore. Woodbridge, Sussex: The Boydell Press, 2013. [S387] Hale, House and Related Families, Mainly of the Connecticut River Valley by Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman. Hartford, Connecticut: Connecticut Historical Society, 1952. [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011.