John Cotton

John Cotton (1584-1652), Puritan clergyman, known as the Patriarch of New England.

Cotton was born in Derby, England, and educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1610 he was ordained a priest of the Church of England, and in 1612 he was chosen vicar of Saint Botolph's Church, Boston, Lincolnshire. He served there almost continuously until 1633, when, because of his Puritan leanings, he was summoned to appear before the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, at the Court of High Commission. Instead, Cotton fled the country, and in September 1633 he arrived at the town of Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There he was ordained teacher of the First Church, a post he held until his death.

Both in England and in Massachusetts, Cotton had a wide reputation for learning and piety, and he wielded a powerful influence in New England. He approved the exile from Massachusetts of the Puritan clergyman Roger Williams and the religious reformer Anne Hutchinson, whom he had first supported in her controversy with church authorities. Cotton became one of the heads of the Congregational church in Massachusetts, promulgating his teachings in more than 50 volumes, including The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (1644), The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England (1645), and The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared (1648). He staunchly upheld the right of Puritan magistrates to enforce uniformity of religious beliefs.