Richard Denton, lll, Reverend - The Origins of Reverend Richard Denton

Another contradiction in the time line in the Oliver Heywood account versus the Mather diary

From https://books.google.com/books?id=kwJjAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PA82&ots...

The Rise of the Old Dissent, Exemplified in the Life of Oliver Heywood page 82

. (5.) After him came Mr. Denton, a godly minister, who lived at Priestley Green; had no great matters, yet increased exceedingly in the world; had several children; continued here several years; above seven. But times were sharp. The bishops were at their height. In his time came out the Book for Sports on the Sabbath-day, the Oath, &c. He saw he could not do what was required, and feared further persecution, and therefore took the opportunity of going into New England; I suppose about the time that Matthew Mitchel and other good men went thither out of these parts. But he had little comfort there, because he was not altogether of their principles as to church discipline; therefore was unsettled; tost into several parts, till at last he returned into Old England about the year 1659; lived awhile in Essex, and there died”. In his time at Coley the chapel was enlarged, the new ceiling built that goes to the north, the seats made uniform, the pulpit brought from Halifax, being an old pulpit there opposite to that which now stands in the church; for as this stands on the south side, so that removed stood north, facing the south, at the other great pillar. (6.) After him came Mr. Andrew Latham, a godly man, ...

* * In this, the account which Mr. Heywood gives differs from that which we find in Mather's ‘Magnalia, where it is said that Mr. Denton died in New England. Dr. Mather gives a particular account of Mr. Mitchel, who went to New England in 1635, in the same ship which carried over Mr. Richard Mather, the minister at Toxteth, in Lancashire, when suspended by the bishop of Chester. Mr. Mitchel is described as a pious and wealthy person. It is a distressing account that is given of the calamities which befel him during the few years of his residence in that country. Several of his people were killed by the Pequot Indians; his cattle destroyed by them; and when he had moved to another part of the continent, his house, barn and goods were consumed by an accidental fire. He was involved also in troublesome disputings with other English settlers. He was suffering also from the stone, which killed him in 1645, at the age of 54. He took with him a son, Jonathan Mitchel, then a boy of eleven years of age, who became a celebrated preacher and pastor of a church at Cambridge, N. E. He died in 1668, and an oratorical writer uses this expression concerning him: “All New England shook, when that pillar fell to the ground.” There is a large account of him in Magnalia, book iv. p. 167

Hmm. Geni thinks Matthew Mitchell came in the Francis, 1633.

So it was useful to make a project and add profiles. From the confused notes for Susan Mitchell

"the Bullard Genealogy" has:

"MATTHEW MITCHELL, immigrant ancestor of this family, was born 1590, in South Outram parish, Halifax, Yorkshire, England, and married, April 16, 1616, Susan Butterfield of Ovenden, in the same parish. They sailed from Bristol, May 23, 1635, in the ship "James," with the company of dissenters of whom Rev. Richard Denton was the head ..."

RE: Denton’s voyage to New England may be identical to the group organized by Ezekiel Rogers from Yorkshire. Per The American Genealogist (2001):

“Richard 1 Belden first appears in records at Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1641. It may be that he and his family immigrated with a group of Yorkshiremen who came over on between eight and eleven ships in 1638. Ezekiel Rogers minister of Rowley near Beverley was one of the organizers of this voyage. The
original of the 1641/2 Protestation Returns for the whole Halifax area still survives. This list of those who swore oaths of allegiance includes all males eighteen years and over. No Richard Belden or members of his family were found anywhere in the region. This confirms that the family of Richard Belden had left Heptonstall by 1641/2.”

This theory makes a whole lot more sense to me. Note that Belden is found in other New England records prior to 1641 in MA relating to men who did *not* come via Watertown.

I made an error above. Denton would have been of higher social status than Beldon most likely. I didn’t finish reading both the article published in 2001 in The American Genealogist until this morning. I’ll upload the article in PDF to Denton’s profile so you can read it because it has good sources for Yorkshire. But Belden was not son of Sir Francis Beldon, Knight as shown on GENI:

Richard Belden, of Wethersfield

He was almost certain the son of Lawrence and grandson of Richard, husbandman of Gisburn, Yorkshire, England. So as to why he was of interest to Winthrop and not Denton I don’t have a good explanation for that.

Anderson states that Matthew Mitchell came over on the James in 1635 from Halifax, Yorkshire [GM 2:5:125-31].

Thank you, Erica. Between the two of you, there is a good deal of material to digest. So, let me add a bit more.

In Northowram (W.R. Yorks): Its History and Antiquities, (1898) p. 43 that you cited, Pearson states that Andrew Latham, born in Prescot, Lancashire succeeded Rev. Denton as the minister at Coley but Pearson did not say when Latham began his tenure. The date he began at Coley, of course, could be meaningful. I tried to find more about Andrew Latham but found nothing. Pearson did say he was still young and while at Coley he married Jane Boyle.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Northowram_W_R_Yorks.html?id=d...

And, to add to your insurrectionist profile of Coley you may have seen that Pearson footnoted Captain Hodgson. The DNB entry for John Hodgson describes him as: "...a Yorkshire gentleman, who resided near Halifax, took up arms on the side of the parliament in the civil wars in December 1642, at the instigation of Andrew Latham of Coley Chapel, when Sir William Saville attacked Bradford."

Here's the PDF

https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000059428061833&...

https://www.geni.com/projects/Great-Migration-Passengers-of-the-Jam...

Please join, maybe we can reconstruct a passenger list. (I'm dreaming)

Yes, you've nailed what's bothering me. Who organized the 100 Yorkies to come over in 1635? Who ministered to them when arrived? Are we talking about Ezekiel Rogers? Richard Denton? Richard Belden? More?

Was the chapel at Coley was an obscure, sedate country / family posting, or a rabble rousing pulpit?

OK these Coley curates are a curious lot!

- Heywood an ejected minister
- Latham a civl war partisan
- Denton won't read the Book of Sports ....

I wonder what the Sutherlands (lords of the manor at Coley) were ... They went broke 1630 / 1640 it looks like. Surely that impacted on the curate?

I'm thinking Denton, Rogers, Beden, etc all came together at around the same time and they were nowhere near Watertown. And they all came for the same reason. Ezekial Rogers also left Yorkshire because he wouldn't read from the Book of Sports:

"[Ezekial Rogers] was preferred by his patron to the living of Rowley in Yorkshire.[2] In December 1638, after seventeen years of service, Rogers was discharged from his post as rector of Rowley, [Yorkshire] after he had refused to read The Book of Sports. Believing the future of Puritanism was at stake, he left for the New World with the members of twenty families of his congregation.[2] He arrived in New England in December 1638 with the families on the ship John of London, and wintered at Salem, Massachusetts. The first printing press brought to America came on board the ship with them, with the printer Stephen Daye.[3] Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport were then setting up their colony at New Haven; they tried to enlist Rogers, but without success.[2] Early in the spring of 1639 he and most of these twenty families settled in the town of Rowley, Massachusetts. Rowley was incorporated on September 4, 1639. Rogers was the pastor at Rowley until his death on 23 January 1661..."

Listed all the Puritan Great Migration Ship Projects here

https://www.geni.com/projects/Great-Puritan-Migration-1620-1640/42414

(no doubt incomplete)

The John of London is here, I'll copy it over to a Geni project

http://www.packrat-pro.com/ships/johnoflondon.htm

Look more like North Shore names than Connecticut names - Jewett, Brocklebank, Boynton. Also, way too short a list.

I'm taking it "something happened" in (Dec?) 1638 to have caused an attack on Yorkshire ministers, I think this is after Laud. Maybe the mandatory reading from the Book of Sport (issued 1633) didn't get enforced until then in Yorkshire; a new archbishop?

Nice! To be clear John of London of one of 8 to 12 ships organized by Ezekiel Rogers to bring families from Yorkshire. Denton probably wasn't on the John of London but one of the ships that accompanied it. I went through Winthrop's Journal to see if he had notes on these passengers but couldn't find anything. But there are many letters from and to Ezekiel Rogers in his journal.

8 - 12 ships organized by Ezekiel Rogers, now it's making sense. Maybe I'm reading it wrong but Rev Denton doesn't strike me as a driving force for emigration. He seemed well respected, liked, honored perhaps, but always a little apart. He's a Presbyterian among Congregationalists, and a county vicar with a small congregation that I see no sign of picking up & leaving for America. It wasn't until the ecclesiastical troubles in Wethersfield that he enters "history" at all, I think. He must have emigrated as crisis of conscienceness ....

From Wikipedia "1630s in England"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1630s_in_England

Here are a few religious events that may have contributed to the migration.

1637
30 April – King Charles issues a proclamation attempting to stem emigration to the North American colonies.[1]

1638
18 April – flogging of John Lilburne for refusing to swear an oath when brought before the court of Star Chamber for distributing Puritan publications.[8]

1639
26 January – King Charles I raises (with difficulty) an army and begins to march north to fight the Scottish Covenanters in the First Bishops' War.[10]

27 February – Charles denounces the Covenanters.[10]

21 April – William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke imprisoned for refusing to fight against the Covenanters.[10]

25 April – Charles issues a proclamation promising to pardon rebels.[10]

14 May – Charles issues a further proclamation promising to settle the Covenanters' grievances and not to invade Scotland.[10]

19 June – Treaty of Berwick signed between the King and the Covenanters, ending the First Bishops' War.[10]

From Wikipedia "Archbishop of York"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbishop_of_York#Conquest_to_Reform...

The Archbishop of York from 1632 to 1640 was Richard Neile. Neile (1562-1640) had appointed Laud as his chaplain when Neile was Bishop of Rochester (1608). Neil was on the privy council and sat on the infamous Court of Star Chamber. Cromwell had attacked Neil in his only speech in Parliament in 1628-9.

Wikipedia re Richard Neile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neile

From Wikipedia "Covenanter"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenanter

The Covenanters were a Scottish Presbyterian movement that played an important part in the history of Scotland, and to a lesser extent that of England and Ireland, during the 17th century.

Upheaval and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
In 1637, Scotland was in a state of turmoil. King Charles I and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, met with a reverse in their efforts to impose a new liturgy on the Scots. The new liturgy had been devised by a panel of Scottish bishops, including Archbishop Spottiswoode of St. Andrews, but a riot against its use was orchestrated in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, ostensibly started by Jenny Geddes.

Updated Richard Belden and added Lawrence Baildon, of Heptonstall. I was just working with Belden / Belding a couple of generations down, in fact.

We should also be looking at the families the Rev's kids married into in case there were any Yorkshire affinities.

Thanks! No more knighthood for poor descendants of Richard Beldon. Hopefully animal husbandry will suit them. :)

From the seminal Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer

http://erenow.com/common/fourbritishfolkwaysinamerica1989/6.html

The Puritan migration also drew from other parts of England, but often it did so through East Anglian connections. Throughout England, there were scattered parishes where charismatic ministers led their congregations to Massachusetts. But these leaders were themselves often East Anglians. A case in point was the parish of Rowley in Yorkshire, whence the Reverend Ezekiel Rogers brought a large part of his congregation to Massachusetts, where they founded another community called Rowley in the New World. Rogers was himself an East Anglian, born at Wethersfield in Essex, educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and for twelve years a chaplain at Hatfield Broad Oak. He had moved to Yorkshire as a Puritan missionary, “in the hope that his more lively ministry might be particularly successful in awakening those drowsy corners of the north.”5

When looking for Rev. Denton's motive for emigrating, I would be more inclined to think he had multiple reasons. If the Sutherlands were having financial troubles, the failure of their financial support would be one reason. The Book of Sports would be another. Knowledge that the King and Laud were trying to impose a new liturgy on the Presbyterians across the border in Scotland would be yet another. The King's efforts to slow or stop emigration (and an escape route) would be another. Perhaps harsh implementation of Laud's rules by Archbishop Neil could be yet another. Rumors about the King raising an army to engage in religious suppression of the Presbyterians across the border could be an additional reason. Stories about freedom of worship and a bountiful new land across the ocean yet another. The ability to join with like-minded others to make the voyage at that time yet one more.

But when did all of those reasons come together to create action?

Do we know the names of the ships organized by Ezekiel Rogers? Or the port(s) of departure?

From http://leavesfamilyhistory.co.uk/research/1638-migration/

Ezekiel Rogers, a strict and fiery preacher, was suspended from his duties for “refusing to read from that accursed book, that allowed sports on God’s Holy Sabbath”.  It is not certain when he ceased his duties but in a diary written by John Winthorp, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay, it states that when Ezekiel Rogers and his companions arrived in the province they had “for a good time, withdrawn themselves from the Church communion in England”.

There is disagreement over who actually travelled from Rowley to the Massachusetts. Mr A. N. Cooper, an East Riding Antiquarian in 1909,  claimed Rogers took 20 families from Rowley, so depopulating the village, but later research in the 1940’s suggested that only four families, headed by: William Bellingham, Thomas Nelson, cousins Jerimiah & Ezekiel Northend, and William Jackson, had been parishioners of Rowley parish, the others being from other parishes and Counties. My research suggests that only the Northend’s have strong ancestral links to the parish. ...

.... Before boarding passengers should have obtained the King’s license to travel, although not all did, and swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown.

I don't know the names of the ships in the fleet, this is new territory for me. But point of departure was Hull.

Did any of the village at Coley or nearby also come?

Remember that Denton would have picked up his Dissenting views years before at Cambridge, and likely was familiar with trains of thought & the news from America.

As far as I can tell, the first time Denton is mentioned as a leader is 1640 / 1641

https://books.google.com/books?id=_hkWAAAAYAAJ&vq=Denton&pg...

(although later hagiography has him naming Wethersfield!)

I will need to go back to find the source, but my recollection is that Wethersfield was renamed after a Wethersfield in Essex by another resident of the town.

The name of Wethersfield, Connecticut apparently came from Wethersfield, Essex, England

“The History of Ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut,” Vol. 1, Henry R. Stiles (1904). https://archive.org/stream/historyofancient11adam#page/n5/mode/2up., p. 52, et seq. discusses the naming of Wethersfield. The author speculates (at p. 54) that Rev. John Sherman was probably the first clergyman to preach in Wethersfield until 1637. He notes that Rev. Sherman was from Dedham in Essex and that he may have known of a famous Wethersfield, Essex preacher named Richard Rogers and may have known one of that preacher's sons who was also a preacher and who migrated to New England.

Perhaps Rev. Sherman was the one who introduced the idea of Essex to Rev. Denton. Perhaps Rev. Denton went to old Wethersfield in Essex or to Dedham in Essex.

The Richard Rogers noted in the above text was Ezekiel Roger's father. Richard Rogers had been the pastor in Weathersfield, England for 43 years and died in 1618.
He was the author of a well known book called "The Seven Treatises." The above text says that book was read "far and wide" by nonconforming clergymen of the day.

Here's a list of passengers of the John, 1638, with their origin

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:John_of_London%2C_sailed_1638

For Reverend Ezekiel Rogers, M.A., founder of Rowley DNB notes:

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Rogers,_Ezekiel_(DNB00)_

He was preferred by his patron to the living of Rowley in Yorkshire. There he became conspicuous as a preacher, attached himself to the puritan party, and was suspended. In 1638 became with a party of twenty families to New England. On 23 May 1639 he was admitted a freeman of Massachusetts. In the same year he and his companions established themselves as a township, to which they gave the name of their old home, Rowley ...

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So why wasn't Denton a freeman of the Mass Bay? Did he go directly to Connecticut? If so, who invited him & with what party? They were walking their way still in 1636 ...