Davenport, John

Davenport, John,

1597–1670, Puritan clergyman, one of the founders of New Haven, Conn., b. Coventry, England, educated at Merton and Magdalen colleges, Oxford. Starting as a Church of England cleric, Davenport turned more and more to nonconformity. As pastor of an influential London parish he fostered the Puritan cause and in 1633 had to flee to Holland. There he also got into theological troubles, and, after returning to England, he and Theophilus EatonEaton, Theophilus,
1590–1658, Puritan leader in Connecticut, one of the founders of New Haven, b. Buckinghamshire, England. A member of the London congregation of John Davenport, he was interested in the Massachusetts Bay Company and other Puritan colonial ventures.
..... Click the link for more information.  headed a party of Puritan colonists who sailed (1637) to New England. In 1638, Davenport led the colonists to a spot chosen by Eaton, and New Haven colony was founded. Davenport was minister in New Haven and a powerful figure in the colony until he lost (1665) the bitter fight to prevent the union of New Haven colony and Connecticut. In 1667 he accepted the call to the First Church in Boston, where new theological disputes caused many of his congregation to secede and form the Third or Old South Church.

Davenport, John

(1597–1670) clergyman, author, colonist; born in Coventry, England. He became an Anglican minister in 1625 but was attracted to the Puritan faith and became a full dissenter by 1632. He resigned his post and preached briefly in Holland before emigrating to Boston (1637). With his boyhood friend, Theophilus Eaton, he founded the New Haven Colony in 1638. He was the pastor of the church there (1638–67). He sheltered the English regicides, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, in 1661. He opposed the Half-Way Covenant and the merging of New Haven into the Connecticut colony. He left for Boston in 1667 and was briefly the pastor of the First Church there.