English clergyman, born in Lincolnshire, England, about 1592; graduated at Cambridge (1614); was a classmate there of Oliver Cromwell; was vicar of Bilsby, near Alford (1623–1631). He adopted Puritanism, was silenced by Archbishop Laud, and went to Massachusetts in 1636. He preached at a church in Braintree, and created dissension through his sympathy with the religious opinions of his sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson. He was banished from Massachusetts in 1638, owing to a sermon preached at Boston on Fast Day, 1637, and which the general court pronounced seditious; removed to Exeter, NH, and founded a church, and in 1643 removed with part of his church to Wells, ME; was allowed to return to Massachusetts in 1646; settled as pastor at Salisbury, NH (1662), where he died on the 15th of November 1679. Wheelwright’s Writings were edited by Charles H. Bell (Boston, 1876).
