English clergyman and author, born at Haverhill, Suffolk County, England, in 1578; graduated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1601. In 1626 he was a preacher at St. James, London, and soon after rector of Standon Massey, in Essex, where he had difficulties with Archbishop Laud, who silenced him in 1633. He emigrated to Massachusetts in 1634, and was pastor at Ipswich for three years, where he bore a leading part in founding Haverhill, on the Merrimac. In 1638 he was appointed by the general court to draw up, for the consideration of the freemen a law system which was, for the most part, incorporated in the Body of Literature of 1641. He returned to England and settled at Shenfield, in Essex, where he died in 1653. He wrote, while in America, The Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647), a satire on the politics, fashions, religions and current opinions of the day,—a work marked by bigotry, and a style so original, forceful and witty as to raise it out of the imitative manner of provincial literature. His second satire, Mercurius Anti-Mechanicus; or, The Simple Cobbler’s Boy and His Lapfull of Caveats (1648) was addressed to London tradesmen. See also Literary Criticism.
