Henry Whitfield House - Henry Whitfield

Henry Whitfield

Henry Whitfield, one of Guilford's founders and first minister, is estimated to have been born sometime between June 8 and October 1, 1592 in Greenwich in the English county of Kent. Thomas Whitfield, his father was a lawyer in London and his mother, Mildred Manning, was descended from the poet and "Father of English literature" Geoffrey Chaucer. Whitfield attended New College, Oxford, where he befriended the future founder of the Saybrook colony in Connecticut, George Fenwick. He initially studied law after graduation, but found it undesirable and promptly changed his focus to ministry studies. Whitfield was ordained a minister of the Church of England in 1618 and soon took up the post of vicar of St. Margaret's Church in Ockley, Surrey, where he remained for the next 18 years. During this time he married Dorothy Shaeffe (also of Kent) and fathered nine children, living off the estate of his father. However, under the rule of King Charles I, the Church of England began to persecute Separatists and Puritans who opposed the new firm rule of the church and called for reform. Whitfield's sympathies soon shifted to the Puritan movement following the persecution led by Archbishop William Laud. Shortly after being censured as a dissident by the High Commission Court in 1638, Whitfield resigned from his post in Ockley and recruited twenty five families, mostly farmers of Surrey and Kent, to travel to the New Haven colony. Upon arrival in June 1639, Whitfield consulted Fenwick and Rev. John Davenport, founder of the New Haven Colony, and decided to purchase land from the Menunkatuck Indians halfway between the New Haven and Saybrook colonies. Whitfield and his party moved into the new Guilford colony in September of that year and immediately began construction of his house, though it was not finished until the following spring due to the winter weather conditions. In the early years of the Guilford colony, Whitfield served as both the minister and community leader, delivering sermons and conducting marriage ceremonies as well as settling civil disputes. However, in 1650 Henry Whitfield returned to England, leaving his wife and the majority of his children in Guilford. It has been speculated that he returned due to the changed political and religious atmosphere for Puritans under the reign of Oliver Cromwell. Whitfield was reinstated in the Church but died in 1657, soon after his return, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral on September 17.