John Coggeshall - England and Massachusetts

England and Massachusetts

John Coggeshall, the son of John and Ann (Butter) Coggeshall, was born and raised in northeastern Essex, England, being baptized at Halstead. After his marriage he lived four miles (six km) away in Castle Hedingham where several of his children were baptized, and where he was a merchant prior to his emigration. In 1632, Coggeshall and his family joined the mass immigration of English Puritans to New England, sailing on the Lyon, the same ship that brought Roger Williams the year before. The Coggeshalls first settled at Roxbury where they were admitted to the Roxbury Church the year of their arrival, and where John Eliot would soon be the pastor. In 1634 Coggeshall moved with his family to Boston where he and his wife were admitted to the church on 20 August, and where they became the next door neighbors of William and Anne Hutchinson.

Coggeshall was a mercer, specifically involved in the silk trade, and held many offices in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a deputy to the General Court for Boston from 1634 to 1637 and a Boston selectman during the same period. In 1634 he was also on a committee to survey Mount Wollaston, and on a committee to oversee ammunition.

Some time after moving to Boston, Coggeshall became an enthusiastic supporter of Anne Hutchinson, the controversial dissident minister and preacher. Also supporting her initially was the Reverend John Cotton, and a majority of the Boston church members. Even the governor of the colony, Henry Vane was a strong admirer of Mrs. Hutchinson, but he was voted out of office, and when John Winthrop became the governor strong measures were taken to "stamp out heresy and drive out the heretics." Because of her religious opinions, and her influence in conveying her ideas within the community, Mrs. Hutchinson was tried, convicted, and banished from the colony during the Antinomian Controversy. At her civil trial, Coggeshall spoke out in her defense and was one of only three deputies to vote for her acquittal, the other two being William Aspinwall and William Coddington. Coggeshall also supported another dissident minister, the Reverend John Wheelwright, whose wife was the sister of Anne Hutchinson's husband. Shortly after Hutchinson's banishment, Coggeshall was expelled from the General Court and in March 1638, was also directed to leave Massachusetts.

Scores of Mrs. Hutchinson's followers were ordered out of the Massachusetts colony, but before leaving Boston a group of them, including Coggeshall, signed what was later called the Portsmouth Compact, establishing a non-sectarian civil government upon the universal consent of the inhabitants, with a Christian focus. Planning initially to settle in New Netherland, the group was persuaded by Roger Williams to purchase some land of the Indians on the Narragansett Bay. They settled on the north east end of Aquidneck Island, and established a settlement they called Pocasset, but in 1639 changed the name to Portsmouth. William Coddington was elected the first judge (governor) of the settlement. In May 1638 Coggeshall was on a committee to lay out land there, and was granted six acres at the same time. The following year a disagreement prompted Coddington and a few other leaders, including Coggeshall, to leave Portsmouth and begin a new settlement at the south end of the island called Newport. In his journal, Governor Winthrop described the 1639 disagreement in Portsmouth, writing, "the people grew very tumultuous and put out Mr. Coddington and the other three magistrates," Coggeshall being one of the three alluded to by Winthrop.