Increase Nowell

Increase Nowell
Name	Increase Nowell
Birth date	c.1590
Birth place	Lancashire
Death date	1655
Death place	Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony
Occupation	Clergyman, Puritan minister
Known for	Colonial ministry, involvement in Massachusetts Bay Company affairs, role in legal and ecclesiastical disputes
Spouse	Mary Nowell
Children	multiple

Increase Nowell.

Increase Nowell was an English-born Puritan clergyman and colonial leader active in early seventeenth-century New England. He emigrated from Lancashire to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and became prominent in ministerial, civic, and ecclesiastical controversies that connected figures across Plymouth Colony, Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London. Nowell participated in legal and religious disputes involving the Massachusetts General Court, the Massachusetts Bay Company, and ministers such as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Roger Williams.

Early life and education

Nowell was likely born in Lancashire in the late sixteenth century and received a university education typical of Puritan clergy of his generation. He is associated with studies at Oxford University or Cambridge University records and moved in networks that included graduates who became ministers in Essex and London. Early biographical details link him to the circle of Puritan activists involved with the Massachusetts Bay Company and the wider migration of 1620s and 1630s that included members of Parliament, Francis Bacon’s contemporaries, and merchants from East India Company connections. His formative contacts included ministers and patrons who had ties to Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and the Puritan strongholds of East Anglia.

Clerical career and Puritan ministry

On arrival in New England, Nowell entered the ministry within the Puritan pattern established by ministers such as John Winthrop and John Cotton. He served in pastoral and lecture capacities that brought him into frequent collaboration and contention with leading ministers of Boston, Charlestown, Massachusetts, and Newtown (Cambridge). Nowell’s ministerial work intersected with the ecclesiastical ordinances adopted by the Massachusetts General Court and with disciplinary measures debated by figures including Thomas Shepard, Richard Mather, and Samuel Stone. His preaching and pastoral oversight aligned with the congregational polity favored by the Massachusetts Bay Company founders, while also engaging with dissenting currents represented by Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson.

Nowell participated in ordinations, fast-day services, and synodical gatherings that linked Boston clergy to ministers in Plymouth Colony and Connecticut Colony. He engaged with charitable and civic institutions such as the town meetings influenced by John Winthrop the Younger and the legal practices that brought ministers into consultation with magistrates like Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet. His role sometimes required adjudication of moral cases among parishioners, collaborations with the General Court, and correspondence with Puritan contacts in London.

Role in the English Civil War and Commonwealth

During the period of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth of England, Nowell’s loyalties and communications reflected the transatlantic ties between New England Puritans and parliamentary leaders. He corresponded with figures sympathetic to the Parliamentary cause, maintaining connections with ministers and lay leaders who supported the Long Parliament and later the Council of State. Nowell engaged in debates over the political implications of Puritan ecclesiology that linked colonial clergy to metropolitan events, including the trial of Charles I and the rise of figures like Oliver Cromwell.

His responses to the shifting political landscape brought him into contact with colonial officials handling directives from London and with New England magistrates negotiating royalist sympathizers, Quaker activists from George Fox’s networks, and the colonial implementation of ordinances that reflected the changing policies of the Commonwealth. Nowell’s position illustrates how colonial ministry intersected with imperial politics through links to merchants, patentees of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the transatlantic letters exchanged with London ministers and parliamentarians.

Writings and theological views

Nowell produced sermons, catechetical materials, and polemical tracts typical of Puritan ministers who addressed both doctrinal instruction and pastoral care. His theological outlook reflected Calvinist emphases comparable to those articulated by John Calvin, Martin Luther in Protestant genealogy, and contemporaries such as Richard Baxter and Thomas Goodwin. Nowell’s writings debated issues of church discipline, baptismal practice, and the covenant theology prominent among New England clergy, engaging with controversies that involved Anne Hutchinson’s followers, the synods convened in Cambridge (England) and New England, and authors like William Ames.

His printed and manuscript sermons circulated among ministers in Boston, Hartford, and Salem, and entered correspondence networks with publishers and booksellers in London and Amsterdam. Nowell’s theological positions placed him within the orthodox Puritan mainstream while encountering dissent from more radical separatists and from advocates of religious liberty such as Roger Williams.

Personal life and legacy

Nowell married and raised a family in the Massachusetts colony; his domestic life connected him to leading colonial families and to commercial networks reaching Bristol, London, and the West Indies. Descendants and relatives intermarried with families associated with Harvard College benefactors and New England civic leaders like John Winthrop Jr. and Increase Mather’s contemporaries. After his death in 1655, Nowell’s reputation persisted in local histories, parish records, and ministerial memoirs compiled by writers who documented New England’s ecclesiastical development, including compilations that later influenced scholars at Harvard University and in antiquarian circles of London.

Category:Clergy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Category:17th-century Puritans