Thomas Wadsworth

Thomas Wadsworth (1630–1676) was an English presbyterian minister, an ejected nonconformist after 1662. Life The son of Thomas Wadsworth, he was born in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark, on 15 December 1630. His father was close to Samuel Bolton, who held a lectureship at St Saviour's as well as being Master of Christ's College, Cambridge; and in 1647 Thomas entered Christ's College. There his tutors were Peter Harrison and William Owtram. He was scholarly, religiously inclined, and joined an academic club for philosophical study and devotional exercises. Having graduated B.A. in 1650–1, Wadsworth was called home by his father's last illness. Elected Fellow in 1652 of Christ's, he graduated M.A. in 1654, and then resigned his fellowship on Bolton's advice, accepting a call to minister at St. Mary's, Newington Butts, Surrey. The rectory had been filled by Henry Langley on the sequestration of James Meggs; Langley was followed by John Morton, on whose death the parish was divided on the question of his successor; each section independently petitioned parliament in favour of Wadsworth, who was appointed on 16 February 1653. He was ordained by the eighth London classis in the church of St Mary Axe. He gained a reputation preacher and catechist. On August 1660, after the English Restoration, Meggs claimed the living; Wadsworth resigned on 29 September. He retained a Saturday morning lectureship at St Antholin's, and a Monday evening lectureship at St Margaret, Fish Street Hill. The parishioners, who were the patrons of the perpetual curacy of St Laurence Pountney, presented him to that living, with a lectureship at St John the Baptist's. He held it till the Uniformity Act of 1662, preaching his farewell sermon on 23 August, the day before the act came into force.