Good work! As far as I can tell Hanserd Knollys had three children. He arrived 1638 and his first child died en route to New England. He says he left New England in 1641 with a child aged three and a pregnant wife (so I presume a third child was born). So he definitely did not leave a child behind in New England. And I've never seen any genealogical publication link this man with John Knowles of Hampton.
Here is the sketch from ABANDONING AMERICA Knollys, Hanserd, baptist minister pages 13, 17n.55, 22,71,168-70,177-8,232,293,349, 355
p 13:
Hanserd Knollys (a minister from Lincolnshire who returned to England within three years, and became a prominent baptist) was more realistic about his fourteen-week voyage over to Boston:
* “By the way my little child died with convulsion fits, our beer and water stank, our biscuit was green, yellow and blue, moulded and rotten, and our cheese also, so that we suffered much hardship ... but God was gracious to us, and led us safe through those great deeps.”
P 17
Between 1640 and 1643: Christopher Blackwood, George Burdett, Samuel Eaton, Richard Gibson, Hanserd Knollys, Thomas Larkham, Robert Lenthall, Hugh Peter (as a colonial agent, with Weld), John Phillip, Robert Peck, Peter Saxton, Thomas Weld. Francis Bright returned to England in 1630. Nathaniel Eaton, the first head of Harvard College, left in disgrace in 1639 for Virginia, but later returned to England. Pilgrims, Appendix 3, notes which of the first generation clergy returned home before 1660, and when.
P 168-170
KNOLLYS, Hanserd (1598-1691)
Hanserd Knollys, the son of Richard Knollys, was born near Louth in
Lincolnshire. He had close connections with Scartho, near Grimsby, where his
father was rector from 1613. Knollys was educated at St Catharine's College,
Cambridge, and ordained deacon and priest in June 1629. After this he
became vicar at Humberston, Lincolnshire. On 22May1632 he married Anne
Cheyney. Knollys, who had encountered puritanism at Cambridge, objected
to requirements such as wearing a surplice and making the sign of the cross at
baptism. He also had scruples about 'mixed communion' at the Lord's table.
A few years into his ministry he became convinced that he must resign his
orders: ordination at the hands of a bishop was not a 'seal from Christ of my
ministry'. John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, tried to retain Knollys (and even offered him a better living) but Knollys refused. John Wheelwright*, at this point a preacher at Belleau, exercised a powerful influence on him. In the early 1630s Knollys and Wheelwright enjoyed relative freedom, with Williams's tacit protection, but everything changed when Williams's power fell away. In 1636 the Court of High Commission arrested Knollys - he was taken to the house of the man who served the warrant, but managed to get away. After much deliberation, Knollys decided to emigrate. He seems to have reached Boston in the summer of 1638. Later, he wrote a vivid account of his Atlantic crossing and early days in New England:
I tarried so long in London waiting for a passage, that when I went aboard I had but 6 brass farthings left, and no silver or Gold, only my Wife had £5 that I knew not of ... By the way my little Child dyed with Convulsion fits, our Beer and Water Stank, our Bisket was green, yellow and blew, moulded and rotten, and our Cheese also, so that we suffered much hardship, being 12 weeks in our passage; but God was gracious to us, and led us safe through those great Deeps, and e're we went ashore, came one and enquired for me, and told me a Friend that was gone from Boston to Rode Island had left me his house to sojourn in ... The Magistrates were told by the Ministers that I was an Antinomian, and desired they would not suffer me to abide in their Patent: But within the time limited by their Law in that Case, two Strangers coming to Boston from Piscattuah, hearing of me by a meer Accident, got me to go with them to that Plantation, and to preach there, where I remained for about four years.
Knollys arrived at a sensitive time, just after the Antinomian Controversy which had seen his old friend John Wheelwright exiled. Knollys did not stay in Massachusetts Bay, but went north to Piscataqua. Knollys's ministry in the settlements at York and Dover had the support ofJohn Underhill, who was under censure from the Boston church for adultery. Initially, Knollys competed in ministry with the maverick George Burdett*. Knollys earned a rebuke from the Massachusetts authorities in 1639 for sending letters to England which, according to John Winthrop, described the civil and ecclesiastical government of the colony as 'worse than the high commission ... and that here was nothing but oppression ... not so much as a face of religion'. Knollys repented and promised to give public satisfaction: he was granted letters of safe passage into Massachusetts for this purpose. A quarrel between Knollys and Thomas Larkham* at Dover (or Northam), c.1641, over 'baptizing children, receiving members, burial of the dead' led to a riot. Thomas Lechford noted that Knollys had gone 'to seek a new place at Long Island'. Winthrop observed that Knollys was discovered to be 'an unclean person', who had 'solicited the chastity of his two maids' in a hypocritical fashion (as he had urged his church to proceed against Underhill for adultery). Winthrop' noted how Underhill, Knollys and other antinomians fell into immorality after 'crying down all evidence from sanctification'.
Knollys and his family left New England in the autumn of 1641. Knollys wrote 'being sent for by my aged Father I returned with my Wife and one Child about three years old, and was great with another child, and came safe to London on the 24th of December 1641'. If the attribution of authorship to Knollys is correct, he published a manifesto against episcopacy, A petition for the prelates, almost as soon as he got back. Knollys became a schoolmaster, then an army chaplain under the earl of Manchester. By 1644 he declared himself a baptist. In 1645, in London, he gathered the Particular Baptist church with which he was connected for the rest of his life. He converted Henry Jessey ( ODNB) to the baptist cause, and attracted the ire of the Presbyterian polemicist Thomas Edwards. In the 1650s Knollys associated with Fifth Monarchists: some of his followers signed the manifesto that accompanied Thomas Venner's* rising in 1657; as a result Knollys spent eighteen weeks in Newgate prison and some years in the Netherlands and Germany. Throughout his career, he took on teaching and clerical work to support himself. In the mid-1660s he published several educational texts. An intriguing development in the late 1640s, which must have helped his finances, was a renewed connection with Scartho. Knollys became rector on 2 December 1647, in succession to his father. Knollys's old scruples about ceremonies and episcopal ordination no longer applied - parliament had set aside the prayer book and abolished bishops - but it is still surprising to find the baptist Knollys holding a parish living up in Lincolnshire, in conjunction with his ministry to a gathered church in London. He must have resigned at the Restoration, but kept the living in the family: his son 'Cheney Knollys' was _rector at Scartho from 30 September 1662 until his death in 1671. Knollys outlived his son by two decades: as the funeral sermon for this 'venerable old man' observed, 'The minister, like the candle, wastes while he shines. But at his death he rests from his labours.'
Publications [Hanserd Knollys] A petition for the prelates (1641), ESTC R179508; Christ exalted (1645); A declaration concerning the publike dispute which should have been in the publike meeting-house ... concerning infants-baptisme (1645); A moderate answer vnto Dr Bastvvicks book; called Independency not Gods ordinance (1645); shining of a flaming-fire in Zion (1646); The rudiments of the Hebrew grammar in English (1648); An exposition of the first chapter of the Song of Solomon (1656); Rhetoricce adumbratio (1663); Radices Hebraicce (1664); Radices simplicium (1664); Grammaticce Graecce compendium (1664); Grammaticce Latince compendium (1664); Linguce Hebraicce delineatio (1664); Grammaticce Latince, Grcecce, & Hebraicce (1665); Apocalyptical mysteries (1667); The parable of the kingdom of heaven expounded (1674); The baptists answer (1675); An exposition of the eleventh chapter of Revelation (1679); Mystical Babylon unvailed (1679); The vvorld that now is; and the vvorld that is to come (1681); The gospel minister's maintenance vindicated (1689); An answer to a brief discourse concerning singing in the publick worship of God (1691); [Hanserd Knollys, William Kiffin], The life and death of . .. Mr Hanserd Knollys (1692). CCEd Person ID 71006 [Richardus Knowles]; Helena Hajzyk, 'The Church in Lincolnshire, c.1595-c.1640' (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1980), 306, 460, 466; Life and death of ... Mr Hanserd Knollys, 17-18; Pilgrims, 59-60; Lechford PD, 44, 53, 54; Suffolk Deeds I, 3; WJ, 285, 300, 318, 348-50; Anne Laurence, Parliamentary army chaplains, 1642-1651 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society, 1990), 142-3; Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 163, 174-5, 178-9 and passim; B.S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy men (London: Faber, 1972), 182 and passim; CCEd Person ID 63576 [Hanserd Knollys] and Person ID 98576 [Cheyney Knowles]; Thomas Harrison, A sermon on the decease of Mr Hanserd Knollis, 29, 39. For detail on Knollys's career as a baptist: B.R. White, Hanserd Knollys and radical dissent in the 17th century (London: Friends of Dr Williams' s Library, 31st Lecture, 1977); Stephen Wright, The early English baptists, 1603-1649 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006).BDBR,ODNB.
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