Thomas Weld

Thomas WELD 1595-1661

Biographical Note

Born at Sudbury, Suffolk, son of Edmund Weld. BA Trinity College, Cambridge 1613, MA 1618. Vicar of Terling, Essex 1625, where he quickly established himself as an active puritan, and after several brushes with authority he was deprived by Laud for nonconformity in 1632. After a brief spell in the Netherlands he moved to Massachusetts, becoming pastor of the church at Roxbury later in 1632. He worked with John Eliot on the committee that produced the Bay Psalm Book in 1640, and in 1641 was appointed (with Hugh Peters and William Hibbins) to return to England to raise funds for the colony. He became embroiled in the theological and political disputes back home and although he was recalled to New England in 1645, he decided to remain and after a brief period as rector of Wanlip, Leicestershire he moved to St Mary’s Gateshead in 1649. His rigorous discipline there generated controversy among the various independent factions, and his parishioners brought a formal (but unsuccessful) complaint against him in 1658. He was ejected in 1660 and died in London.

Books

Weld’s library (presumably as left in America in 1641) was purchased by John Eliot for the Society for Promoting and Propagating the Gospel in New England in 1651, for £34. A list survives in Bodleian MS Rawl.C.934.

Sources

• New England Historical and Genealogical Register 36 (1882), 371-73.
• Matthews, A. G. Calamy revised. Oxford, 1934.
• Winship, Michael P. "Weld, Thomas (bap. 1595, d. 1661), Independent minister and religious controversialist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.