Peter Bulkley

Peter Bulkley or Bulkeley (January 31, 1583 – March 9, 1659), was an influential early Puritan preacher who left England for greater religious freedom in the American colony of Massachusetts. He was a founder of Concord, and an ancestor of President of the United States George W. Bush and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson lists him in his poem about Concord, "Hamatreya". [cite web
url=http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/poems/hamatreya.html
title=Hamatreya
author=Ralph Waldo Emerson
publisher=American Transcendalism Web]

Early life

Bulkley, reputedly a descendant of the Plantagenets,cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=1tA6JjSgdCQC
title=Sketches from Concord and Appledore
author=Frank Preston Stearns
year=1896
publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons] was born at Odell, Bedfordshire, England. He was admitted to St. John's College at Cambridge University at the age of sixteen, where he received several degrees. At one point he was even a Fellow of St. John's.cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=nzYAAAAAYAAJ
title=A History of American Literature
author=Moses Coit Tyler
year=1883
publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons] After finishing his education, Bulkley succeeded his father as rector of Odell, 1610-1635. [According to Huish, the church remained virtually unchanged three centuries later.] During this time Bulkley followed in his father's footsteps as a non-conformist. Finally in the 1630s there were increasing complaints about his preaching and he was silenced by the archbishop for his unwillingness to conform with the requirements of the Anglican Church.

In 1633, Charles I reissued the Declaration of Sports, an ecclesiastical limitation on allowed recreational activities, with the stipulation that any minister unwilling to read from the pulpit should be removed, and Bulkley's sentiments, along with others in the Puritan movement, were against it. In 1634, Bulkley refused to wear a surplice or use the Sign of the Cross at a visitation for Archbishop William Laud. For this infraction he was ejected from the parish, at least temporarily.cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sAL4xpKL7YMC
title=The American Pilgrim's Way in England
author=Marcus Bourne Huish
year=1907
publisher=London Fine Art Society] [Huish notes that Laud himself may not have been present, but rather his Vicar-General, Nathaniel Brent.]

Career in America

Within the year he emigrated to New England, coming aboard the "Susan and Ellen" in 1635. He was ordained at Cambridge, Massachusetts in April 1637, and "having carried a good number of planters with him into the woods", became the first minister in Musketaquid, later named Concord. He was "noted even among Puritans for the superlative stiffness of his Puritanism".

He was known for his facility in Latin with both epigrams and poetry, with Cotton Mather praising the latter. As a writer, his book of Puritan sermons titled "The Gospel Covenant, or the Covenant of Grace Opened", published in London in 1646, in which he appealed to "the people of New England," that they might "labor to shine forth in holiness above all other people", and evoked the City upon a Hill of John Winthrop. To historian Moses Coit Tyler, the "monumental book ... stands for the intellectual robustness of New England in the first age." It is considered one of the first books published in New England. [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=lCzKp7yJkioC
title=Bibliotheca Britannica
author=Robert Watt
year=1824
publisher=Archibald Constable & Co.
location=Edinburgh
isbn=0415137063]

Bulkley served as moderator at a 1637 synod called in Cambridge due to what Emerson called the "errors" of Anne Hutchinson.cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sAL4xpKL7YMC
title=Life of Rev. Joseph Emerson
author=Ralph Waldo Emerson
year=1834
publisher=Crocker and Brewster
location=New York City] [Hutchinson is also an ancestor of George W. Bush.] According to "tradition", a council of Indians considering attacking the town of Concord held off because "Bulkley is there, the man of the big pray!"

He died in Concord.

Personal life

His first wife, Jane Allen, died in 1626. His second wife Grace Chetwode and sons John, Benjamin, and Daniel accompanied him to America. His son, Peter Bulkley, married Rebecca Wheeler ca. 1667, was a Fellow of Harvard University, a Massachusetts Freeman (franchised voter), and a Commissioner of the United Colonies, in addition to a career as a preacher. [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Vcbt3PeI9SAC
title=Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University
author=John Langdon Sibley
year=1881
publisher=Charles William Sever]

References

*Chapman, Rev. F. W. "The Bulkeley Family; or the Descendants of Rev. Peter Bulkeley, who settled at Concord, Mass., in 1636". The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., Printers. 1875. Hartford.
*"The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633". 2 vols. Boston: New England Genealogical Society, 1935.
*Jacobus, Donald Lines. "Rev. Peter Bulkeley". New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., 1933.

External links

*worldcat id|lccn-n85-115549