HIGGINSON, FRANCIS
(1586, Claybrooke, England-6 August 1630, Salem, MA). Education: B.A., St. John's College, Cambridge University, 1610, M.A., St. John's College, 1613. Career: Curate, Claybrooke, 1615-17; lecturer, St. Nicholas, 1617-27; minister, Salem, MA, 1629-30.
Francis Higginson served a dozen years as an Anglican minister and was comfortable with life in the established church until he came into contact with Thomas Hooker*, whose nonconformist views he came to embrace. Consequently he had to relinquish his position. For a time under the moderate regime of the bishop of London, he was able to continue his ministry, but then harsher authorities heard of his case and determined to bring him to trial in a court of high commission. To avoid prosecution Higginson elected to go to New England under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629, a year in advance of the Winthrop migration to Boston.
He settled in Salem (then Naumkeag) and formed a Congregational church, sharing responsibility with Samuel Skelton. Higginson was ordained teacher and Skelton, pastor, but in practice those two offices, common in the early Congregational church, overlapped. The Salem Puritans, unlike those in Plymouth, adopted non separating Congregationalism, thinking of themselves as a reformed branch of the Anglican church. Higginson and Skelton are sometimes credited with establishing a precedent followed by the numerous churches founded in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the following years.
Higginson is best remembered for New England's Plantation, a tract he wrote to oppose the notion, then circulating in England, that Massachusetts was a barren wasteland. With Puritan simplicity Higginson described the attraction of New England's wilderness to the pioneers. The region, he says, is a "most healthful place." Long before urban congestion changed the face of eastern Massachusetts, Higginson could write enthusiastically, "A sup [sip] of New England's air, is better than a whole draft of old England's ale." Amid the seemingly endless forests of America he wrote, "Here is good living for those that love good fires."
Ironically Higginson died during his first summer in the allegedly salubrious climate of New England, apparently weakened by the rigors of the previous winter. So while his writing correctly describes some of the attractions offered by America, his death is a reminder of the hardships faced by the Puritan pioneers.
Bibliography
A: New England's Plantation; or, A Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of that Country (London, 1630; Salem. MA. 1908).
B: AAP 1.6-10; DAB 9. 11-12; DARB, 204; NCAB 1,380; J. B. Felt. Memoir of the Rev. Francis Higginson (Boston. 1852); Thomas W. Higginson. Life of Francis Higginson (New York. 1891).
Francis Higginson served a dozen years as an Anglican minister and was comfortable with life in the established church until he came into contact with Thomas Hooker*, whose nonconformist views he came to embrace. Consequently he had to relinquish his position. For a time under the moderate regime of the bishop of London, he was able to continue his ministry, but then harsher authorities heard of his case and determined to bring him to trial in a court of high commission. To avoid prosecution Higginson elected to go to New England under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629, a year in advance of the Winthrop migration to Boston.
He settled in Salem (then Naumkeag) and formed a Congregational church, sharing responsibility with Samuel Skelton. Higginson was ordained teacher and Skelton, pastor, but in practice those two offices, common in the early Congregational church, overlapped. The Salem Puritans, unlike those in Plymouth, adopted non separating Congregationalism, thinking of themselves as a reformed branch of the Anglican church. Higginson and Skelton are sometimes credited with establishing a precedent followed by the numerous churches founded in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the following years.
Higginson is best remembered for New England's Plantation, a tract he wrote to oppose the notion, then circulating in England, that Massachusetts was a barren wasteland. With Puritan simplicity Higginson described the attraction of New England's wilderness to the pioneers. The region, he says, is a "most healthful place." Long before urban congestion changed the face of eastern Massachusetts, Higginson could write enthusiastically, "A sup [sip] of New England's air, is better than a whole draft of old England's ale." Amid the seemingly endless forests of America he wrote, "Here is good living for those that love good fires."
Ironically Higginson died during his first summer in the allegedly salubrious climate of New England, apparently weakened by the rigors of the previous winter. So while his writing correctly describes some of the attractions offered by America, his death is a reminder of the hardships faced by the Puritan pioneers.
Bibliography
A: New England's Plantation; or, A Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of that Country (London, 1630; Salem. MA. 1908).
B: AAP 1.6-10; DAB 9. 11-12; DARB, 204; NCAB 1,380; J. B. Felt. Memoir of the Rev. Francis Higginson (Boston. 1852); Thomas W. Higginson. Life of Francis Higginson (New York. 1891).