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The Reverend John Hull Company

The Reverend Joseph Hull was born at Crewkerne, Somerset (six miles southeast of Barrington) in 1594 to Thomas Hull and Joanna Peson Hull.(67) In 1614 he graduated from St. Mary Hall, Oxford.(68) In 1619 he was ordained by the Bishop of Exeter, serving during the next three years as the teacher, curate and minister of Colyton, Devonshire.(69) In 1621 he was appointed Rector for North Leigh, Devonshire (eighteen miles southwest of Barrington) where he served until 1632.(70) His sermons were popular and he appears to have been associated with several other popular preachers of the region.

In the 1620's and 1630's there were a number of non-conformist curates who offered a "cure of the soul" under license, but whom later resorted to itinerant preaching due to conflict with the official church. These gadding ministers or preachers did not receive set payment for their independent services and with the pressure mounting from the Church of England chose to leave the country rather than continue such a precarious and combative lifestyle.(71) Hull seems to have somewhat straddled this roll.

The first record of Hull's conflict with the Church of England is with respect to his association with the Reverend John Wareham. Hull had graduated from St. Mary Hall, Oxford in 1614, the same year as Wareham. Wareham (and perhaps Hull as well) received his Master of Divinity in 1618.(72)

In 1626, Wareham was offered the ministry at Sandford, Dorset, but declined, stating that he preferred to remain as the lecturer at Crewkerne, Somerset. Such a refusal to serve was exceptional.(73)

On November 13, 1627 Wareham was accused of stating that certain church practices were undesirable. He was also charged with failure to read authorized prayers before his congregation.(74) That same year, he admitted repeating sermons in his home on Sunday evenings to members of his immediate family and other parishioners. Although he was ordered to cease such activity by Dr. Duck, Chancellor to William Laud the Bishop of Bath & Wells, he claimed the sermons were only for family devotion and perhaps the few persons who dropped by on occasion. He was suspended from his parish and left the diocese to settle at St. Sidwell's in Exeter.(75)

In September 1629, Wareham accompanied by Hull and another cleric, John Cox, returned to Crewkerne. Apparently, Wareham sought to make a farewell sermon before leaving for New England. As a result, the wardens of Crewkerne parish were cited for allowing all three to preach without a license and failing to register Wareham, Hull and Cox in the parish's Book of Strange Preachers. Wareham was again expelled from the diocese on November 28, 1629.(76) In March 1630, he was reordained at Plymouth prior to emigrating with his congregation to the settlement at Hull, Massachusetts.(77)

I found no record of what action, if any, was taken against Joseph Hull for the Crewkerne affair. However, he resigned his rectorship at North Leigh in 1632. The next year, he became the officiating curate (assistant to the parish priest or temporary replacement due to suspension or incapacity) at Broadway, Somerset.(78) Broadway is located approximately half way between Bickenhall and Barrington (three miles from each) and was part of Pierce's diocese. The Bicknell's undoubtedly became familiar with Hull, and had probably heard him preach, at least by this time.

In 1634, during his tenure as Broadway's curate, Hull attended a visitation at Chard (four miles south of Broadway). In January 1635, he was prosecuted for preaching at Broadway without a license. That same month he also allegedly preached at the ancient town of Glastonbury (approximately twenty miles north of Broadway), where he allegedly is quoted as saying that judgment hung over the land and that first it would fall on the clergy and then the laity.(79) He failed to respond to the court's citation and on February 17, 1635 was expelled from the Church of England.(80)

Hull had probably already gathered at least part of his company of emigrants, which included the Bicknells, the Lovells (probably related to Zachary's wife, Agnis Lovell), and Richard Porter (whose yet to be born daughter, Mary, would wed Zachary's son John) and was preparing, or prepared, to leave for New England when he was cited for illegal preaching in January 1635.

The Hull Company's ship left Weymouth about March 20, 1635. A list of passengers, entitled "Bound for New England", was compiled by John Porter, a Deputy Clerk to Edward Thoroughgood.(81) The voyage took forty-six days. The ship landed at Boston on May 6, 1635.(82) On July 8, 1635, Hull's congregation was granted the right to settle at Wessaguscus, south east of Boston. A short while later, the settlement's name was changed to Weymouth by Hull's congregation after their port of departure in England.(83)

Although Hull was a man of "exceptional ability", he was apparently dismissed from his parish once his "liberal views were known".(84) He then moved successively to Hingham (a few miles east of Weymouth) where he served as commissioner and deputy in 1638, then Barnstable and Yarmouth (on the Cape Cod Peninsula).(85) He apparently desired to bridge the gap between Anglicans, Puritans and Separatists.(86) His views lead to conflict with Governor John Winthrop, and eventually resulted in his expulsion from the colony.(87)

The fact that Hull, an "excommunicated" and "very contentious" person, was "entertained" as minister of Accominticus (later known as York), Maine was one of the reasons Winthrop gave for denying admission of several northern settlements into the confederation of the four New England colonies in 1643. The people of these settlements around the Gulf of Maine were generally conformists to the Church of England. In contrast to their dour cousins of Massachusetts, they encouraged public merriment, maypoles, morris dances, wassails, drinking in general, and unaustere dress.(88)

Hull was said by one account to have settled in Accominticus prior to 1640, and to have made occasional visits to the Isles of Shoals (off the New Hampshire coast)(89) to administer sacraments at Smuttynose Island.(90) Another account states that he actually served on the islands first, then accepted the ministry of Accominticus later, on October 16, 1643, thereafter occasionally returning to the islands.(91) Regardless of the chronology of his service, he apparently cultivated a number of devotees both on the Isle of Shoals and the Maine-New Hampshire mainland between 1640 and 1645.

Hull left his ministry at Accominticus and returned to England in 1645. In 1648 he became vicar of Launceston, Cornwall.(92) In April 1656 he became the rector of St. Buryan in Cornwall.(93) With the Restoration of 1660, and the New Act of Conformity passed in May 1662, he was ejected from his parish and returned to New England.(94) In 1662, he became minister at Oyster River (now Durham), New Hampshire. He died on November 18, 1665 at the age of seventy on the Isles of Shoals,(95) apparently having returned to serve his final days as the local minister.