Everything about Stephen Bachiler totally explained
Stephen Bachiler (c.
1561 –
1656) was an
English clergyman who was an early proponent of the
separation of church and state in
America.
An early graduate of
Oxford (St. John's College, 1586), he was
vicar of
Wherwell,
Hampshire (1587–1605) when ousted for
Puritanical leanings under
James I. In
1630 he was a member of the
Company of Husbandmen in
London and with them, as the Plough Company, obtained a 1,600 mile² (4,000 km²) grant of land in Maine from the
Plymouth Council for New England. The colony was called "Lygonia" after Cecily Lygon, mother of
New England Council president Sir
Ferdinando Gorges. Bachiler was to be its minister and leader. Although the settlers sailed to America in
1631, the project was abandoned.
Bachiler was 70 years old when he reached
Boston in
1632, and gathered his followers to establish the First Church of Lynn (then
Saugus). He incurred the hostility of the Puritan
theocracy in Boston, casting the only dissenting vote among ministers against the expulsion of
Roger Williams. Despite his age, he was uncommonly energetic, and throughout some two decades pursued settlement and church endeavors, always engaged in controversy and confrontation with
Bay Colony leaders.
In
1638, Bachiler and others successfully petitioned to begin a new plantation at Winnacunnet, to which he gave the name
Hampton when the town was incorporated in
1639. His ministry there became embroiled in controversy when Timothy Dalton was sent to the town as "teaching assistant" by the Boston church after New Hampshire was absorbed by Massachusetts in
1641. Shortly thereafter, Bachiler was excommunicated by the Hampton church on unfounded charges of "scandal", but protested to Governor Winthrop and was later reinstated. In other respects, Bachiler's reputation was such that in 1642, he was asked by Thomas Gorges, deputy governor of the Province of Maine, to act as arbitration "umpire" (deciding judge) in a Saco Court land dispute between George Cleeve and John Winter.
By 1644 Cleeve had become deputy governor of
Lygonia, a rival province to that of Gorges' in Maine established from a resurrected Plough Patent, and asked Bachiler to be its minister at Casco. Bachiler deferred, having already received a call to be minister for the new town of Exeter. Once again Massachusetts intervened in his affairs when the General Court ordered deferral of any church at Exeter. Frustrated in his attempts at a new ministry, Bachiler left Hampton and went as
missionary to
Strawbery Banke (now
Portsmouth, New Hampshire) probably that same year
1644. While there, he married in 1648 (as fourth wife) a young widow, Mary Beedle of Kittery, Maine. In 1651, she was indicted and sentenced for adultery with a neighbor. Denied a divorce by the Massachusetts Court, Bachiler finally returned to
England about
1653. He died near
London, and was buried at All Hallows Staining on October 31,
1656.
Perhaps the best summation of his career is in the biographical entry in Robert Charles Anderson's
The Great Migration Begins (NEHGS, Boston 1995): "Among the many remarkable lives lived by early New Englanders, Bachiler's is the most remarkable."
Notable descendants
Descendants of Stephen Bachiler
External links
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