George Newton
1602–1681
Long western Presbyterian ministry at Taunton; pastoral hero of the 1645 siege.
Biography
Of Magdalen Hall Oxford, then Taunton (Somerset) from 1631 — a fifty-year ministry that spanned the entire generation of the Civil Wars. Newton's pastoral ministry through the brutal three-month royalist siege of Taunton (December 1644 — May 1645), in which the town was largely burnt and its inhabitants reduced to near-starvation under Sir Ralph Hopton's army, made him a local hero. He attended the Assembly intermittently — Somerset was far from London during war years — and his Assembly contributions are slight. Ejected in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity but continued to preach privately at his house in Taunton, where he died in 1681. He was succeeded in his gathered Dissenting congregation by Joseph Alleine.
Principal works
- A Sermon Preached the 11. of May, 1652 (1653)
English Presbyterian divine
The great majority of the sitting members were English parish ministers of Presbyterian conviction. They formed the drafting core of the Assembly, manning its three standing committees and supplying most of the text of the Confession, the two Catechisms, and the Directory for Public Worship.