Thomas Thoroughgood
c. 1595–1669
Norfolk minister; *Iewes in America*, the Lost-Tribes thesis on Native American descent.
Biography
Of Christ's College Cambridge, then rector of Great Massingham in Norfolk, where he spent his whole ministerial career. His Iewes in America: or, Probabilities that those Indians are Iudaical (1650, expanded second edition 1660) argued that the indigenous peoples of America descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel — a position with significant millennial-Israel resonance in Anglo-Reformed eschatology. The work was widely discussed by both English and New England theologians: John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, prefaced the second edition; Cotton Mather and Increase Mather both engaged it; and it shaped the Mathers' continuing expectation of Israel's restoration. Thoroughgood attended the Assembly intermittently, was ejected in 1662, and died in 1669.
Principal works
- Iewes in America (1650)
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.