Chauncy, Charles (1592–19 February 1672), Puritan minister and president of Harvard College, was born in Yardley-Bury, Hertfordshire, England, the son of George Chauncy, a member of the lesser gentry, and Agnes Welch Humberstone. In 1605 Chauncy was sent to the Westminster School, which narrowly escaped the notorious Gunpowder Plot of that year. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1610, received the B.A. in 1614, a master’s degree in 1617, and in 1624 was awarded a second bachelor’s degree in divinity. After taking his first degree, Chauncy became a fellow of the college and eventually served as lecturer in Hebrew and Greek....
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Chauncy, Charles (1592-1672), Puritan minister and president of Harvard College
Mark A. Peterson
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Hoar, Leonard (1630?–28 November 1675), Puritan minister and president of Harvard College
Mark A. Peterson
Hoar, Leonard (1630?–28 November 1675), Puritan minister and president of Harvard College, was born in Gloucestershire, England, the son of Charles Hoare, a brewer, and Joanna Hinksman. Charles Hoare was wealthy enough to provide in his will for Leonard to be sent to Oxford University, but after his father’s death in 1638, Leonard’s mother moved the family across the Atlantic to New England, where they settled in Braintree, Massachusetts. Instead of Oxford, Leonard Hoar enrolled at Harvard College, where he received an A.B. in 1650 and an A.M. in 1653....
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Morton, Charles (1627-1698), Puritan clergyman and educator
Edgar J. McManus
Morton, Charles (1627–11 April 1698), Puritan clergyman and educator, was born at Pendavy in Cornwall, England, the son of the Reverend Nicholas Morton, the rector of St. Ive, and Frances Kestell. His early years were spent in Southwark, London, where Nicholas Morton had been appointed to the rectory of St. Saviour’s shortly before Charles’s birth. His mother died when he was quite young, and after the death of his father in 1640, Charles and two younger brothers returned to Cornwall to live with their mother’s family. In 1646 he entered Cambridge, his father’s alma mater, and joined the Puritan party, which controlled the university throughout the Great Rebellion. When Oxford, which had been a Royalist bastion, surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in 1646, hundreds of scholars and lecturers were ejected to make room for men loyal to the new regime. In 1648 Morton joined the Cambridge Puritans who flocked to Oxford to take advantage of the opportunities at the older institution. He was admitted to Wadham College in 1649, and he took his B.A. the same year. Wadham was then a major center for the study of the “new philosophy,” as emerging experimental science was known in the seventeenth century. By the time he took his M.A. in 1652, Morton had acquired a first-rate scientific education....
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Oakes, Urian (1631-1681), Puritan clergyman and president of Harvard College
Barbara Dailey
Oakes, Urian (1631–25 July 1681), Puritan clergyman and president of Harvard College, was born in England, possibly in London, the son of Edward Oakes and Jane (maiden name unknown). His parents brought Urian and his brother Edward to Cambridge, Massachusetts, about the year 1640. Although his occupation in England is unknown, Edward Oakes, Sr., in Massachusetts established himself as a respected member of the colony. Obtaining freeman status in 1642, he served as deputy to the General Court from Cambridge (1659–1682) and from Concord (1684–1686); he also was selectman (1643–1678) and a lieutenant in Metacomet’s ( ...
