Massachusetts Bay Company
John Davenport, an English Puritan clergyman, was born in Coventry, England in 1597. He was educated at the University of Oxford and was a minister of the Church of England. Sometime prior to 1633, Davenport became a Nonconformist. In 1633, he moved to Holland. There, be became pastor of a Puritan church in Amsterdam for three years. At the end of that time he returned to England and assisted in obtaining for the Massachusetts Bay Company a charter to establish a colony in the New World.
With Theophilus Eaton, in 1637, Davenport immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The following year Davenport and Eaton established a new settlement that is today known as New Haven in Connecticut.
In this new setting, Davenport became the pastor. It was a position in the community that gave him great influence and allowed him to control who became church members. This resulted in also giving him considerable political privileges. However, his power did not extend to allowing him to prevent the combining of the New Haven and Connecticut colonies under the charter of 1662.
Five years later, in 1667, Davenport accepted a pulpit in Boston. Soon Davenport's congregation fell into a pattern of dissension a similar to what had occurred in Boston in 1631, when Roger Williams
began to speak out against Puritan beliefs and two years later when Anne Hutchinson.
did the same. The result of the dissension was that the members of Davenport's congregation split into two factions.
John Davenport continues withDavenport and Halfway Covenant.
