John Wheelwright Biography | Poet

John Wheelwright (c.1592–1679), was a Puritan clergyman in England and America, and was most noted for being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Antinomian Controversy, and for subsequently establishing the town of Exeter, New Hampshire. Born in Lincolnshire, England, he was raised in a family with substantial means, and received both a B.A. and M.A. at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he was a noted athlete and where Oliver Cromwell was a college mate of his. Ordained in 1619, he became the vicar of the church in Bilsby, Lincolnshire, and held this position for ten years until removed for simony .