William Hubbard
William Hubbard was an influential figure in early New England, having emigrated from England to Boston in 1635 at the age of thirteen. He pursued higher education, graduating from Harvard College in 1642, and initially aimed to become a physician before entering the ministry in 1653 after the death of his first wife, Margaret Rogers. Hubbard led a local church for nearly half a century and became known for his strong leadership on social and political issues, including his involvement in protests against the censure of New England ministers and opposition to arbitrary colonial taxes.
He was also a participant in the Salem witch trials, where he successfully advocated for the release of a woman accused of witchcraft. Hubbard authored significant historical works, including a narrative about the conflicts with Indigenous peoples and a general history of New England, though his writings sometimes reflected the Puritan perspective without fully acknowledging Native American viewpoints. Despite facing personal controversies, such as marrying a widow significantly younger than himself later in life, he was respected in his community and continued to contribute to religious discourse until his death in 1704.
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William Hubbard
Clergy
- Born: c. 1621
- Birthplace: Little Clacton, Essex, England
- Died: September 14, 1704
- Place of death: Ipswich, Massachusetts
Biography
In 1635 William Hubbard emigrated at the age of thirteen to Boston, Massachusetts, with his parents and five siblings. Hubbard’s father soon became a profitable farmer, and Hubbard was able to enter Harvard College and graduate in the first class in 1642. Initially intending to become a physician, in 1646 Hubbard married Margaret Rogers, the daughter of Reverend Nathaniel Rogers of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Soon after Rogers’s death in 1653, Hubbard entered the ministry, joining the leadership at Rogers’s own church, where he would remain for forty-five years.
Known for his continuing problems with money, Hubbard nevertheless provided firm leadership in his church on various social and political issues. In 1671, he joined a group of fifteen ministers who protested the uneven censure of all New England ministers (charged as a result of the unapproved founding of the Old South Church in Boston). In the 1680’s, he participated in the rebuttal of an arbitrary tax levied by the colony. During the Salem witch trials in 1692, he served as a character witness for one woman and was able to win her freedom. Greatly respected by his contemporaries, he was asked to present a sermon before the Massachusetts General Court in 1676 that would be published as his first text.
The following year, he published his history of the Pequod Wars of the 1630’s in a book titled Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England, from the First Planting Thereof in the Year 1607, to This Present Year 1677. The book makes no pretense at understanding the views of the Native Americans who found themselves at odds with the Puritan settlers. Rather, the book seeks to demonstrate that the Puritans were carrying out the will of God in their battles with the Pequod.
In the wake of various controversies besetting the Puritan churches in America, Hubbard published The Happiness of a People in the Wisdome of Their Rulers Directing and in the Obedience of Their Brethren Attending unto What Israel Ought to Do in 1676, a call for a return to Puritan traditions and orthodoxy as a means of quieting discontent and restoring harmony. In 1682, the General Court of Massachusetts commissioned Hubbard to begin a history of New England, which he titled A General History of New England from the Discovery to MDCLXXX. His history would not be printed until 1815, when it would be published by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Cotton Mather and other historians would draw upon it for their own histories, just as Hubbard drew upon texts written by early settler John Winthrop. Possibly due to the text’s expressed doubts about whether the Puritan settlement of New England evinced proof of God’s everyday intervention on behalf of the settlers, orthodox Puritan leader Increase Mather suppressed its publication.
Hubbard would go on to publish other sermons. Despite the minor scandal that erupted when, as a seventy-three-year-old widower he married thirty-seven-year-old widow Mary Pearce, his former housekeeper, he enjoyed the love and respect of his society. He died on September 14, 1704.