was incorporated at New College, Oxford, on 28 April 1652, and, after being elected fellow of that society, graduated M.A. on 30 June 1653. After the Restoration he was ejected from New College, and, returning to America, was continuously elected assistant from 1671 to 1686. In 1684, however, and again in 1686, he was so displeased with the general result of the election that he refused to qualify for office by taking the necessary oath. In the politics of his colony he was identified with the moderate party, whose general policy towards the crown was one of concession. In spite of this he seems to have retained the confidence of his fellow-colonists, as he was chosen one of the federal commissioners from 1673 to 1677, and again from 1680 to 1686. In 1677 he was appointed one of two agents to represent the colony in England in a boundary dispute with the proprietors of New Hampshire. In 1692 he was appointed lieutenant-governor under the new charter of Massachusetts, and held that office till his death. In the year of his appointment he presided over the court specially constituted for the trial of the Salem witches, and acted with great severity. He died unmarried at Dorchester, New England, on 7 July 1701. He was a liberal benefactor to Harvard University, founding a hall, called by his name, at a cost of 1,000l., and bequeathing twenty-seven acres of land.
[Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts; Palfrey's History of New England; Sewell's Diary in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. 5th ser. vol. vi.; Quincy's History of Harvard University; Hist. of Dorchester (Dorchester Ant. and Hist. Soc.), 1851–8; Collections of Dorchester Ant. and Hist. Soc.]
STOUGHTON, JOHN (1807–1897), dissenting minister, son of Thomas Stoughton by his wife, Sarah Bullard, daughter of the master of the Norwich lunatic asylum (Bethel Hospital), was born in the parish of St. Michael at Plea, Norwich, on 18 Nov. 1807. His father, son of an admiral in the navy, was a strict churchman. He died when Stoughton was only five years old, and the boy's education was somewhat neglected. His mother, a Friend, taught him to read, and sent him to the Norwich grammar school. While there he saw something of the intellectual coterie which then gave Norwich an exceptional position among provincial cities [see Taylor, William, (1765–1836)]. Placed in the office of a Roman catholic lawyer, Stoughton turned with zest from Blackstone and De Lolme to the study of Milner's ‘End of Religious Controversy,’ and convinced himself that the independent churches most nearly corresponded to the primitive type. To this view he adhered through life. Abandoning the law, Stoughton in 1828 entered Highbury College, where the society of his contemporary, Henry Rogers [q. v.], formed a potent intellectual stimulus.
On his ordination in May 1833 Stoughton was called to the co-pastorate of the congregational church at Windsor. This charge he resigned after ten years to succeed to that of Hornton Street church, Kensington. He remained at Hornton Street for more than thirty years. Though he never took rank among the masters of pulpit eloquence, his sermons attracted the more cultivated middle class. His leisure he devoted to organisations for evangelical propaganda and to literary work, chiefly historical, which gained him wide recognition. He enjoyed the respect and friendship of some dignitaries of the church of England, among them Deans Alford, Hook, and Stanley, and Archbishops Tait and Magee. In 1856 he delivered the Congregational Lecture on ‘The Ages of Christendom before the Reformation,’ and was elected chairman of the Congregational Union.
In 1862 appeared his first important work, ‘Church and State Two Hundred Years Ago: a History of Ecclesiastical Affairs in England from 1660 to 1663,’ London, 8vo. There followed his elaborate ‘Ecclesiastical History of England’ (Civil Wars, Commonwealth, and Restoration), London, 1867–70, 4 vols. 8vo, which, though unduly diffuse in style, evinced careful study of original sources and freedom from pedantry and prejudice. With its sequels—‘Religion in England under Queen Anne and the Georges,’ London, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo, and ‘Religion in England from 1800 to 1880,’ London, 1884, 2 vols. 8vo—it forms an important contribution to the religious history of England.
At the instance of Lord Ebury, Stoughton compiled an account of nonconformist modes of communicating, which was appended to the fourth report of the ritual commission, 1870 (Parl. Papers, 1870, No. xix.). Having accepted in 1872 the chair of historical theology in New College, St. John's Wood, he resigned on 11 April 1874 the Kensington charge. With his professorial and literary work he combined for many years occasional duty as a preacher. In the summer of 1876 he arranged a conference between churchmen and dissenters, which met on 4 July in a room in the House of Lords under the presidency of Archbishop Tait, and discussed, without result, the means to co-operation in Christian effort. In 1877 he delivered in
