Peter Bulkley or Bulkeley (January 31, 1583 – March 9, 1659) was an influential early Puritan preacher who left England for greater religious freedom in the American colony of Massachusetts. He was a founder of Concord,[1] and was named by descendant Ralph Waldo Emerson in his poem about Concord, Hamatreya.[2]
According to the 8th edition of Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, Bulkley is a descendant of the Plantagenets,[1] and was born at Odell, Bedfordshire, England. He was admitted to St. John's College at Cambridge University at the age of sixteen, where he received several degrees. At one point he was even a Fellow of St. John's.[3][4] After finishing his education, Bulkley succeeded his father as rector of Odell, 1610-1635.[5] During this time Bulkley followed in his father's footsteps as a non-conformist. Finally in the 1630s there were increasing complaints about his preaching, and he was silenced by the archbishop for his unwillingness to conform with the requirements of the Anglican Church.
In 1633, Charles I reissued the Declaration of Sports, an ecclesiastical limitation on allowed recreational activities, with the stipulation that any minister unwilling to read from the pulpit should be removed, and Bulkley's sentiments, along with others in the Puritan movement, were against it. In 1634, Bulkley refused to wear a surplice or use the Sign of the Cross at a visitation for Archbishop William Laud. For this infraction he was ejected from the parish, at least temporarily.[6][7]
Within the year he emigrated to New England, coming aboard the Susan and Ellen in 1635. He was ordained at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in April 1637, and "having carried a good number of planters with him into the woods",[4] became the first minister in Musketaquid, later named Concord. He was "noted even among Puritans for the superlative stiffness of his Puritanism".[4] In March 1638 during the Antinomian Controversy, he was one of the ministers who sat during the church trial of Anne Hutchinson, which resulted in her excommunication from the Boston church.[8]
He was known for his facility in Latin with both epigrams and poetry, with Cotton Mather praising the latter.[4] As a writer, his book of Puritan sermons titled The Gospel Covenant, or the Covenant of Grace Opened, published in London in 1646, in which he appealed to "the people of New England," that they might "labor to shine forth in holiness above all other people", and evoked the City upon a Hill of John Winthrop. To historian Moses Coit Tyler, the "monumental book ... stands for the intellectual robustness of New England in the first age."[4] It is considered one of the first books published in New England.[9]
Bulkley served as moderator at a 1637 synod called in Cambridge due to what Emerson called the "errors" of Anne Hutchinson.[10] According to "tradition", a council of Indians considering attacking the town of Concord held off because "Bulkley is there, the man of the big pray!"[10] (This occurred during King Philip's War in 1675-6, after Peter was dead, and refers instead to his son Rev. Edward Bulkley.)[11]
In 1643, he was the author and the first signer of a petition sent to Governor John Endecott in favor of Ambrose Martin, who was fined for speaking negatively towards the Puritan church and consequently met significant financial hardship.[12]
Bulkley died in Concord.
Bulkley's first wife, Jane Allen, died in 1626. [13] They had twelve children:[14]: 38
After eight years as a widower, he married Grace Chetwood (or Chitwood); they had four more children:[14]: 38
His second wife and sons John, Benjamin, and Daniel accompanied him to America.[13] His son Gershom graduated Harvard in 1655 and married Sarah Chauncey, daughter of the president of Harvard, October 26, 1659.[14]: 78 Son Peter married Rebecca Wheeler ca. 1667, was a Fellow of Harvard University, a Massachusetts Freeman (franchised voter), and a Commissioner of the United Colonies, in addition to a career as a preacher.[13]
