Cotton, JOHN

Cotton, JOHN, clergyman, born at Derby in 1585, was a tutor at Cambridge, and from about 1612 held a charge at Boston, in Lincolnshire. Cited to appear, for his Puritan views, before Laud at the high commission court, he in 1633 fled to Boston, in New England, where he preached until his death in 1652. Cotton was reputed a profound scholar, and was the author of nearly fifty works, including a catechism, forms of prayer, and a defence of the interference of the civil authority in religious matters, in a famous controversy with Roger Williams.