Stoughton, JOHN, a learned English divine, was born in Norwich, 18th November 1807, and educated at Highbury College, Islington, and University College, London. Appointed Congregationalist minister at Windsor in 1832, he removed to Kensington in 1843, and here laboured till his retirement in 1875, when the congregation presented him with £3000. From 1872 till 1884 he acted as professor of Historical Theology and Homiletics in New College, St John's Wood. He was Congregational lecturer in 1855, chairman of the Congregational Union in 1856, received the D.D. degree from Edinburgh in 1869, took part in the Evangelical Alliance Conferences at New York (1873) and Basel (1879). He died 24th October 1897. See Life by his daughter (1899).
He edited for many years The Evangelical Magazine, and has written many books marked by profound learning, the most important Church and State Two Hundred Years Ago (1862); Ecclesiastical History of England (5 vols. 1867-74), supplemented by two volumes on the Reign of Anne and the Georges (1878), and two on the period of 1800-50 (1884); Homes and Haunts of Luther (1875); Footsteps of the Italian Reformers (1881); Spanish Reformers (1883); studies of Wilberforce, Penn, Howard; and Recollections of a Long Life (1894).