Biography

BOLTON, SAMUEL, D.D. (1606-1654), divine and scholar, who has been wrongly identified both with a son and a brother of Robert Bolton, B.D. [see BOLTON, ROBERT, 1572-1631], was born in London in 1606, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge (LE NEVE, Fasti, ed. Hardy, iii. 690, 607). In 1643 he was chosen one of the Westminster assembly of divines. It is stated that he was successively minister of St. Martin's, Ludgate Street, of St. Saviour's, Southwark, and of St. Andrew's, Holborn. He was appointed, on the death of Dr. Bainbrigge in 1645, master of Christ's College, Cambridge, and served as vice-chancellor of the university in 1651. Although with 'no ministerial charge' he 'preached gratuitously every Lord's day for many years.' It is believed that it was this Samuel Bolton who, in 1648, attended the Earl of Holland upon the scaffold ( WHITELOCKE, Mem. p. 387). He died, after a long illness, 15 Oct. 1654. In his will he gave orders that he was to be ‘interred as a private Christian, and not with the outward pomp of a doctor because he hoped to rise in the day of judgment and appear before God, not as a doctor, but as a humble Christian.' Dr. Calamy preached his funeral sermon. [Brook's Puritans, iii. 223-4 ; Clark's Lives, pt. i. 43-7; Calamy' s Funeral Sermon, 1654; Bolton's Genealogical and Biographical Account ; Abram's Blackburn, p. 264.] A. B.

1606–1654

Cambridge

Christ's College

1647-1649

Middlesex

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