Zechariah Symmes (5 April 1599, in Canterbury – 4 February 1671, in Charlestown, Massachusetts) was an English Puritan clergyman who emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England and became pastor of the First Church in Charlestown, an office he held continuously from 1634 to his death in 1671. Although not one of the original Charlestown founders of 1629, on arrival in 1634 he swiftly found his place among them in the church they had convened two years previously. One of the many emigrant ministers who emerged from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he was a close fellow-worker among the leading lights of the "Bible Commonwealth".
Having helped to formulate the laws by which the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the Colony were interwoven, throughout his long ministry he strongly upheld the conservative Puritan orthodoxy of his own Church, and of the Congregational collective, against doctrinal threat or dissent. Even in his passage to America he was confronted with the Antinomianism of Anne Hutchinson, and having urged and participated in the proceedings against her party which led to their banishment, he played an active part in the many unfolding controversies against the Baptists, the Quakers, and other subversive tendencies. With Massachusetts Baptists in particular he had a long struggle as their leading protagonists during the 1640s and 1650s were members of his own church.'Zechariah Symmes, 1634-1671', in W.B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols (Robert Carter & Brothers, New York 1859-1869), Vol. I, pp. 47-48 (HathiTrust).
He is the ancestor of one of the early English families in America.J.A. Vinton, The Symmes Memorial: A Biographical Sketch of Rev. Zechariah Symmes (David Clapp & Son, Boston 1873) (Internet Archive).
Origins
William Symmes, the father of Zechariah, matriculated from Clare Hall, Cambridge in 1577, and took B.A. in 1580/81 and M.A. in 1584. Becoming a Fellow of the college, he was ordained deacon and priest by the Bishop of Peterborough (Richard Howland) on 5 March 1586/87, and received the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1591.'Symmes or Sym, William', in J. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I volume 4 (Cambridge University Press, 1927), p. 76 (Internet Archive). Clergy of the Church of England database, 'Syme, William', CCEd Person ID: 148989 . Soon after ordination, around 1588 he preached at St Mary's church, Sandwich, in Kent, where Revd. Thomas PawsonSee under 'Pausson, Henry', in Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part I volume 3 (Cambridge University Press 1924), p. 321 (Internet Archive). (who had been ordained by Matthew Parker in 1560) held the vicarage jointly with that of Ham in Kent (both Crown presentations) from 1564 until his death in 1597.Church of England Clergy database, 'Pawson, Thomas (1560-1597)', CCEd Person ID: 73309 . Pawson, who had known Symmes and his parents in his schooldays, informed him that his father (also William Symmes) and mother had been Protestant in the time of Queen Mary I, and gave to the younger William a book of evangelical sermons which had belonged to the elder William and had been hidden in the Symmes house to avoid persecution. In December 1602 William junior recorded this information on the flyleaf of the book, and added the following remark: "I charge my sons Zachariah and William, before Him that shall judge the quick and the dead, that you never defile yourselves with any idolatry or superstition whatsoever, but learn your religion out of God's holy word, and worship God as he himself hath prescribed, and not after the devices and traditions of men."C. Mather, 'The Life of Zechariah Symmes', in Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, The Ecclesiastical History of New England (Book III Chapter 21), First American Edition, 2 Vols (Silas Andrus, Boston 1820), I, at p. 415 (Google).
Born at Canterbury on 5 April 1599, Zechariah was religious from childhood. He was apparently the elder brother: he and William both attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Zechariah went first, admitted pensioner 1617, taking B.A. in 1620/21 and M.A. in 1624, and his brother followed, matriculating in 1619, taking B.A. in 1622/23 and M.A. in 1626. Zechariah is said to have been a particularly close friend of Jeremiah Burroughs.Mather, Magnalia, I, pp. 415-16. After working as children's tutor in various wealthy households,Mather, Magnalia, I, p. 415. he became lecturer at St Antholin, Budge Row in London in 1621 and in the following year married Sarah Baker at St Saviour's, Southwark. A son (c. 1623), and a daughter Sarah (c. 1625) were born to them in London.Vinton, The Symmes Memorial, pp. 1-17, at p. 16 (Internet Archive). However, as a dissenter he suffered persecution in the Bishops' Courts and resigned this position in 1625, being presented instead as Rector of Dunstable, Bedfordshire in that year, where he remained until 1634. There his children William (1626), Marie (1628), Elizabeth (1629), Huldah (1630), Hannah (1632) and Rebekah (February 1633/34) were baptized.J. Savage, Gleanings for New England History (Separate printing, 1843), at pp. 65-66 (Internet Archive): Issued also in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Series 3 volume 8, pp. -348. Upon graduation and ordination his brother William received the Crown presentation of Harlington in Bedfordshire (not far from Dunstable) in 1627, where he at once married Mary Crawley on 17 May, and remained the Rector of Harlington until 1638.'Symmes, Zechariah' and 'Simmes, William', in Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part 1 volume 4, p. 76 (Internet Archive).
Emigration Whether for reasons of continuing persecution, or for the insufficiency of the living of Dunstable, Symmes followed the call of Divine providence to New England with his family in 1634. He sailed in the Griffin (which in the previous year had carried John Cotton to the same destination), arriving in Boston on 18 September. Among his fellow-travellers were the Revd. John Lothropp (who became pastor at Scituate and later at Barnstable, Plymouth Colony) together with some 30 of his congregation from the original English Independent Church in Southwark.Vinton, The Symmes Memorial, p. 3 (Internet Archive).'First Independent Church in England', in W. Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses, in London, Westminster, and Southwark, 4 Vols. (Author, London 1808), I, pp. 36-50, at pp. 40-41 (Google).
During the passage Symmes and Lothropp conducted religious meetings in the great cabin of the ship, where Symmes formed an unfavourable opinion of Anne Hutchinson, also a passenger, in whom (according to his later testimony) he perceived a secret opposition to the content of their ministry. They were (she thought) preaching a Covenant of Works, where Anne contended for a Covenant of Grace. Symmes, who in England had once or twice heard her slight the ministers of the Word, found her opinions corrupt and narrow in a discussion concerning a passage in St John, "that place in John concerning the love of the brethren",I.e., the First Epistle of John. Anne was affirming that those who love Christ will love one another. and she challenged him and said that "when they came to Boston there would be something more seen" than he had said, and that she had many things to say, but he "could not bear them now". On arrival at Boston he reported her for her views, and was called in to discuss the point at issue when she applied for admission to the church.Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay (Thomas and John Fleet, Cornhill, Boston, 1767), Appendix II: 'November 1637, The Examination of Mrs Anne Hutchinson at the Court in Newtown', pp. 482-520, at p. 493 (Internet Archive).See also D.D. Hall (ed.), The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, pp. 322-23 (Google).
Soon after his arrival Symmes was invited to assist in founding a church in a new place, but not wishing to distance himself from other ministers preferred to join a settled church, and, having been admitted to the church at Charlestown on 6 December, on 22 December 1634 he was granted the office of Teaching Elder, where Thomas James was pastor.W.F. Poole (ed.), Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England, by Captain Edward Johnson (Warren F. Draper, Andover 1867), Chapter XXXII, p. 70 (Internet Archive). (Original: Nathaniel Brooke, London 1654). James Cudworth, who had settled shortly before this in Scituate, referred to the arrival of his "cosson" Symmes there in a letter to his stepfather Dr. John Stoughton, active in the promotion of the emigrant ministry.'Letter of James Cudworth of Scituate, 1634', (to Dr. Stoughton), in New England Historical and Genealogical Register 14 (1860), pp. 101-04; see also J.C. Whitebrook, 'Dr John Stoughton the Elder', Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society Vol. VI, no. 2 (October 1913), pp. 89-107, at pp. 104-07, continued in Vol. VI, no. 3 (February 1914), pp. 177-87, at pp. 177-78 (Internet Archive); also W.N. Sainsbury (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660 (Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, London 1860), p. 194, no. 39 (Internet Archive). This kinship probably lay through Stoughton, whose brother Thomas had emigrated in 1630 to become founding minister of Dorchester, Boston,E.McL. Turner, The English Ancestry of Thomas Stoughton, 1588-1661, and his son Thomas Stoughton, 1624-84, of Windsor, Conn. (Artcraft Press, Waterloo, Wisconsin 1958), at pp. 62-73. (HathiTrust) Warning: the page sequence in this view is muddled. See Internet Archive version (Login only). and whose brother Israel Stoughton (emigrated 1632) then represented Dorchester in the Massachusetts General Court.R. Thompson, 'Stoughton, Israel', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Their father Thomas Stoughton (a dissenting minister) was a native of Sandwich in Kent, where he died in 1622.P. Collinson, J. Craig and B. Usher, Conferences and Combination Lectures in the Elizabethan Church: Dedham and Bury St Edmunds 1582-1590, Church of England Records Society Vol. 10 (Boydell Press, 2003), p. xciv and 'Biographical Register' pp. 252-55, at p. 253, fn. 2 and p. 254 and p. 255 (Google). John Stoughton had been a senior Fellow at Emmanuel College while the Symmes brothers were studying there.Alumni Cantabrigienses Part I Vol. 4, p. 171 (Internet Archive).
Edward Johnson remarked that Mrs Sarah Symmes, 'indued by Christ with graces fit for a Wildernesse condition, her courage exceeding her stature, with much cheerfulnesse did undergoe all the difficulties of these times of straites, her God through Faith in Christ supplying all her wants with great industry, nurturing up her young children in the feare of the Lord'.Wonder-Working Providence, p. 70. Her children baptized in Charlestown were Ruth (1635), Zechariah (1637/38), Timothy (1640, died 1641), Deborah (1642) and Timothy (1643).The Symmes Memorial, pp. 16-17.
Pastor of Charlestown: first years Thomas James