Pynchon, William

PYNCHON, WILLIAM: English colonist in America and religious author; b. at Springfield (28 m. n.e. of London), Essex, in 1590; d. at Wraysbury (3 m. s.e. of Windsor), Buckingshamshire, Oct. 29, 1662. He was probably educated at Cambridge; was one of the original patentees of the Massachusetts Bay Company, 1629; came to America, 1630; settled at Roxbury, Mass.; founded Springfield on the Connecticut River, 1636, naming it for his English 372home. Visiting England he published The Meritorious Price of our Redemption (London, 1650) controverting the Calvinistic view of the atonement. The heresies it contained (that Christ did not suffer for man the torments of hell, nor bear man's sins, nor the curse of the law for them, and therefore did not redeem mankind by suffering that curse) aroused great consternation in Massachusetts Bay Colony and upon his return the general court condemned the book to be burned by the executioner and cited Pynchon to appear before it in May, 1651. He acknowledged the order by answering in a letter that he had been entirely misunderstood; but he was summoned again in Oct., 1651, and again in May, 1652. He ignored both orders, and, leaving his children, he returned to England, Sept., 1652. He further published Meritorious Price of our Redemption (1655), revised with a rejoinder to the answer of John Morton, A Further Discussion of . . . the Sufferings of Christ (1653); The Jewes Synagogue (1652); How the First Sabbath was Ordained (1654); and The Covenant of Nature Made with Adam (1662).

Bibliography: Massachusetts Historical Collections, 2 ser., vol. viii., 10 vols., Boston, 1814–23; J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 395–396, 4 vols., New York, 1858–75; H. M. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the Last 300 Years as seen in its Literature, Appendix, nos. 1552, 1638, 1642, 1705, ib. 1880; F. H. Foster, Genetic Hist. of New England Theology, pp. 16–20, 114, Chicago, 1907; DNB, xlvii. 85.