Richard Baxter, whose life spanned nearly the entire Stuart dynasty, was the leading Nonconformist minister at the time of the Restoration and one of the greatest of the Puritan divines.
His early life was associated with the west of England and Kidderminster in particular, where from 1641 to 1660 he preached to and shepherded a congregation that grew to one fifth of the town. For eighteen months during the Civil War he also moved about preaching to various units of the Parliamentarian army. In April 1660, just prior to the arrival of King Charles II, Baxter left Kidderminster for London, and was associated with the city much of the remainder of his life.
He was for a time one of the king’s chaplains and played a leading role in the attempt by the Nonconformists to reach a peaceful settlement with the Anglicans. He was the Nonconformist spokesman at the Savoy Conference of April 1661, and he prepared a list of proposed additions to the prayer-book, which unfortunately were rejected. In 1662 he was deprived of his living as a preacher by the Act of Uniformity.
Baxter had preached at St. Dunstan’s- inthe- West, St. Bride’s and other London churches, but after 1662, though he continued to preach on occasion, he was under great restraint, often watched, and was imprisoned several times. He married in 1662, and in 1669 his wife Margaret kept house for him in prison at Clerkenwell for six months. She died in 1681. In 1685, ill and barely able to stand, he was abused and sentenced to yet another prison term by the vicious Judge Jeffries. Yet his mental and spiritual output during all these years of hardship was phenomenal—countless sermons and 168 books, some of them large volumes. Two of his books, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest and The Reformed Pastor, are among the greatest Christian classics. One of his last statements was a prayer for London: ‘Lord, pity, pity, pity the ignorance of this poor city!’ He was buried in London at Christ Church, Greyfriars.