Awnsham Churchill

[1] With another brother, John, he then entered into business as booksellers and stationers at the sign of the Black Swan in Paternoster Row, London.

[2] At the beginning of 1680 he signed a petition to the king asking for the recall of parliament; and in 1682 he published a sermon of Samuel Bold against persecution.

[1][3] In the mid-1680s the Churchill brothers were involved in the opposition to James II of England, visiting Amsterdam and consorting with those supporting Monmouth's Rebellion.

[4] He was arrested in 1687 for printing Gaspar Fagel's Letter, which outlined the position on religious toleration of the Prince of Orange.

He amassed a fortune, and was able to purchase, in 1704, the manor of Higher Henbury in Dorset from John Morton, and that of West Ringstead from James Huishe in 1723.

[2] Churchill was returned in a contest as Whig Member of Parliament for Dorchester at the 1705 English general election.

This was enough to alienate the High Churchmen of Dorchester, and in 1710 they procured an address from the borough which pointedly condemned ‘republican principles and anti-monarchical notions’.

[2] The Churchill brothers published in 1695 the edition of William Camden's Britannia by Edmund Gibson, from a manuscript of John Aubrey.