Edmund Calamy the Elder

Edmund Calamy was born in the parish of St Thomas the Apostle, London, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and then Pembroke College, Cambridge,[1] where his opposition to Arminianism excluded him from a fellowship.

Nicholas Felton, Bishop of Ely, nevertheless made him his chaplain, and gave him the living of St Mary, Swaffham Prior in East Cambridgeshire, which he held till 1626.

[3] He retired when his bishop Matthew Wren insisted on the observance of certain ceremonial articles: Calamy refused to read out the Book of Sports in his church.

[2] At the opening of the Long Parliament he distinguished himself in defence of the Presbyterian polity, in contributing to the joint conciliatory work known as Smectymnuus.

[2] In that year he edited the Souldier's Pocket Bible, a popular Biblical anthology designed for the Parliamentarian military forces.

[2] Calamy belonged to the hypothetical universalist group in the Assembly, those influenced by John Davenant or his reading of the Synod of Dort.

Calamy the Younger followed a religious path similar to his father's, and lost the rectory of Moreton, Essex in the Great Ejection of 1662.