John Davenport (minister)

His brother was the Catholic theologian Francis Davenport, chaplain to Queens Catherine of Braganza and Henrietta Maria de Bourbon.

His time in Holland had been disrupted by a controversy with his supervising pastor John Paget over this issue, and it led to his withdrawal from the Puritan church in Amsterdam.

[11] On May 19, 1669, Davenport preached the Election Sermon before the General Court in Boston, using the occasion to condemn the actions of "Councils" that interfered with the liberty and administration of individual congregations.

Perhaps instigated by this sermon, the Deputies (the lower house of the General Court) named a commission to investigate the actions of the founders of the Third Church and the ministers who had endorsed the separation.

Later that summer, it was discovered that the release letter from New Haven had been severely redacted to give an impression that was not perhaps warranted, though Davenport's First Church rejected charges that they had been misrepresented.

[12] Davenport's appointment to the leading church in New England and his inflammatory election sermon brought to a head the simmering disagreements over the compromise settlement of the Half-way Synod.

But Davenport died the following year; Increase Mather, the other leading Anti-Synodist, experienced a change of heart; and Synodist deputies swept the election of 1671, ending the temporary crisis.