Hull's willingness to preach without approval from church officials and his efforts to chart a middle course between Anglicans and Puritans resulted in repeated conflicts with religious and colonial authorities.
[5] Hull married Agnes (surname unknown)[6] in St. Cuthbert's Church, Wells on 13 March 1633[7] and resigned at North Leigh the following day.
[8] Hull's decision to return to his native Somerset might have ensured relatives were available to support Agnes, then 23, as she became stepmother to a large family of young children.
Hull, a minister of England, and twenty-one families with him allowed to sit down there.”[17] Native Wessagusset had been “nearly depopulated” by the Great Dying, beginning in 1616 when contact with early Europeans sparked waves of infectious disease for which Americans had no immunity.
Like nearly all Massachusetts ministers, he required prospective congregants to give a “testimony of spiritual experience” before they could join the church and have access to the sacraments.
Samuel Newman, was soon “summoned to heal the breach.” Thus, by 1637, “there were no less than four claimants for the Weymouth pulpit, each with a strong party at his command.”[27] In 1637, Hull “relinquished his charge and withdrew.” After “a brief season of preaching at Bass River, now Beverly, he gave up his ministerial labor.”[31] Moving to adjoining Hingham, he was granted a five-acre house lot and 45 acres[32] which he used to graze cattle.
[33] The ecclesiastic chaos had not cost him “the confidence of his fellow townsmen.” He was appointed a local magistrate in 1638[29] and was elected to serve as the settlement's Deputy to the General Court on 7 September 1638 and 13 March 1639.
[34] To encourage development and defense, colonial officials granted large swaths of Native land to their fellow Englishmen.
The Cape Cod village of Mattakeese was prized for its soil's “adaptation to the raising of grain, much of the land being already cleared by the Indians” who had long “successfully cultivated it.”[35] When the original English grantee failed to establish a settlement, Plymouth eradicated his claim and granted the land to Hull and Thomas Dimmock, who led the first group of colonists to Mattakeese in May 1639.
[40] Communal praise quickly gave way to “controversy,” which “turned primarily on the conflicting loyalties and interests of the people who had come to Barnstable from different places.” Hull and his followers founded the town, but the Scituate settlers brought “a population large enough to support a congregation, and Lothrop expected to be its minister.”[41] Ideally, each Puritan church would have two ministers who led worship and administered sacraments: a pastor and a teacher.
[45] In 1640, only a year after founding Barnstable, “Hull does not appear to have held any office.”[38] Without a ministerial salary, he again turned to “agriculture, especially the ranging of cattle and horses for market.”[46] Early in 1641, residents of neighboring Yarmouth asked him to establish a second church in their settlement.
[53] “When Lothrop's spate of excommunications had no perceptible effect, the power of the civil magistrates was invoked.”[54] On 8 March 1642,[55] Plymouth Colony ordered that “a warrant shall be directed to the constable of Yarmouth, to apprehend Mr. Joseph Hull (if he do either exercise the ministry amongst them or administer the seals [sacraments]), to bring him before the next magistrate, to find sufficient sureties for his appearance the next General Court, to answer his doings (being an excommunicant).
On 11 March 1642, she returned to the Barnstable Church, “renouncing” her decision to join the Yarmouth congregation and “confessing her evil in so doing with sorrow,” according to Lothrop's note in the parish register.
George Burdet of “often soliciting” women to his “incontinent practices and persuading them by scriptures to satisfy his insatiable lust.”[65] Gorges “spent much effort in attempting to obtain a more worthy successor to the sinful minister.” In 1641, at least two possible replacements fell through.
Gorges received a letter from William Vassall of Scituate,[68] apparently explaining that members of Hull's Yarmouth congregation had been excommunicated for choosing him as their minister.
Gorges began his 17 May 1642 reply with his admission that the contents of Vassall's letter “somewhat startle” him: “Sorry I am that they … have exposed themselves to reproof for hearing [Mr.
As for … neighbors here I shall not press their consciences but leave them to their own liberty.” Noting that “Any Church may and do err,” Gorges assured Vassall that he and Hull “should most willingly join with you in the request of a fair hearing of the differences before indifferent men,” but added, “we living at such a distance I see not how it can well be effected.
Because “the Anglican concept of parish included all within its boundaries,”[70] he ministered in both mainland Agamenticus and in fishing villages on the rocky cluster of islands six miles from shore known as the Isles of Shoals.
[25] Word of Hull's ministry in Maine reached Winthrop by 10 May 1643, when he cited it as one of the reasons he decided not to invite Maine to join the New England Confederation: “Those of Sir Ferdinando Gorge and his province, beyond Pascataquack, were not received nor called into confederation, because they ran a different course from us both in their ministry and civil administration; for they had lately made Acomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a tailor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister.”[73] Historian James Adams argues Winthrop's real reason was his plan to seize the vast tract: “To have allowed its inhabitants representation … would have been to acknowledge their right to be considered an independent colony.”[74] Winthrop's claim that Hull was “very contentious” is belied by facts.
Although Hull stood firm in his determination to minister without seeking permission from authorities, he withdrew from conflict in England, Weymouth, Barnstable, and Yarmouth, as he would in Maine.
And despite all that Lothrop had done to turn church and state against him, Hull chose to reconcile with the Barnstable congregation when he returned to Cape Cod in summer 1643.
Archbishop William Laud, whose efforts to impose uniformity of worship “precipitated the slide to Civil War,” had been beheaded in 1645.
Initially two broad groupings emerged in Parliament: the moderate Presbyterians and the more radical Independents.”[83] When Hull “applied for a preaching post in Cornwall, he produced certificates from two ministers with good local ties but very different outlooks”: the “leading Presbyterian in the south-west,” George Hughes, and “hawkish Independent” Hugh Peter.
[88] Regarded as “the most impressive and beautiful late medieval church in Cornwall,” its exterior is completely covered in detailed carvings.
Cuckold sonne of Mr Joseph Hull.”[92] Puritans held power in 1655, and evidence that Hull was in their favor “comes from the fact that the Council of State in October 30th, 1655, approved an Augmentation of £50 certified by the Trustees for the maintenance of Ministers to Jos.
The “Book of Sufferings” of the Land's End Meeting reports that men who “farmed the tithe of the priest of Sennan” imprisoned Friends and seized their property.
In a letter to Cornwall parishes and magistrates, he objected to the local practice of scavenging shipwrecks and asked, “priest Hull, are these thy fruits?
… Hast thou taught them no better manners and conversation, who are so brutish and heathenish?”[96] Hull's tenure at St. Buryan ended in 1662 with the Restoration of the Monarchy.
[100] According to George Bishop's 1667 polemic New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord, two women from the local Quaker Meeting went to “Priest Hull's place of worship,” and disrupted “the Old Man” as he preached.
[102] With Winthrop some dozen years dead, there was no political interference when Hull was selected to replace the man once sent to take his job, Rev.