On Owen's advice he did not proceed to Oxford (a step which he afterwards regretted), but went to Ludlow Castle to read with Richard Wickstead, chaplain to the Council of Wales and the Marches.

[1] He was reluctantly persuaded to go to court, and he went to London under the patronage of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, with the intention of doing so, but soon returned home, resolved to study divinity.

[1] After three months spent working for the dying Owen as a teacher at Wroxeter, Baxter read theology with Francis Garbet, the local clergyman,[1] adding to his reading (initially in devotional writings, of Richard Sibbes, William Perkins and Ezekiel Culverwell, as well as the Calvinist Edmund Bunny at age 14,[4] and then in the scholastic philosophers) orthodox Church of England theology in Richard Hooker and George Downham, and arguments from conforming puritans in John Sprint and John Burges.

[5][1] With the help of James Berry, who later became a colonel in the New Model Army, in 1638 Baxter became master of the free grammar school at Dudley.

[1] Baxter remained at Bridgnorth for nearly two years, during which time he took a special interest in the controversy relating to Nonconformity and the Church of England.

Baxter was invited to deliver a sermon before the people, and was unanimously elected as the minister of St Mary and All Saints' Church, Kidderminster.

[1] When the First English Civil War began in August 1642, like many Baxter tried to avoid taking sides, but Worcestershire was a Royalist stronghold, and he was temporarily retired to the Parliamentarian town of Gloucester.

[1] There he found himself with no fewer than 30 fugitive ministers, among whom were Richard Vines, Anthony Burges, John Bryan and Obadiah Grew.

Included among the congregants were Sir Richard Skeffington, Colonel Godfrey Bosvile, George Abbot the layman scholar, and others.

He joined it that he might, if possible, contract the growth of sectaries in that field, and maintain the cause of constitutional government in opposition to republican tendencies of the time.

Cromwell avoided him; but Baxter, having to preach before him after he had assumed the Protectorship, chose for his subject the old topic of the divisions of the church, and in subsequent interviews argued with him about liberty of conscience, and even defended the monarchy he had subverted.

After his refusal, he was not allowed, even before the passing of the Act of Uniformity, to be a curate in Kidderminster, and Bishop George Morley prohibited him from preaching in the Diocese of Worcester.

In 1684, he was carried three times to the sessions house, being scarcely able to stand, and without any apparent cause was made to enter into a bond for £400 in security for his good behaviour.

Baxter was sentenced to pay 500 marks, to lie in prison till the money was paid, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years.

Baxter was now approaching 70 years old, and remained in prison for 18 months, until the government, hoping to win his influence, remitted the fine and released him.

He wrote 168 or so separate works, including major treatises such as the Christian Directory, the Methodus Theologiae Christianae, and the Catholic Theology.

[8] A slim devotional work published in 1658 under the title Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live[13] formed one of the core extra-biblical texts of evangelicalism until at least the middle of the 19th century.

[14] As summarised by Thomas W. Jenkyn, it differed from the Calvinism on four points:[14] Richard Baxter is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 14 June.

[citation needed] In 1679 Baxter made one of the very few known allusions to Sir Thomas Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus, critically declaring to newly ordained priests, You shall have more.. solid truth than those in their learned Network treatises.

[citation needed] Baxter's influence in New England is referenced in the first chapter of the 19th century devotional work "I Will Be A Lady – a book for girls" by Mrs.

[citation needed] In George Eliot's Mill on the Floss Richard Baxter's "Saints Everlasting Rest" is listed as one of aunt Glegg's books.

Max Weber (1864–1920), the German sociologist, made significant use of Baxter's works in developing his thesis for "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904, 1920).

[22][23] This tribute of general esteem was erected nearly two centuries after Baxter's death, sculpted by Sir Thomas Brock and unveiled 28 July 1875.