Samuel Clarke (minister)

Samuel Clarke (10 October 1599 – 25 December 1683) was an English Nonconformist clergyman and significant Puritan biographer.

Clarke was educated by his father till he was thirteen; then at the free school in Coventry; and when seventeen was entered at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

He was protected by Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, and finally accepted another lectureship in Warwick, where complaints were still made of his omission of ceremonies.

On 23 October 1642 Richard Baxter was preaching for Clarke at Alcester, when the guns of the battle of Edgehill were heard, and next day they rode over the battle-field.

The former curate having been expelled, Clarke was elected in his place by the parishioners, and when the war was over resigned Alcester, which was troubled by 'sectaries,' in order to retain it.

He assisted in drawing up the jus divinum ministerii evangelici, issued by the London Provincial Assembly in 1653, in defence of the regular ministry against the lay-preaching permitted by the independents.

At the Restoration Clarke was deputed by the London ministers to congratulate the king; and he took part with Baxter and others in the Savoy Conference.