The Life of John Rastrick, 1650–1727

This volume makes available in print for the first time an edition of the manuscript autobiography of John Rastrick, a Lincolnshire clergyman known chiefly for leaving the Church of England at the late date of 1687 to become minister to a succession of nonconformist congregations in Spalding, Rotherham and King's Lynn. Despite his relative obscurity, Rastrick's engaging and entertaining autobiography illuminates many of the central issues in the religion and politics of the half-century after the Restoration, offering a uniquely personal perspective upon both national and local events. Rastrick provides a distinctly individual account of a minister's understanding of science and the natural world; education, reading practices and intellectual culture; marriage, family life, feuds and friendships. At once a pearl of nonconformist writing and a treasure-trove of information, Rastrick's autobiography is an essential resource for those interested in the religion, politics and culture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.