secretary of the Duke of Lincoln, provided his daughter with a careful upbringing and excellent home education: for six years she read the Scriptures, and a little later gained access to the ducal library. Edward Taylor (1642-1729) Born in England, highly educated, and living a rather isolated frontier life at Westfield, Mass., Edward Taylor appears to have been outside the major developments in Puritan New England. His theology resembled that of his orthodox Boston contemporaries Michael Wigglesworth, Increase and Cotton Mather, and his lifelong friend Samuel Sewall, more than that of Solomon Stoddard, minister at nearby Northampton, whose liberal views on church membership Taylor strongly disapproved.
Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)
Michael Wigglesworth was born probably in Yorkshire, England, on Oct. 18, 1631. The family went to Charlestown, Mass., in 1638 and soon settled in New Haven, Conn. There was no shelter on the land allotted to the Wigglesworths, and they spent the first winter in a cellar hole.