Richard Baxter 1615-1691

Richard BAXTER 1615-1691

Biographical Note

Born in the village of Rowton, Shropshire, son of Richard Baxter (d.1663) of Eaton Constantine, Shropshire, and Beatrice Adeney (d.1635). Baxter did not receive a university education but had a voracious appetite for books and ‘became one of the most learned of seventeenth-century divines’ (ODNB). Schoolmaster in Dudley, Worcestershire; assistant to William Madstard, vicar of Bridgnorth, Shropshire 1639. Vicar of Kidderminster, Worcestershire 1648 (ejected 1662); licensed to preach in London, 1672. A hugely influential devotional author, and a leading figure in late 17th-century English nonconformity.

Books

Baxter's surviving library catalogue shows him to have had a collection of ca.1500 volumes.

Baxter's inscription in a copy of J. Caudry, Sabbatum redivivum, 1645, Princeton University Library

Characteristic Markings

Princeton University Library 5885.246.11 has Baxter's inscription on the flyleaf, above a biblical quotation.

Sources

• Cambers, A. Godly reading, Cambridge, 2011, 131.
• Hoare, P. (gen.ed.), The Cambridge history of libraries in Britain and Ireland. 3 vols. Cambridge, 2006, II 179-80.
• Keeble, N. H. "Baxter, Richard (1615–1691), ejected minister and religious writer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Matthews, A. G. Calamy revised. Oxford, 1934.
• Nuttall, G. A transcript of Richard Baxter’s library catalogue, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 2 (1951), 207-21, 3 (1952) 74-100.