Richard Adams 1626/7-1698

Richard ADAMS 1626/27-1698

Biographical Note

Born in Woodchurch, Cheshire, son of Charles Adams, rector there. BA Brasenose College, Oxford 1648, fellow 1649, MA 1651; junior bursar 1651-53, senior bursar 1654-55. He donated £6 towards the cost of a new chapel at Brasenose in 1657. Rector of St Mildred, Bread Street, London 1655; ejected 1662, after which he became minister to a small nonconformist congregation in Southwark. He was licensed as a Presbyterian at a house in Cheapside belonging to one of his brothers in 1672. Adams helped to edit some of the posthumously published works of Stephen Charnock in the 1680s; his own funeral sermon for Henry Hurst (d.1690) was published posthumously in 1699.

Books

His will directed that all his books and papers should be inherited by his elder son John, on the condition that he pay his brother Peter £60 on his coming of age; this suggests a collection valued at £120. In 1676, he gave 344 books and a portable writing desk to Woodchurch School (founded 1655), with a further 54 books in 1681. [His own, or specially purchased? Need to see if anything can be found out about these]

Characteristic Markings

None of Adams’s books have been identified.

Sources

• Gastrell, F. Notitia Cestriensis (Chetham Soc 8), 1845, 181.
• Matthews, A. G. Calamy revised. Oxford, 1934.
• Wright, Stephen. "Adams, Richard (1626/7–1698), clergyman and ejected minister." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.