Adoniram Byfield

Adoniram Byfield or Bifield (d. 1660) was an English clergyman, one of the scribes to the Westminster Assembly. The surviving minutes of the Assembly, which according to a project to have them published "arguably constitute the most important unpublished religious text of seventeenth-century Britain", run to over half a million words and are almost all in Byfield's writing.^[1]

Life

He was the third son of Nicholas Byfield, probably born before 1615. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1620, and graduated B.A. in 1624. He was ordained in 1625 and became perpetual curate of the London church All Hallows Staining in 1629.^[2]

In 1642 he was chaplain to Sir Henry Cholmondeley's regiment. On 6 July 1643 he was appointed one of the two scribes to the Westminster Assembly, the other being Henry Roborough. Their assistant was

Directory of Public Worship

(ordered to be published 13 March 1645), which they sold for £400.

It was during the sitting of the assembly that Byfield obtained first the sinecure rectory, and then the vicarage of

Restoration

.

In 1654 he was nominated one of the assistant commissioners for Wiltshire, under the ordinance of 29 June for ejecting scandalous ministers, and was active among them, for example against

presbytery whose tactics opened the way to independency

.

Works

Byfield's most important work consists of the manuscript minutes, or rough notes, of the debates in the assembly, which are almost entirely in his very difficult handwriting. They are preserved in

Dr. Williams's Library,^[3] and were first edited by Alexander Ferrier Mitchell and John Struthers in 1874. According to Mitchell, Byfield had published a catechism some years before the assembly met. In 1626 he edited his father's Rule of Faith, a work on the Apostles' Creed

. To Byfield is ascribed A Brief View of Mr. Coleman his new modell of Church Government, 1645. He also assisted Chambers in his Apology for the Ministers of the County of Wiltshire of 1654.

Notes

^ "Westminster Assembly Project » the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly". Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2009.
^ "Adoniram Bifield (BFLT620A)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
^ "Dr Williams's Library". Archived from the original on 12 October 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2009.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Byfield, Adoniram". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

[1] "Westminster Assembly Project » the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly". Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2009.

[2] "Adoniram Bifield (BFLT620A)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.

[3] "Dr Williams's Library". Archived from the original on 12 October 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2009.

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