The Reverend David Clarkson was the second Puritan rector ‘imposed by parliament’, on the parishioners of Crayford.  This article looks at his life before coming to Crayford and shows how his Puritan faith and traumatic experience as a Royalist prisoner at the start of the Civil War made him a controversial choice to heal Crayford’s divisions at the end of the Second Civil War.

David Clarkson: Trained to be a Puritan Firebrand

David Clarkson was a son of Robert Clarkson, born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in February 1622, and baptized on the 3rd of March the same year. His father was a respectable yeoman with a strong Puritan faith, which ranked him amongst Bradford’s leading inhabitants.  David had one brother, William, who became rector of Addle, Yorkshire and died in 1660 and a sister, Mary, who was married
to Mr. John Sharp, of Little Horton Hall, near Bradford. It is through his brother-in-law that we learn of Clarkson’s early experiences in the English Civil War.

As a child, David’s father sent both of his sons to the local grammar school to try and secure them places to study divinity at university which would put themselves in the position to evangelise Robert’s Puritan beliefs. On the eve of the English Civil War, David took the first step towards his father’s plan by gaining admittance to Trinity College College, Cambridge on October 22nd, 1641.

Clarkson’s Terrifying Experience at the Siege of Bradford 1642

Bradford, like many other manufacturing towns, were strong supporters of the Parliament cause and so they were attacked by Royalist forces, commanded by Sir William Saville.  Sir Thomas Fairfax rescued Bradford from attack, with a Parliamentarian force of 800 foot and 60 horses, which forced Saville’s men to retreat to Leeds. (Fairfax would be the man who would later muster his New Model Army on Crayford Heath at the start of the Second Civil War in 1648). Young Clarkson thinking it safe to return to Bradford from Cambridge to visit his family, became trapped when the city was besieged by the Royalists for a second time under the Duke of Newcastle in June 1642.  Sir Thomas Fairfax made a vigorous defence of Bradford, but having exhausted his ammunition, he offered to capitulate; Newcastle, however, refused to grant the conditions, so Fairfax with 50 horses, cut his way through the Royalist lines and made good his retreat.  We know that Clarkson was given the chance to join his brother-in-law John Sharp in the breakout but failed to make it and was taken prisoner.

A contemporary account of Clarkson’s horrific experiences of being captured by Newcastle’s men appeared in an account by Joseph Lister, an apprentice to Mr John Sharp, the brother-in-law of Mr David Clarkson.  The opening lines below appear to show that the reason that Clarkson failed to escape with Fairfax was that he lost his nerve:

” My master being gone, I sought for my mother, and having found her, she, and I, and my sister, walked in the street, not knowing what to do, or which way to take. And as we walked up the street, we met a young gentleman, called David Clarkson, leading a horse. My mother asked him where he had been with that horse. Says he, ‘ I made an essay to go with my brother Sharp, and the army, who broke through the enemy’s leaguer; but the charge was so hot I came back again, and now I know not what to do.’ Then I answered, and said, ‘ Pray, mother, give me leave to go with David, for I think I can lead him a safe way;’ for being born in that town, I knew all the by-ways
about it.

David Clarkson hoped to slip between the Royalist forces and get back to Cambridge with the help of his brother-in-law’s apprentice Joe Lister.  Like fugitives, they skirted around Bradford to find a way through and were joined by two of Fairfax’s men who were also trying to escape:

” David also desired her to let me go with him, so she begged a blessing on me, and sent me away, not knowing where we could be safe. So away we went, and I led him to a place called the Sill-bridge, where a foot company was standing; yet I think they did not see us, so we ran on the right hand of them and then waded over the water, and hearing a party of horse come down the lane towards the town, we laid us down in the side of the corn, and they perceived us not. It being about daybreak, we stayed here as long as we durst for being discovered, it beginning to be light. Well, we got up, and went in the shade of the hedge, and then looking about us, and hoping to be past the danger of the leaguer, we took to the highway, intending to go to a little town called Clayton; and having waded over the Avater, we met with two men that were troopers, and who had left their horses in the town, and hoped to get away on foot, and now they and we walked together, and hoped we had escaped all danger.

Joe Lister described the terrifying moment when David Clarkson was captured by a Cavalier with drawn sword:

All of a sudden a man on horseback from towards the beacon had espied us and came riding towards us, and we, like poor affrighted sheep, seeing him come fast towards us, with a drawn sword in his hand, we foolishly kept together, and thought to save ourselves by running. Had we scattered from one another, he had but got one of us. We all got into a field; he crossed the field and came to us, and as it pleased God, being running by the hedge side, I espied a thick holly-tree, and thought perhaps I might hide myself in this tree and escape, so I crept into it, and pulled the boughs about me, and presently I heard them cry out for quarter. He wounded one of them, and took them all prisoners, and said, ‘ There were four of you; where is the other ?’ but they knew not, for I, being the last and least of them, was not missed; so he never looked after me more : but I have often thought since how easily we might have knocked him down, had we but had courage ; but alas ! we had none.”

Lister gives no further information respecting young Clarkson, but it is most probable that he was taken to Leeds as a Royalist prisoner.  As a Puritan training to be a man of the cloth, Clarkson must have feared for his life whilst imprisoned in Leeds. To his relief he was exchanged for a Royalist prisoner and was able to return to Cambridge to finish his studies.  His experience made him an implacable enemy of the Royalist cause, something that would not fit well with later becoming rector of Royalist Crayford.

Cambridge, Cromwell and Patronage from the Earl of Manchester

Soon after the civil wars began, the heads of that university resolved to send their plate to the king to be coined into money for his military chest. This brought Cromwell, who was the member for the borough in parliament, to the town, and having raised a troop of horse in that neighbourhood, Cromwell imposed his authority on the city and the Royalist leadership of the university.  Their active support of the King led the University to be purged by the Earl of Manchester, serjeant-major-general of Parliament’s Eastern Association army. He, with a committee, was authorised to

Call before them all provosts, masters, fellows, and students of the university, to hear complaints against such as were scandalous in their lives, ill-affected to the Parliament, fomentors of the present unnatural war, or who had deserted the ordinary places of their residence.

Manchester arrived in Cambridge, on the 24th of February, 1644, and expelled  according to Walker:

Near two hundred masters and fellows, besides scholars, &c, which probably might be as many more.

Manchester then asked for suitable candidates to come forward and take up the vacant positions at the university.  David Clarkson would be one of the beneficiaries.  Manchester explained that:

His purpose was forthwith to supply the vacant fellowships, and desiring that if there were any in the respective colleges, who in regard of degree, learning, and piety, should be found fit for such preferment, they would upon the receipt of that paper return him their names, in order to their being examined by the Assembly of Divines.

Master of Clare College, University of Cambridge

The Westminster Assembly of Divines, which included another future Crayford rector Thomas Thorowgood, were asked to review all of the applications and soon approved David Clarkson.  He become Master of Clare College on the 5th of May, 1645, under the warrant of the Earl of Manchester. They also approved Henry and Francis Holcroft, sons of Sir Henry Holcroft of West Ham, as fellows.  Clarkson was to marry their sister Elisabeth.

Clarkson was now a tutor to the college, and on the 29th of April, 1647, he received as his pupil,  John Tillotson, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury and succeeded Clarkson when he resigned his fellowship, so that he could take the post of rector at Crayford in 1650.

Rector of Crayford

After Parliament’s victory in the First Civil war, there had been a purge on ‘unsuitable rectors’ who did reflect the Presbyterian views of many members of parliament.  This left many parishes without a rector.  It’s possibly the proximity of Crayford to his wife Elisabeth’s family in West Ham that initially persuaded him to take the rector ship of Crayford.  He served as Crayford’s rector from 1650 to 1655, in the difficult aftermath of the Second Civil War and the deposition of the popular rector poet Edward May. This was undoubtedly a traumatic and unhappy time for all of the Clarksons.  It began in the way it ended with the death of David and Elisabeth’s first child, a daughter Lettice who is registered as baptized at St Paulinus church, Crayford in May 1652 and sadly buried there too in March, 1653.  Clarkson’s clash with the parishioners of Crayford and the popular Edward May are the focus of our second article on David Clarkson, which you can read elsewhere on this site.

Rector of Mortlake and the Act of Uniformity

Following this clash with parishioners in 1655, Clarkson left Crayford to become Rector of Mortlake on February 13, 1655.  He remained there until 1662 when along with two thousand two thousand other ministers of the Church of England, he refused to submit to Charles II’s Act of Uniformity, that resulted from the restoration of the monarchy and the end of the Commonwealth. As result Clarkson was forced to leave his position at Mortlake in 1662.

Clarkson’s final Years

For the following twenty years he appears to have ministered in relative obscurity until July 1682, when he became the colleague of Dr. John Owen (1616-1683, English Puritan clergyman and theologian who adopted Independent or Congregational principals, Cromwell’s chaplain, vice-chancellor of Oxford), as pastor of an Independent Church in Leadenhall Street in the City of London, and on Owen’s death, in the following year, his successor. David did not hold this office long, dying rather suddenly at his residence in the Parish of St. Dunstan, Stepney on June 14, 1686, and was buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery.

Despite his unpopularity in Crayford Clarkson occupied a very high place amongst the divines of the Puritan period. The famous Puritan writer, The Reverend Richard Baxter said, that the Rev. David Clarkson:

” was a divine of extraordinary worth for solid
judgment, healing, moderate principles, acquaintance
with the Fathers, great ministerial abilities, and a godly,
upright life.”

He was widely resected by the Puritan community and in particular advocates of the Congregational church.  Indeed, if you google his name you will find that his printed works are still being published.  Clarkson was a prolific writer and a selection of his Puritan sermons was published in London, in 1696, in a folio of 1038 pages, and as late as 1864 they were republished in Edinburgh as part of his “Select Practical Works”, in three volumes on “Nichol’s Series of Standard Divines. Puritan Period.” It is from the work that the engraved portrait shown on this page was published.

Clarkson’s son Matthew would leave for the puritan haven of New England and many of the biographical details of his life come from his sons biography:, “Memoirs of Matthew Clarkson of Philadelphia, 1735 – 1800, by John Hall, and his brother Gerardus Clarkson, 1737 – 1790.