Invitation to join the ‘This Day in Baptist History’ Project

This is an on-going Project and awaits populating by Baptist friends throughout the world. ‘This Day’ is a collaborative project run by the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, offering a piece of Baptist-related history for each day of the year. The creator and manager of the project is Dr Larry J. Kreitzer.

The historical event might be a birth, a death, a date of publication of an important book, a significant happening within the Baptist community, or a controversy.

The Centre has already entered a selection of dates into the project, and now invites users worldwide to contribute to it.
Please send the following to the project manager (larry.kreitzer@regents.ox.ac.uk):

•   Date

•   Heading: containing summary of event

•   Short piece of text explaining the event (about 200 words)

•   If possible, 1 or 2 pictures illustrating the event (otherwise we will find images)

An example for 4 April may be seen above.

Duplication for a date does not matter, especially if the dates apply to different parts of the world.

Contributors are asked to keep the presentation fairly popular so that non-specialists will be able to benefit from the project. They will be credited by name with their pieces.

Contributors are entirely responsible for getting copyright permission, where necessary, for publication of visual images on the web.

Users of ‘On This Day’ are not permitted to reproduce visual images in any media.

If a Baptist person is chosen for commemoration, please indicate whether you would like this person included in an experimental ‘Calendar of Baptist Saints’.

If you would like to contribute, send your entry to larry.kreitzer@regents.ox.ac.uk

 

Purchase of a Newspaper from 1687 reporting on an Anabaptist petition to James II

Regent’s Park College, Oxford has recently managed to purchase an original copy of The London Gazette #2255 (27-30 June 1687) which reported that Anabaptists had delivered a petition to King James II in Whitehall on 29 June 1687.  The petition called upon the king to honour his promises that liberty of conscience in matters of religion would be respected.

Flyer Announcing the ‘William Kiffen and His World’ Project

 

Portrait of William Kiffen (c.1616-1701)

The Oil Painting of William Kiffen (1667)

at Regent’s Park College, Oxford

William Kiffen (1616-1701) is commonly regarded as perhaps the key leader of the Particular Baptists in London during the 17th century. Somewhat surprisingly, the painting probably represents the only contemporary artistic impression of him that has survived. One might be tempted to think that much would be made of an artifact associated with someone universally regarded as a seminal figure in seventeenth-century Baptist life. Few Baptist figures from that period would have had the wherewithal to commission such a painting, or would have been of sufficient stature to be able to generate the interest among descendents in preserving it for posterity.
The painting measures 64 x 78 cm and is in a simple gilded frame. It depicts a seated Kiffen, dressed in a black shirt and wearing a finely embroidered collar befitting his position as a wealthy London merchant; a black skull cap is perched upon his head, shoulder-length brown curls of hair spilling out from beneath it. The moustached Kiffen gazes intently at the viewer, his soft blue-grey eyes inviting interest and engagement.
How the painting came to be made, who commissioned it and under what circumstances, are matters unknown. Unfortunately, the painting is unsigned, which makes determining its artistry difficult if not impossible. However, it does have two lines of Latin text in a subdued red paint inserted into the field just to the left of Kiffen’s right shoulder. The lines read: ‘Aetatis suae 50: An[no] Dom[ini] 1667:’.

This tells us that the painting was done in 1667, when Kiffen was fifty years old. It may also be significant that this was the year after the plague in London, a circumstance in which everyone in the capital would have been made all the more aware of the transitoriness of life. Indeed, one of Kiffen’s fellow leaders of the church in Devonshire Square, Thomas Patient, was a victim of the plague in the summer of 1666. Perhaps Kiffen’s decision to sit for his portrait at this time of great death and uncertainty is, in itself, an attempt to preserve his identity for posterity. It is fairly certain where Kiffen lived at the time when the painting was executed. Within the surviving records of the Devonshire Square church there is a membership list which has the following heading:

The Names of Those Brethren & Sisters yt have given upp themselves to The Lord to walke in his wayes In fellowshipp together w[i]th Bro[ther] W[illia]m Kiffin, this being an abstract of ye former made out this 24th day of ye 12th month 1667 [24 February 1668].

The ‘place of habitation’ of William Kiffen and his wife Hannah is then given as ‘In An alley over ag[ain]st ye new attillery Row in Austin fryars’.

Larry Kreitzer