Grew, Obadiah (1607-11-22 - 1689-10-22)

Obadiah Grew, son of Francis Grew and Elizabeth Denison, was baptized at Mancetter, Atherstone on 22 November 1607. He graduated B.A. from Balliol College, Oxford in 1629 and proceeded M.A. in 1632. He became master of the grammar school at Atherstone in 1632 and was ordained in 1635. He married Ellen (or Helen) Viccars (1603-1687) in 1637 and became stepfather to her two sons, Henry and William Sampson; he and his wife also had a daughter, Mary (b.1638), and a son, Nehemiah (c.1641-1712). He began preaching to parliamentarian troops in Coventry in 1643 and became vicar of St. Michael’s in the city by 1644. He signed the Warwickshire’s ministers’ testimony against the errors of the times in 1648, protested against the regicide in 1649, and was active in the “Kenilworth classis’ in the mid-1650s. He proceeded B.D. and D.D. from Oxford in 1651. He was nominated as an assistant to the Warwickshire commissioners for ejection of scandalous ministers in 1654. He was ejected from his living for nonconformity in 1662 but remained in Coventry, becoming a leader of a conventicle in 1665 and serving as a preacher of the presbyterian Great Meeting established in 1669. He was licensed as a presbyterian in 1672 and was imprisoned during the tory reaction of the early 1680s. In the aftermath of James II’s indulgence, Grew preached at Coventry’s Leather Hall. He died on 22 October 1689 and was buried at St Michael’s.