Moxon, George (1603-01-01 - 1687-09-15)

Moxon was born near Wakefield in around 1603 and attended Wakefield Grammar School and Sidney Sussex College, where he was known for his Latin poetry. He was first chaplain to Sir William Brerton (1604-1661) and then obtained the curacy of St. Helen's, Lancashire. He disused the ceremonies and was cited for nonconformity in 1637. He then fled in disguise to Bristol and sailed to New England where he became pastor of the congregational church at Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1653 he returned to England, and worked with John Machin at Astbury, Cheshire, a sequestered living. Machin was a Presbyterian, but Moxon began a congregational church and on alternate weeks supplied the perpetual curacy of Rushton-Spencer. After the Restoration, Thomas Hutchinson was reinstated. Moxon retained his position at Ruston until he was ejected by the 1662 Act of Uniformity. He preached at a farmhouse near Rushton Chapel. In 1667 he moved to Congleton and preached in his own house near Dane Bridge, which was licensed under the indulgence of 1672. Following the declaration for liberty of conscience, a meeting-house was built at Congleton, but Moxon did not live to oversee its opening. He suffered several paralytic strokes, and from 1678 was assisted by Elizer Birch (d. 12 May 1717), who first used the Congleton meeting house to minister his funeral sermon, after Moxon died on 15 September 1687. He married a daughter of Isaac Ambrose, and they had a son George Moxon, who would hold the sequestered rectory of Radwinter, Essex.