John Allen

John Allin, or John Allin (1596–1671), was an English-born Puritan cleric and one of the patriarchs of New England associated with the foundation of Dedham, Massachusetts.

Biography Allin was born in 1596. It is believed he was of Christ's College, Cambridge at the University of Cambridge, where he proceeded M.A. He was a classmate of George Phillips.

According to the Dictionary of National Biography, he is described "by one not given to laudation" as having been ‘a hard student, a good scholar,’ and it is added he was ‘an excellent preacher, a grave and pious divine, and a man of a most humble, heavenly, and courteous behaviour, full of sweet christian love to all.’ Nonetheless, was he exposed to the politico-religious persecutions of the times. Being ‘settled’ at St Mary-at-the-Quay Church, Ipswich, he came under the ban of Bishop Wren. He voluntarily left his ‘cure’ and removed to London, rather than be contentious.

To America About the year 1637–8 he accompanied a band of English Puritanism to New England, ‘being obliged to go on board the ship which was to convey him thither in disguise, in order to elude pursuit.’ He was invited by the residents to settle in Dedham, Massachusetts "with thoughts of future employment in publik worke." In 1639 he was chosen pastor of the First Church and Parish in Dedham where he continued "much beloved and useful all the rest of his days," only now and again accompanying Eliot in his "labours" among the Indians. When a fellow passenger attempted to fish over the railing on a Sunday, he was questioned as to why he would work on the Sabbath.