Samuel Bold

Samuel Bolde or Bold (1649–1737) was an English clergyman and controversialist, a supporter of the arguments of John Locke for religious toleration.

Life Apparently a native of Chester, he was brought up by William Cook, a nonconformist minister ejected from St. Michael's Church, Chester, in 1662, who died in 1684. Bolde was instituted vicar of Shapwick in Dorset in 1674, but resigned or was ejected in 1688; he was instituted rector of Steeple in the Isle of Purbeck in 1682, and held the living until his death. In 1721 he succeeded to the adjacent parish of Tyneham, united to Steeple by act of parliament.

In 1682, when a brief for the persecuted Huguenots was to be read in church, Bolde preached a sermon against persecution and published it with Awnsham Churchill. With a second edition in the same year, it raised a great outcry; Bolde then published a Plea for Moderation towards Dissenters. He justified his general praise of nonconformists, mentioning amongst others Richard Baxter and Henry Hickman as "shining lights in the church of God". In 1720 Bolde republished the sermon against persecution, adding a short account of his subsequent troubles. and in 1724 appeared his last controversial work, Some Thoughts concerning Church Authority. This was occasioned by Benjamin Hoadley's launching of the Bangorian Controversy, with a sermon on the nature of the kingdom of Christ, and his Preservative against the Principles and Practices of Nonjurors, of which Bolde approved. Bolde was answered by several persons, among others by Conyers Place, who condemned him as full of "stupid and affected cant".

In 1693 he published a devotional treatise entitled Christ's Importunity with Sinners to accept of Him, which had been probably already published in 1675. The republication contains an affectionate dedication to Mrs. Mary Cook, the widow of William Cook, his early tutor. In 1696, an epidemic having caused many deaths in his parish, he published eight Meditations on Death written during the leisure bodily distempers have afforded me. In the year before his death Bolde published a Help to Devotion containing a short prayer on every chapter in the New Testament.