Henry Finch (minister)

Henry Finch (1633–1704) was an English ejected minister.

Finch was born at Standish, Lancashire, and baptised on 8 September 1633. He was educated at the grammar schools of Standish and Wigan. Calamy does not say at what university he graduated. After preaching in the Fylde country (between the Lune and the Ribble) he was presented in 1656 to the vicarage of Walton-on-the-Hill, Lancashire, a parish which then included the town of Liverpool. He was a member of the fifth presbyterian classis of Lancashire.

In July 1659 he took an active part in the plans for the rising of the 'new royalists' under Sir George Booth. His property was seized by the parliamentary sequestrators, and not restored. Unable then to accept the terms of the Uniformity Act 1662, he was ejected. He retired to Warrington, where he lived for some years in dependence on his wife's relatives. The Five Mile Act (1665) compelled him to leave, and he settled in Manchester (not then a corporate town), where he supported himself by keeping a school.

Both at Warrington and Manchester he attended the ordinary services of the Church of England, preaching only occasionally on Sunday evenings in his own dwelling to such restricted gatherings as the law allowed. On the indulgence of 1672 he took out a licence as a 'general presbyterian minister,' and officiated in the licensed 'private oratory' (Birch Chapel), which was in the hands of Thomas Birch of Birch Hall, Lancashire, though the legal owners were the warden and fellows of the collegiate church of Manchester. On 29 October 1672 he took part in the first ordination conducted by the ejected nonconformists, in the house of Robert Eaton at Deansgate, Manchester.

On the outbreak of the Monmouth rebellion (1685) Finch was imprisoned at Chester; but later was allowed to resume his ministry. The Toleration Act (1689) called attention to the insecurity of his position: Birch Chapel, being a consecrated place, could not be licensed as a dissenting meeting-house. Finch, however, stayed on until the death of Thomas Birch the younger in 1697, when the chapel was ceded by his son, George Birch, to the legal owners. Finch then preached at licensed houses in Platt and Birch, till his friends built a meeting-house at Platt (1700), Finch himself contributing towards the erection. The opening discourse was preached by Finch's son-in-law, James Grimshaw of Lancaster, author of 'Rest from Rebels,' 1716.

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