Richard Hollinworth

Richard Hollinworth (also Hollingworth) (1607–1656) was an English clergyman of presbyterian views, an influential figure in North-West England in the 1640s.

The son of Francis Hollinworth and Margaret Wharmby his wife, he was born at Manchester, and was baptised on 15 November 1607. He was educated at the Manchester grammar school and Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1626–7, and M.A. in 1630. After ordination he became curate of Middleton, near Manchester, under Abdias Assheton.

At the consecration of Sacred Trinity Chapel in Salford, on 20 May 1635, Hollinworth preached the sermon, and after the resignation of Thomas Case, who held the living for a short time, he was appointed minister there. He was in that position in 1636, and until a short time before 1649, holding the preferment along with offices at Manchester Collegiate Church. In 1643 he is styled chaplain of the collegiate church, and in the same year succeeded William Bourne in the fellowship there. During the suspension of the corporate body by parliament he officiated, along with Richard Heyrick, the warden, as a "minister"; the college was dissolved in 1650. The "protestation" of the people of Salford in 1642 was taken before him as minister of the town. In 1644 he is named in an ordinance of parliament for ordaining ministers in Lancashire. During the plague outbreak of 1645 in Manchester he worked among the people, Heyrick being absent in London at the Assembly of Divines.

Hollinworth instituted a weekly lecture against the Independents, and became involved in controversy with them. By the exertions of Heyrick and Hollinworth and their friends the presbyterian discipline was established in Lancashire by an ordinance of parliament dated 2 October 1646, and the first meeting was held in the following month at Preston. Hollinworth's name was the second of those signing the Harmonious Consent of the Lancashire ministers with the ministers of London, in 1648, in which religious toleration was condemned.

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