William Kiffin
British minister and merchant
William Kiffin (1616–1701), sometimes spelled William Kiffen, was a seventeenth-century English Baptist minister. He was also a successful merchant in the woollen trade.
Life
He was born in London early in 1616. His family appears to have been of Welsh descent. Both his parents died of the plague which broke out in June 1625. His father left property which was invested by some relatives in their business; on their failure little was saved. Kiffin was likely apprenticed in 1629 to John Lilburne, then a brewer (note: this probably is inaccurate; Liliburne was the same age as Kiffin; he was also not a brewer until 1641ish); he left Lilburne in 1631, and seems to have been apprenticed to a glover (Kiffin became a Freeman of the Leathersellers' Company on 10 July 1638, having served an apprenticeship to John Smith, thought to have been a glover by trade). In 1631 Kiffin attended the sermons of many Puritan divines, including John Davenport and Lewis du Moulin, but attached himself next year to John Goodwin the independent. He joined a religious society of apprentices, and became (1638) member of the Nonconformist church gathered in Southwark by Henry Jacob and then ministered to by John Lothrop. Kiffin preached occasionally.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3568761. VIAF identifies the subject as 25412749. The Library of Congress control number is n85013521. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1616, 1701, 1625 and 1629.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Kiffin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.