Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Darton, Nicholas

by Augustus Charles Bickley

DARTON, NICHOLAS (1603–1649?), divine, was born in 1603 in Cornwall of poor parentage. He matriculated as a battler at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1618, graduated B.A. in 1622, took orders, and in 1628 was presented to the living of Kilsby in Northamptonshire. He was always considered a puritan, and at the outbreak of the civil war espoused the side of the parliament, becoming a presbyterian. He ceased to hold his living in 1645, and is believed to have died in 1649. He wrote:

1. ‘The True and Absolute Bishop; with the Convert's Return unto Him,’ &c., 1641.
2. ‘Ecclesia Anglicana, or Darton's Cleare and Protestant Manifesto, as an Evangelical Key sent to the Governour of Oxford, for the opening of the Church Dores there that are shut up without Prayers or Preaching,’ 1649.

Wood states that he wrote other works, and Brook that he published several sermons, but neither enumerates them.

[Boase and Courtney's Biblioth. Cornubiensis; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 263; Baker's Northamptonshire, p. 402; Brook's Puritans, iii. 531.]

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