Richard Kingsnorth

On Thursday the 23rst of May, we drove around Kent, the home of some of my ancestors, the Pullens and Kingsnorths. We visited three villages, Chilham, Headcorn and Staplehurst. This blog post will focus on the latter of these villages where many of our Kingsnorth ancestors that came from. One of them was called Richard Kingsnorth.

Richard Kingsnorth, was born in Stuart times, we have no idea where or when. He became a Baptist in 1644 after watching a Anglican Vicar declare he was converting to being a Baptist. Richard Kingsnorth was persuaded by the Vicar and some time in the 1640's set up a secret baptist church in his house, as there were no other baptist churches in the area . At the time it was illegal to have a baptist church meeting in your house. If a church was discovered there, you would be fined and sent to jail. We know that he was never caught.

When we visited Staplehurst we saw Richard Kingsnorth's church where he was married and the font where he was christened.

We walked along a muddy track betweent two fields that Richard Kingsnorth himself would have walked down all the time to get to the centre of Staplehurst.

At the end of the track was his house, where he had set up the church.

It was an excellent day!

the track up to the house

Richard Kingsnorth's house where the church met in 1644