John Kettelwell

Born on March 10, 1653, in Yorkshire, John Kettlewell was educated at Northallerton Grammar School and later at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He became a fellow of Lincoln College, was ordained in the late 1670s, and went on to serve as vicar of Coleshill in Warwickshire.

Kettlewell wrote devotional works that earned him a reputation in his own lifetime, but he is especially remembered for his role as a nonjuror after the Glorious Revolution. He refused to accept the new political settlement, lost his vicarage in 1690, and spent his remaining years in London writing religious and controversial works.

He died on April 12, 1695, at just 42 years old. Though his life was short, his writing captures a vivid moment in English religious history, where questions of faith, duty, and political allegiance were deeply intertwined.