Dr. Mather's own opinion of Mr. Wheelwright was expressed in a letter to G. Vaughan, Esq., in 1708. "Mr. Wheelwright was always a gentleman of the most unspotted morals imaginable; a man of a most unblemished reputation." "His worst enemies never looked on him as chargeable with the least ill practices." [Belknap's Biog., III. 338.]
The sermon of Mr. Wheelwright which gave offence in 1636, is still preserved in manuscript. The Hon. Jeremiah Smith, late of Exeter, N. H., who had read it, and who was fully competent to judge of its legal bearings, said that he found in it no ground for a charge of sedition. The charge was "wholly groundless, there was not the least color for it." [Judge Smith's MS.]
Mr. Wheelwright was settled over the first church in Salisbury, Ms., Dec. 9, 1662. [Rev. J. B. Felt.] In 1671, at the ordination of Rev. Joshua Moody, at Portsmouth, Mr. Wheelwright gave the Right Hand of Fellowship. One of Mr. Wheelwright's descendants, of the ninth generation, Rev. Rufus Wheelwright Clark, is now pastor of that church in Portsmouth. Mr. Wheelwright's last will "names his son Samuel, son-in-law Edward Rishworth, his grandchildren Edward Lyde, Mary White, Mary Maverick, and William, Thomas, and Jacob Bradbury." [Farmer's Geneal. Reg.] Thomas Wheelwright of Wells, was also a son of Rev. John Wheelwright. For an interesting account, containing other facts respecting Mr. Wheelwright, see "Collectanea" by Hon. J. Kelly, in Exeter News Letter, May 24, 1842.
Two of the descendants of the Rev. Mr. Wheelwright, of the seventh generation, are now living in Newburyport. Abraham Wheelwright, Esq., and Ebenezer Wheelwright, Esq., both merchants. The first is the oldest man in the place who is still able to walk abroad, having attained to the age of 90 years. He was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and was distinguished for patriotism and bravery. He was in the field with Washington in most of his actions, and was several times taken prisoner by the British, but always effected his escape.
"The first church formed in Exeter became extinct a few years after its formation." [Dow's Hist. Address; Farmer & Moore.] "An attempt was made by the remaining inhabitants of Exeter to form themselves into a church, and settle Mr. Batchelder, who had been minister at Hampton." This the general court prohibited, on account of their divisions; and directed them to "defer gathering a church, or any other such proceeding, till they, or the court of Ipswich, upon further satisfaction of their reconciliation and fitness, should give allowance therefor." [Belknap's Biog., I. 58.]
The Rev. Samuel Dudley was the second minister in Exeter. It does not appear that there was any formal church organization there, during his ministry. In some circumstances, a minister labored with a people several years, before a church was formally organized. Rev. Joshua Moody was ten or twelve years in the ministry at Portsmouth, before a church was gathered in that place.
Mr. Dudley was son of Gov. Thomas Dudley, who came to New England in 1630, and of whom Farmer speaks, as "a man of approved wisdom and godliness." Gov. Dudley was, however, among the most zealous of those who effected the banishment of Wheelwright. Cotton Mather says, "His orthodox piety had no little influence unto the deliverance of the country, from the contagion of the famalistical errors, which had like to have overturned all." [Mag., I. 122.]
A short passage from Farmer should be introduced here, not merely as relating to the persecution, which led to the settlement of Exeter, by Wheelwright, but as it gives a just representation of the Puritan character in those times. "Through the whole of his life, Governor Dudley opposed and denounced what he deemed to be heresy with an honest zeal, which, in these days of universal toleration, is sometimes referred to, as a blot upon his fame. But the candid and judicious, who are acquainted with the history of the Puritans, and the circumstances under which 'they came into a corner of the new world, and with an immense toil and charge made a wilderness habitable, on purpose there to be undisturbed in the exercise of their worship,' will never be found censuring and railing at their errors. They will rather wonder at the wisdom of the views, the disinterested nobleness of principle, and self-sacrificing heroism, displayed by these wonderful men, to whom the world is indebted for the most perfect institutions of civil and religious freedom known among men." [Am. Quar. Reg. Vol. XV. 301.]
Mr. Dudley of Exeter is noted in Fitch's MS. as "a person of good capacity and learning." [Belknap, I. 53.] He was born in England in 1606. In New England, he resided in Cambridge, in Boston, and in Salisbury. He was Representative of Salisbury in 1644. His ministry in Exeter he commenced in 1650, and died there in 1683, aged 77. In 1656 the inhabitants of Portsmouth voted "to give an invitation to Mr. Samuel Dudley, son of Thomas Dudley, the Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, to be their minister, and to give him a salary of eighty pounds a year." He accepted the proposition, and agreed to visit them the next spring; but it does not appear that he ever came." [Adams's Annals of Portsmouth.] Mr. Dudley's first wife was Mary, daughter of Governor Winthrop. She died at Salisbury, April 12, 1643. He had a second and a third wife. Besides his descendants of the name of Dudley, there are numerous families in New Hampshire, and elsewhere, who trace their descent from Mr. Dudley of Exeter. Among his descendants were the wife of Gen. Henry Dearborn; the wife of Rev. John Moody; the wife of John Burgin; the wife of Gov. James Sullivan; the grandmother of Tobias Lear, Washington's secretary; and also the mother of Gov. Langdon. For a long list of descendants of Rev. Samuel Dudley, see Exeter News Letter, Aug. 31, 1846.
The Rev. John Clark was the third minister in Exeter.