Samuel Whiting, a leading New England minister and author of one of the earliest spiritual biographies in America, was born at Boston, Lincolnshire, son of John Whiting, mayor of Boston in 1600 and 1608. Related to the Reverend John Cotton, he received his A.B. (1616) and A.M. (1620) at the great Puritan college, Emmanuel, at Cambridge. On 6 August 1629 he married his second wife, Elizabeth St. John, daughter of a member of parliament and sister of Oliver St. John, future chief justice of England under Cromwell. Earlier prosecuted for nonconformist preaching and practices at Lynn Regis, Whiting was harassed again after his second marriage in his ministry at Skirbeck. Having seen Cotton flee England in disguise, he brought his wife, his daughter from his first marriage, Dorothy, and his son Samuel to New England in 1636. They settled at Saugus (renamed Lynn in honor of Whiting's English pastorate), where, until his death...