The Brewer's Clerk

Kiffin's apprenticeship came under a glover. And like all of the Puritan tradesmen who became preachers, they were derided for their presumption to go from a status of the unlettered to the position of a Scripture interpreter. Joseph Ivimey gives the following summary:

The pamphlet we have referred to is entitled, New preachers, New---" Greene the felt-maker, Spencer the horse-rubber, Quartermine the brewer’s clerk, and some few others, who are mighty sticklers in this new kind of talking trade, which many ignorant coxcombs call preaching. [...]

The doctor speaks very contemptuously of his opponents.--He calls one of them a brewer’s clerk: no doubt this was Mr. Kiffin, who had been an apprentice to the famous republican John Lilburn, of turbulent memory. He it was to, it is probable, who is called Quartermine the brewer’s clerk, in the pamphlet entitled, New Preachers, New. [Joseph Ivimey, History of the English Baptists, Ch. 6 Web edition]