Mr. Kiffin was a merchant, carrying on business with foreign countries, and especially with Holland. He conducted his mercantile affairs with so much skill that in a few years he was among the wealthiest men in London, and known by all classes of society throughout the kingdom as one of the greatest of English merchant-princes. This made him a conspicuous object for persecuting spite, and it stirred up the cupidity of a base horde of informers, whom the Stuarts employed to ruin Dissenters. Lord Arlington, one of the secretaries of Charles II., told Mr. Kiffin that he was on every list of disaffected persons whose freedom was regarded as dangerous to the government.
Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (1881), pg. 654.
Kiffin, Rev. William, was born in London in 1616. In 1625 the plague, which swept over his native city, deprived him of both his parents and left him with six plague sores, the cure of which was regarded as impossible. Through two sermons preached by Mr. Davenport and Mr. Coleman, in London, Mr. Kiffin obtained from Christ a divine life which defied the evils of seventy stormy years. He united with a Congregational church, by which he was first called to the ministry. In 1638 he joined the Baptist church of which the Rev. John Spilsbury was pastor. From this community a colony went forth in 1640 which formed another church. The new organization met in Devonshire Square. It elected Mr. Kiffin pastor. an office which he retained for sixty-one years, the duties of which three assistant pastors at different times aided him to discharge.
Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (1881), pg. 654.
