coln gaol, and kept there some fifteen months, till at the spring assize of 1663 he and others were released, pursuant to a petition drawn up by him and presented to the king on 26 Dec. In 1666 he became an ‘apostle’ or ‘messenger,’ an office originally created by the older baptists for the supervision of congregations in a district (cf. Robert Everard [q. v.], Faith and Order, 1649). Grantham developed the office into an itinerant ministry-at-large to ‘plant churches.’ The title of messenger is still retained in the ‘old connection’ of general baptists, and has been by other baptists revived in a somewhat different sense.
On 7 March 1670 he issued proposals for a public disputation with Robert Wright, formerly a baptist preacher, who had conformed at Lincoln; but neither Wright nor William Silverton, chaplain to Bishop Fuller, would respond. Under the Conventicle Act of 1670 Grantham was imprisoned again for six months at Louth. Soon after his release he baptised a married woman. The husband threatened him with an action for damages for 100l. in having thereby assaulted her. The indulgence of 15 March 1672 did not meet the case of the Lincolnshire baptists; accordingly Grantham had another interview with the king on their behalf, and obtained an ineffectual promise of redress. He suffered several imprisonments during the remaining years of Charles's reign.
In 1685 or 1686 Grantham removed to Norwich, where he founded a general baptist congregation in White Friars Yard. In 1686 he founded a similar congregation in King Street, Yarmouth; in 1688 he baptised persons at Warboys, Huntingdonshire; in 1689 he was allowed to preach in the town hall of King's Lynn, and founded a congregation there. His closing years were full of controversies with other dissenters in Norwich, especially John Collinges, D.D. [q. v.], and Martin Fynch [q. v.] With the established clergy of the city he was on better terms; John Connould, vicar of St. Stephen's, was his warm friend, their intimacy having begun in a theological correspondence. By dint of self-education Grantham had acquired much literary capacity. He is credited with the knowledge of eight or nine languages; his writings show acquaintance with the Greek and Latin fathers. He seems to have had access to the manuscript copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ of Servetus, in the library (now at Cambridge) of John Moore [q. v.], prebendary of Norwich, and bishop from 1691. His somewhat remarkable verses (1691) constitute the earliest favourable notice of Servetus in English. His later theology was of a Sabellian type, with a strong leaning to the quaker doctrine of the inner light. He advocated the imposition of hands on the newly baptised, believed in the permanence of miraculous power of healing by unction, and disapproved of psalmody (except by single voices) as a part of public worship.
On 6 Oct. 1691 John Willet, rector of Tattershall, Lincolnshire, was brought up before the mayor of Norwich, Thomas Blofield, for slandering Grantham at Yarmouth and Norwich. Willet admitted that there was no foundation for his statement that Grantham had been pilloried at Louth for sheep-stealing. Grantham paid Willet's costs, and saved him from gaol. He died on Sunday, 17 Oct. 1692, aged 58 years, and was buried just within the west door of St. Stephen's Church. A great crowd attended the funeral; the service was read by his friend Connould, who added, ‘This day has a very great man fallen in Israel.’ Connould was buried in the same grave in May 1703. A long memorial inscription on canvas (given by Richard) was afterwards placed in his meeting-house, probably by his grandson, Grantham Killingworth [q. v.]
Grantham published: 1. ‘The Prisoner against the Prelate, or a Dialogue between the Common Gaol at Lincoln and the Baptist,’ &c., n.d. (1662, in verse; has rude cut of gaol and cathedral). 2. ‘The Baptist against the Papist,’ &c., 1663, 4to (dated Lincoln Castle, 10 Jan. 1662, i.e. 1663; reprinted in ‘Christ. Prim.,’ bk. iv.). 3. ‘The Seventh Day Sabbath Ceased,’ &c., 1667, 4to (embodied in ‘Christ. Prim.,’ bk. ii. pt. 2, chaps. 12, 13). 4. ‘A Sigh for Peace: or the Cause of Division Discovered,’ &c., 1671, 4to (in answer to ‘A Search for Schism’). 5. ‘The Baptist against the Quaker,’ &c. (1673? against Robert Ruckhill and John Whitehead; reprinted in ‘Christ. Prim.,’ bk. iv.). 6. ‘A Religious Contention … a Dispute at Blyton,’ &c., 1674, 4to. 7. ‘The Loyal Baptist; or an Apology for the Baptised Believers,’ &c., 1674, fol.; 2nd part, 1684, fol. (answer to Nathaniel Taylor). 8. ‘The Fourth Principle of Christ's Doctrine Vindicated,’ &c., 1674, 4to (reprinted in ‘Christ. Prim.,’ bk. iv.). 9. ‘The Successors of the Apostles, or a Discourse of the Messengers,’ &c., 1674, 4to (reprinted in ‘Christ. Prim.,’ bk. iv.). 10. ‘The Paedobaptists Apology for the Baptised Churches,’ &c. (1674? reprinted in ‘Christ. Prim.,’ bk. iv.). 11. ‘Christianismus Primitivus,’ &c., 1678, fol. (four books, each book and each part of bk. ii. separately paged; bk. iv. has separate title-page; it is a collection of treatises rather
