house a portrait of the bishop is said still to remain.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 754–6, 915; Kennett's Register and Chronicle; British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books; Archdeacon Thomas's Hist. of the Diocese of St. Asaph; Browne Willis's Survey of St. Asaph, ed. Edwards; Rowlands's Cambrian Bibliography, p. 232; Williams's Biog. Dict. of Eminent Welshmen, pp. 181–2; the pamphlets against Powell contain some biographical materials.]
GRIFFITH or GRIFFIN, JOHN (fl. 1553), præmonstratensian, was a Welshman, and a monk of the order of Cistercians in the, monastery of Halesowen in Worcestershire. He was educated at Oxford in the Cistercian college of St. Bernard, now St. John's College, but what degree he took is uncertain. He was a learned and pious man, but ‘being unacquainted with the dealings of the world, had like to have been drawn over to the reformed religion’ (Wood); he was, however, ‘fastened in his faith again,’ much to the joy of the Roman catholics. He preached eloquently in English and in Latin. He wrote in Latin ‘Conciones Æstivales’ (‘modicum etiam non videbitis mel’), and ‘Conciones Hyemales’ (‘cum appropinquasset Iesus lerosolymam’). The time of his death and his place of burial are both uncertain, as he had been expelled from his monastery several years before the dissolution of the religious houses; but he was still living in the reign of Edward VI, and perhaps in that of Queen
Mary.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 62; Pits, Angl. Theol. i. 739, ed. 1619; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.]
GRIFFITH, JOHN (1622?–1700), general baptist minister, appears to have joined the baptists about 1640, and founded about 1646 a congregation in Dunning's Alley, Bishopsgate Street Without. It is probable that he practised medicine, as he was known as Dr. Griffith. After the Restoration he frequently got into trouble as a conventicle preacher, and persistently declined the oath of allegiance. His difficulty was that the terms of the oath bound him to obey laws not then in being, and future sovereigns who might prove papists. His first imprisonment was in Newgate (1661) for seventeen months. He was again committed on 18 April 1683, and is said to have spent fourteen years more or less in gaol. He appears to have been free from molestation after James's declaration for liberty of conscience (11 April 1687). In 1698 his small congregation received an endowment under a trust created by Captain Pierce Johns' bequest. He was an advocate of close communion. He died on 16 May 1700, in his seventy-ninth year. He published:
- ‘A Voice from the Word of the Lord, to … Quakers,’ &c., 1654, 12mo.
- ‘Six Principles of the Christian Religion,’ &c., 1655, 4to.
- ‘A Complaint of the Oppressed,’ &c., 1661, 4to.
- ‘The Unlawfulness of Mixed Marriages,’ &c., 1681, 4to.
- ‘The Case of Mr. John Griffith,’ &c., 1683, 4to.
Posthumous was
- ‘Two Discourses,’ &c., 1707, 8vo (revised by J. Jenkins).
[Funeral Sermon by Richard Allen, 1700; Crosby's Hist. English Baptists, 1738, vol. ii.; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, ii. 175 sq.; Wood's Hist. General Baptists, 1847, p. 153.]
GRIFFITH, JOHN (1714–1798), independent minister, was born in London in December 1714. His father was a churchman, his mother a member of the independent congregation of Thomas Bradbury [q. v.] He was for a short time apprenticed to a clog-maker. He became a follower of Whitefield, and joined Whitefield's society at the Tabernacle in 1749. Chance led him to hear Samuel Stockell at the independent congregation in Meeting House Lane, Red Cross Street. About 1750 he became one of Stockell's communicants, without severing his connection with the Tabernacle class meetings. Griffith began to preach about 1752, and after Stockell's death (3 May 1753) was appointed pastor 30 Oct. 1754. His ministry was successful, till a dispute with one of his deacons led him to withdraw in 1758 with part of his congregation to an old meeting-house in White's Alley. The congregation grew, and built (1771) a new meeting-house in Mitchell Street. But in a few years it declined, and Griffith retired. In January 1778 he became minister of a new congregation at West Orchard, Coventry, Warwickshire. He ‘does not appear to have been adapted to the situation,’ and removed on 25 March 1781 to Brigstock, Northamptonshire, where his ministry ended in 1788. Returning to London he still preached occasionally. He died on 17 Aug. 1798, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. He was twice married, and had a large family by his first wife; his second wife died before 1788.
He published ‘A Brand Plucked out of the Fire,’ &c., 1759, 12mo (a curious account of his early life and of his quarrel with his first church).
Evangelical Mag. 1799, p. 175 sq.; Wilsons Diss. Churches of London, 1808 ii. 559, 1810 iii. 314 sq.; Sibree and Causton's Independency in Warwickshire, 1855, p. 82 sq.; Centenary of West Orchard Chapel, Coventry, 1879, p. 8.]
