James Peirce

James Peirce (1673-1726) came from a Nonconformist family in London. He lost his parents at an early age and was taken in by his minister, Matthew Mead, who eventually sent him to the University of Utrecht and then to Leyden. After five years of study, he returned to London, preaching occasionally at Miles Lane.  He was ordained in 1699 and two years later began his ministerial career, first in a mixed dissenting congregation in Cambridge (1701-1706) and then in a Presbyterian chapel in Newbury (1706-1713) before coming to the James’ Presbyterian meeting in Exeter in 1713. A few years after his arrival in Exeter, a controversy erupted within the congregation over Peirce’s growing Arianism, much of which derived from the influence of the Cambridge minister William Whiston. In March 1719, he and his associate minister, Joseph Hallett II, were expelled from the church in Exeter for failing to subscribe to orthodox trinitarianism. Immediately, a new church was formed at the Mint in Exeter (some 300 attendants came with Peirce from the James’ Meeting). See Jerom Murch, A History of the Presbyterian and General Baptist Churches in the West of England (London: Hunter, 1835), 421-431; Allan Brockett, Nonconformity in Exeter 1650-1875 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), 69-95; 156-157.