The Saintly and the Enslaved
Richard Baxter (1615-91) -one of the intellectually most distinguished people to be associated with the town. In 1641 he was appointed as a preacher attached to St Mary's church where his thinking was well received by the Puritan burgesses of Kidderminster. Personally he was less close minded in thinking than the term ‘Puritan’ often conjures up now. He spent much of the Civil War as chaplain to Parliamentary forces seeking to act as a moderating force.
On his return to Kidderminster after 1647, he built a large congregation of committed followers. After restoration of Charles II, the mood in the town and in the nation turned against his thoughtful dissent and he was forced to leave, never to return again but he remained a prominent national figure. Towards the end of his life he was persecuted and imprisoned by Judge Jeffries in the Catholic reaction under James II. Baxter wrote extensively, and no modern book about the English Civil War and its aftermath is complete without references to his writings.
His statue stand by St Mary's Church overlooking the ring road.
Ukawsaw Groniosaw was born in what is now northeast Nigeria in 1705. He was traded as a slave to Barbados, then owned by a Calvinist minster in New York and raised as a Christian there. He was freed from slavery by the terms of the minister’s will. In due course he made his way to England seeking similar spiritual guidance and eventually settled for some years in Kidderminster – the writings of Richard Baxter were a particular inspiration.
While in Kidderminster he wrote a book, his Narrative this first book known to have been written by an African in English and a piece of work which is the first such slave narrative in English – an account of life spent as a slave by a former slave. It received wide attention a the time and was reprinted multiple times. He was living in Kidderminster in his sixties but must have left and died in Chester in 1775.
