Background
John Woodbridge VI was born in 1613, at Stanton, near Highworth, England, the eldest son of John Woodbridge, minister at Stanton, Wiltshire, England, and Sarah Parker, and the grandson of Robert Parker, the famous Puritan divine.
John Woodbridge VI was born in 1613, at Stanton, near Highworth, England, the eldest son of John Woodbridge, minister at Stanton, Wiltshire, England, and Sarah Parker, and the grandson of Robert Parker, the famous Puritan divine.
Woodbridge was trained for the ministry at Oxford, whence the oath of conformity drove him without a degree.
In the spring of 1634 he emigrated to New England with his uncle, Thomas Parker, settling at Newbury, Massachussets, where Parker was ordained pastor. Woodbridge was chosen by the Newbury settlers as their first town clerk (1636 - 1638), as selectman (1636), as deputy to the General Court (1637-1638, 1640 - 1641), and in 1638 and 1641 by appointment of the General Court he was commissioner for small causes at Newbury. In 1640 - 1641, he was a leading spirit in the settlement of Andover, securing a patent from the Indians and helping to extinguish conflicting claims to the site. Gradually, however, he inclined to the ministry and in 1643, upon the advice of Parker and Dudley, he deserted civil and agrarian pursuits to serve for two years as schoolmaster in Boston. On October 24, 1645, he was ordained first pastor of the church at Andover, where he remained until 1647, when friends persuaded him to return to England. There he served as minister of Andover, Hampshire, 1648-1650, and of Barford St. Martin, Wiltshire, 1652-1662. Well known to Independent leaders, he was chaplain to the parliamentary commissioners who treated with the King at the Isle of Wight in 1648 and assistant to the Wiltshire Committee in 1657. Ejected from his parish in 1662, he taught school at Newbury, Berks, until the Bartholomew Act necessitated his departure. He returned to Massachusetts in the following year, and soon was settled as assistant to his aged uncle, still pastor at Newbury. Within two years dissensions arose which eventually forced Woodbridge to retire from the ministry. One Edward Woodman created factions at Newbury by alleging that Parker abused his pastoral authority. Although the Woodman party were repeatedly censured by civil and ecclesiastical authorities, they persisted in irregular proceedings. Through their machinations Woodbridge was dismissed from his ministry, May 21, 1670, but he stayed to support Parker until an investigating committee of the General Court, on May 15, 1672, requested him "not to impose himself or his ministry (however otherwise desirable) upon" the Newbury church. From "Coelestial Dealings, " he thereupon turned to "Mundane affairs, " in which his exertions were more acceptable. In England he had become a friend of William Potter, with whom he had discussed plans to expand credit and facilitate commerce by establishing a "Bank of Money. " Seeing the financial straits of New England when he returned in 1663, he revived the schemes, interested merchants, and in 1667-1668 presented to the Council a concrete proposal to erect a bank of deposit and issue with land and commodities as collateral. He experimented with the plan in March 1671 and later with such success that a decade afterwards (September 1681) a group of merchants joined the enterprise, issued bills, "and had rational Grounds to conclude, that it would work it self up into Credit, with discreet men. " To advertise the scheme and to silence objectors Woodbridge published in March 1681-1682 Severals Relating to the Fund, the first American tract on currency and banking extant. The outcome of the plan is not recorded, but it did not impoverish its author, for Woodbridge reaped "remarkable blessings of God upon his own private estate". In his later years, he was again appointed Newbury's commissioner for small causes (1677 - 1679, 1681, 1690), and elected assistant in 1683 - 1684.
John Woodbridge died on March 17, 1695, at Newbury, Massachusetts.
On May 20, 1639, John Woodbridge married Mercy Dudley, daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley. The couple had twelve children.