Background
Harrison, who was born at Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, was taken by his parents, Richard Harrison and Margaret Picke Harrison, while a youth to New England, and there trained up to the ministry.
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Thomas Harrison
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Trinity College.
Career
The governor, with the connivance of Harrison, expelled from Virginia certain ministers who held extreme views, and their expulsion was followed by a disastrous rising among the Indians. This was held by many, Harrison included, to be a judgment of Providence against the persecutors of the expelled preachers. Thus Harrison"s change of views occasioned his dismissal, upon which he came to London, and, obtaining some fame as a preacher, was chosen about 1650 to succeed Doctor Thomas Goodwin in his gathered church at Saint Dunstan"s-in-the-East.
Here he remained for a few years, after which he removed to Bromborough Hall, Wirrall, Cheshire.
In 1657 he accompanied Henry Cromwell, when he went to Ireland as lord-lieutenant. He lived in Cromwell"s family, and preached at Christ Church, Dublin.
At the Restoration he left Ireland, and settled in Chester, preaching to large congregations in the cathedral, till he was silenced by the Acting of Uniformity. From a list of graduates at Cambridge from 10 October
1660 to 10 October 1661, it appears that Harrison took his Doctor of Divinity there.
But according to Calamy (Account, p 607) he received it at Dublin. After the passing of the Acting of Uniformity he returned to Dublin, and founded a flourishing dissenting church of congregational views. His eloquence and fluency both in prayer and preaching brought him great notoriety, and Calamy states that ‘he was a complete gentleman, much courted for his conversation.’ When he died there was a general mourning in Dublin.
He left behind him a valuable library, containing many manuscripts, among them a ‘System of Divinity’ in a large folio written by himself.
