Kiffin in Cathcart Part 2

Mr. Kiffin was a merchant, carrying on business
with foreign countries, and especially with Holland.
He conducted his mercantile affairs with so
much skill that in a few years he was among the
wealthiest men in London, and known by all classes
of society throughout the kingdom as one of the
greatest of English merchant-princes. This made
him a conspicuous object for persecuting spite, and
it stirred up the cupidity of a base horde of informers,
whom the Stuarts employed to ruin Dissenters.
Lord Arlington, one of the secretaries of
Charles II., told Mr. Kiffin that he was on every
list of disaffected persons whose freedom was regarded
as dangerous to the government.

Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (1881), pg. 654.

Kiffin in Cathcart Part 1

Kiffin, Rev. William, was born in London in
1616. In 1625 the plague, which swept over his
native city, deprived him of both his parents and
left him with six plague sores, the cure of which
was regarded as impossible. Through two sermons
preached by Mr. Davenport and Mr. Coleman, in
London, Mr. Kiffin obtained from Christ a divine
life which defied the evils of seventy stormy years.
He united with a Congregational church, by which
he was first called to the ministry. In 1638 he
joined the Baptist church of which the Rev. John
Spilsbury was pastor. From this community a
colony went forth in 1640 which formed another
church. The new organization met in Devonshire
Square. It elected Mr. Kiffin pastor. an office
which he retained for sixty-one years, the duties
of which three assistant pastors at different times
aided him to discharge.

Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (1881), pg. 654.