Michael Wigglesworth

Protestant clergyman and poet, born in Yorkshire, N England, UK. He emigrated to Massachusetts as a boy, graduated from Harvard (1751), and was a fellow and tutor at Harvard before being ordained in Malden, MA (1656). His epic poem ‘Day of Doom’ (1662) has been described as conservative Calvinist theology in readable form, and it was an early American best-seller. He continued his pastorate in Malden, and also practised medicine there to the end of his life.

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) was a Puritan minister and poet whose The Day of Doom was a bestseller in early New England.

When Wigglesworth was ten years old his father became bed-ridden, forcing the boy to leave his schooling in order to help maintain the family farm.

Wigglesworth believed that he was essentially not worthy of believing in God as a result of merely being human.

When Wigglesworth becomes a minister of a church, he is soon overcome with a psychosomatic disorder in which he feels he can, ironically, do everything except preach. His confused and disappointed congregation elects to find a replacement for Wigglesworth, an unnamed preacher who goes on to embezzle funds from the church.

In his diaries, Wigglesworth's expresses an overwhelming sense of inferiority.

In the 1650s, Wigglesworth confided in encoded messages of his diary that he was plagued by homosexual attractions to his male students, which continued even after his marriage.