Individual Details

Reverend Thomas Stoughton was educated at Queens College, Oxford obtaining a BA degree in 1577, became a fellow in 1579, and a master of arts in 1583.  He was ordained at Lincoln in Lincolnshire on February 13, 1581/82.   He became rector at Naughton, Suffolk, England.  He became increasingly disaffected with the Church of England and aligned with the Puritan movement.  As a consequence of this, he was removed from his church in Naughton. He wrote a number of religious treatises which questioned the Church of England including a 1597 paper A Treatise Against Poperie.  He did serve as vicar at Coggeshall until 1606 until he was dismissed from there due to his separatist leanings.  He did not receive another position.
Thomas married a woman named Katherine, whose maiden name is unknown; although two possibilities have been put forward as Katherine’s parents, both have been disproved so no one really knows.  They had 12 children, seven of whom survived childhood.  Katherine died in 1603 about two months after the birth of her twelfth child.  Several of the adult children, including our ancestor Elizabeth Stoughton Chamberlain, settled in the New England colonies. The Reverend Stoughton died in 1622.
Source: Anderson, Robert Charles.(1995).  The Great Migration begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633. Boston: Great Migration Study Project.

Birth	1557	Naughton, Suffolk, England
Death	12 Jun 1622	Coggeshall, Essex, England

Spouse	Katherine Stoughton mnu (1560 - 1603)
Child	Elizabeth Stoughton (1591 - 1647)
Child	Anne Stoughton (1591 - 1591)
Child	Thomas Stoughton (1592 - 1661)
Child	John Stoughton (1593 - 1639)
Child	Judith Stoughton (1599 - 1639)
Child	Israel Stoughton (1602 - 1644)

Father	Francis Stoughton (1531 - 1557)
Mother	Agnes Tringall (1535 - )