John Wheelwright (c.1592–1679), was a
Puritan clergyman in England and America, and was most noted for being banished from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony during the
Antinomian Controversy, and for subsequently establishing the town of
Exeter, New Hampshire. Born in
Lincolnshire, England, he was raised in a family with substantial means, and received both a B.A. and M.A. at
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he was a noted athlete and where
Oliver Cromwell was a college friend. Ordained in 1619, he became the vicar of the church in
Bilsby, Lincolnshire, and held this position for ten years until removed for
simony.