Hanserd Knollys (ca.1599-1691) is the 4th essay in The British Particular Baptists, volume 1 revised edition

After Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 and his son Richard stepped down from leadership, the crown was returned to Charles II in 1660. A number of Fifth Monarchists, led by the Baptist Thomas Venner and believing the Lord’s Coming was at hand, attempted an insurrection in London. It failed miserably and resulted in the arrest of four hundred people who were suspected of taking part in the uprising. Knollys was one of those imprisoned in Newgate for eighteen weeks because he “refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.” He was released when a pardon was issued to celebrate the king’s coronation. This imprisonment was the foretaste of twenty-eight years of brutal persecution for all who dissented from the worship of the Church of England.. . .Knollys’ personal example of faithfulness in the midst of fiery trials is a model for all believers. His faith and walk remained constant through persecution, imprisonment, reproachment, personal pain, family deaths, denominational growth, denominational problems, times of want, and times of plenty. The stability of the Particular Baptist movement at the end of the seventeenth century owed not a little to the personal integrity and sparkling witness of this London Baptist pastor named Hanserd Knollys. --Barry Howson