The members of the

Westminster Assembly The Westminster Assembly of Divines was a council of divines (theologians) and members of the English Parliament appointed from 1643 to 1653 to restructure the Church of England. Several Scots also attended, and the Assembly's work was adopt ...

of Divines, sometimes known collectively as the Westminster Divines, are those clergymen who participated in the Assembly that drafted the

Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the "subordinate standard" o ...

. The

Long Parliament The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In Septe ...

's initial ordinance creating the Westminster Assembly appointed 121 ministers of the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

to the Assembly, as well as providing for participation on the part of 30 lay assessors (10 nobles and 20

commoners A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...

), as well as six Commissioners representing the

Church of Scotland The Church of Scotland ( sco, The Kirk o Scotland; gd, Eaglais na h-Alba) is the national church in Scotland. The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox, in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church ...

. Of the original 121 divines, approximately 25 never took their seats in the Assembly. The Parliament subsequently added 21 additional ministers to the Assembly (the additions being known to history as the Superadded Divines) to replace those ministers who did not attend, or who had died or become ill since the calling of the Assembly. ''Note:'' In the list below, members of the Assembly without dates beside their names are mainly

Royalists A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of governm ...

who did not take their seats in the Assembly because King Charles I instructed all loyal subjects not to participate in the Westminster Assembly.

Divines

Lay Assessors

Nobles

Commoners

Scottish Commissioners

Ministers

Elders

References

William Maxwell Hetherington William Maxwell Hetherington (4 June 1803 – 23 May 1865) was a Scottish minister, poet and church historian. He entered the university of Edinburgh but before completing his studies for the church he published, in 1829, 'Twelve Dramatic S ...

''History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines''
(1853) (List is i

List of Westminster Divines from the Westminster Assembly Project

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of The Westminster Divines