(1616 - 1683) John Owen entered Oxford at age twelve and received a B.A. and M.A. by the age of nineteen. His first publication in 1642, A Display of Arminianism, gained him the church at Fordham in Essex and therre he was married, and had eleven children. He was a proponent of independent, congregational church government. During England's Civil War he sided with ParlAment and became chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Owen was appointed the dean of Christ Church College, Oxford in 1651. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660 he was allowed to continue preaching, when most of his colleagues had been silenced. For some years before his death Owen had suffered greatly, but died quietly on August 24, 1683.