JAMES, Thomas, clergyman, born in England in 1592; died there about 1678. He was graduated at Cambridge in 1614, and came from Lincolnshire, where he had been a minister, to Boston on 5 June, 1632. He was ordained in Charlestown, Massachusetts, 2 November, 1632, and was the first minister of that place, but was discharged in March, 1636, a dissension having sprung up between him and his congregation. He then went to New Haven, and in 1642 to Virginia, but was compelled to leave because he would not conform to the English church. He returned to New England in June, 1643, and afterward to his native country, where he was minister of Needham, Suffolk, until he was ejected for nonconformity in 1662.--His son, Thomas, was minister of East Hampton, L. I., from 1650 till the time of his death in 1696.