Deaths on October 12

William Gurnall, English minister, theologian, and author (b. 1617)

William Gurnall (1616 – 12 October 1679) was an English author and Anglican clergyman born at King's Lynn, Norfolk, where he was baptised on 17 November 1616.

He was educated at the free grammar school of his native town, and in 1631 was nominated to the Lynn scholarship in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1635 and MA in 1639. He was made rector of St Peter and St Paul's Church, Lavenham in Suffolk in 1644; and before he received that appointment he seems to have officiated, perhaps as curate, at Sudbury.At the Restoration he signed the declaration required by the Act of Uniformity 1662, and on this account he was the subject of a libellous attack, published in 1665, entitled Covenant-Renouncers Desperate Apostates.