Thomas Adams graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1602, and four years later, with a Master of Arts degree from Clare College. Ordained deacon and priest in the Lincoln diocese in 1604, he served as curate of Northill, Bedfordshire from 1605 to 1611. When his new patron dismissed him, Adams’s parishioners signed a petition stating that he had “behaved himself soberly in his conversation, painfully in his calling, lovingly amongst his neighbors, conformable to the orders of the Church, and in all respects befittingly to his vocation” (J. Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, p. 78). This testimony may have assisted Adams in securing an appointment the following year as vicar of Willington, Bedfordshire.
