Wikipedia, "William Pynchon"

Encyclopedia article on William Pynchon (11 Oct 1590 - 29 Oct 1662), read in October 2026: “an English colonist and fur trader in North America best known as the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts. He was also a colonial treasurer, original patentee of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.” An original settler of Roxbury, he led the settlement of Agawam (Springfield) in 1635-36, renamed in 1640 “after Pynchon’s home village.” In 1636-1652 he exported “between 4,000 and 6,000 beaver pelts a year.” His The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption (London, 1650) “was immediately burned on the Boston Common (only 4 copies survived), and soon after became the New World’s first-ever banned book” (the article’s opening calls it the “second banned book”). “Instead of retracting his arguments, Pynchon stealthily transferred his land holdings to his son John … while William Pynchon returned to England in 1652, where he remained for the rest of his life. He died in Wraysbury, then in Buckinghamshire in England in 1662.” It quotes his warrant of 1650 for the Indian who had stolen the petticoat of Sarah Chapin, daughter of Samuel Chapin: “you shall not use violence.” His son John “extended his father’s settlements in the Connecticut River Valley northward, founding Northampton, Westfield, Hadley, and other towns.” He is an ancestor of the novelist Thomas Pynchon.