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Foreword
- Alan Argent
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- Book:
- Dr Williams's Trust and Library
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2022
- Print publication:
- 06 May 2022, pp xi-xiii
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Summary
By the time of his death on 26 January 1716 Dr Daniel Williams was the most eminent of the English Protestant dissenters. Consulted by leading politicians, greatly respected as theologian and preacher, he deployed his financial astuteness to establish an enduring legacy for the benefit of his co-religionists. It was understandable that his primary concern was for the ministers of dissent, and the education of candidates for the dissenting ministry. It was essential to the future of the dissenting denominations that successive generations of educated ministers be provided for their congregations and academies. Having overcome hardships in his early life, Dr Williams made it his priority to serve his fellow ministers of religion and, in the words of his memorial plaque at the library, ‘to make their path to solid learning easier than he himself had found it’. That purpose he implemented through a bursary to be held at the university of Glasgow for ministerial candidates, through grants to individual dissenting ministers, and the establishment of the library which, more than three hundred years later, still bears his name.
Dr Williams's Library has been central to the history of Protestant dissent in Britain, and particularly to that of the Presbyterians, Congregationalists (or Independents, as they were usually known during the eighteenth century) and Baptists, who constituted the principal dissenting denominations. Its successive locations in London enabled it to become a repository for dissenting archives as well as a meeting place for inter-denominational co-operation. Subsequently, with very substantial increases of its holdings of rare printed books, important manuscript collections, and other primary documents, it acquired an international reputation as a major resource for the religious history of Britain. That reputation was consolidated by the foundation in 1947 of the Friends of Dr Williams's Library and the series of annual lectures, that it has sponsored (seventy-three by 2020), and by the numerous acknowledgements made in the prefaces of academic monographs that have drawn upon the library's collections. The three-hundredth anniversary of the death of its founder has provided further opportunities for reflection upon and consolidation of the history of the Dr Williams's Trust and Library. In this regard, Dr David L. Wykes, who served as Director of the trust and library from 1998 to 2021, has made a significant addition to the literature.
8 - Unitarians and Philanthropy After 1844: the Formation of a Denominational Identity
- Edited by Clyde Binfield, G. M. Ditchfield, David L. Wykes
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- Book:
- Protestant Dissent and Philanthropy in Britain, 1660–1914
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 21 March 2020
- Print publication:
- 20 March 2020, pp 152-168
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Summary
In the mid-nineteenth century the Baptists, Congregationalists and Unitarians were supported nationally by a number of major charities. Some, such as the Presbyterian Fund and the Congregational Fund, dated from the last decade of the seventeenth century, others, such as the Lady Hewley's Charity and the Particular Baptist Fund, from the first decades of the eighteenth century, and the support they provided was still significant over a century later. Yet more had been established at the end of the eighteenth century, such as the largely Congregational London Missionary Society and the Baptist Missionary Society, or at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a period when evangelical dissent grew vigorously. Unitarians responded with their own funds intended to propagate Unitarianism. All three denominations had benevolent societies for the support of their indigent ministers, or the widows and families of ministers. Surprisingly they still co-operated in distributing grants from the ‘Society for the relief of Aged and Infirm Protestant Dissenting Ministers’ established in 1818, though there was an attempt to exclude ministers who were not doctrinally orthodox from benefitting. They also supported their own colleges for training students for the ministry. There were nevertheless important differences. The Baptists and Congregationalists were involved in two major areas, overseas missions (and later home missions to convert the heathen at home) and chapel building, both involving significant denominational engagement and fund-raising, areas in which Unitarians did not engage nationally. There were other important differences between the three denominations. The Congregational Union of England and Wales was founded in 1831, and the Baptist Union of Great Britain in 1832, but the Unitarians lacked an effective national organisation. In 1825 the Unitarian Fund and a number of other Unitarian bodies established to propagate unitarian doctrine were brought together to form the British & Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA), which was the only central organisation for Unitarians until 1928, but it was poorly supported. The Unitarians were easily the smallest of the three denominations, with only 250 congregations in 1852, mainly inherited from the English Presbyterians. The Congregationalists were the largest with over 3,200 congregations in England and Wales by 1851. The Baptists had 1,134 churches organised in associations by this date.