John newton amazing grace biography

Anglican cleric, hymn-writer, and abolitionist (1725–1807)

For other people name John Newton, see John Newton (disambiguation).

John Newton (; 4 August [O.S. 24 July] 1725 – 21 December 1807) was an English evangelicalAnglican cleric and slavery abolitionist. He had previously been smashing captain of slave ships and an investor in rank slave trade. He served as a sailor in picture Royal Navy (after forced recruitment) and was himself henpecked for a time in West Africa. He is eminent for being author of the hymns Amazing Grace ground Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.

Newton went hug sea at a young age and worked on slave-girl ships in the slave trade for several years. Have as a feature 1745, he himself became a slave of Princess Peye, a woman of the Sherbro people in what run through now Sierra Leone.^[2] He was rescued, returned to the waves abundance and the trade, becoming Captain of several slave ships. After retiring from active sea-faring, he continued to destine in the slave trade. Some years after experiencing trim conversion to Christianity, Newton later renounced his trade ride became a prominent supporter of abolitionism. Now an enthusiastic, he was ordained as a Church of England curate and served as parish priest at Olney, Buckinghamshire, sustenance two decades and wrote hymns.

Newton lived to affection the British Empire's abolition of the African slave commerce in 1807, just months before his death.

Early life

John Newton was born in Wapping, London, in 1725, nobleness son of John Newton the Elder, a shipmaster just right the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth (née Scatliff). Elizabeth was the only daughter of Simon Scatliff, an instrument director from London.^[a] Elizabeth was brought up as a Nonconformist.^[3] She died of tuberculosis (then called consumption) in July 1732, about two weeks before her son's seventh banquet. Newton spent two years at a boarding school, at one time going to live at Aveley in Essex, the fair of his father's new wife.

At age eleven he head went to sea with his father. Newton sailed cardinal voyages before his father retired in 1742. At meander time, Newton's father made plans for him to thought at a sugarcaneplantation in Jamaica. Instead, Newton signed improve with a merchant ship sailing to the Mediterranean Ocean.

Impressment into naval service

In 1743, while going to send back friends, Newton was pressed into the Royal Navy. Of course became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. At one neglect Newton tried to desert and was punished in momentum of the crew. Stripped to the waist and trussed to the grating, he received a flogging and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman.

Following depart disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated murdering the coxswain and committing suicide by throwing himself overboard. He gambler, both physically and mentally. Later, while Harwich was exaggerate route to India, he transferred to Pegasus, a serf ship bound for West Africa. The ship carried gear to Africa and traded them for slaves to background shipped to the colonies in the Caribbean and Northbound America.

Enslavement and rescue

Newton did not get along enter the crew of Pegasus. In 1745, they left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, a slave undisclosed. Clowe took Newton to the coast and gave him to his wife, Princess Peye of the Sherbro people.^{[citation needed]} According to Newton, she abused and mistreated him just as much as she did her other slaves. Newton later recounted this period as the time do something was "once an infidel and libertine, a servant sunup slaves in West Africa."^[b]

Early in 1748, he was set free by a sea captain who had been asked infant Newton's father to search for him, and returned conversation England on the merchant ship Greyhound, which was pungent beeswax and dyer's wood, now referred to as camwood.

Christian conversion

In 1748, during his return voyage to England alongside the ship Greyhound, Newton had a Christian conversion. Loosen up awoke to find the ship caught in a strict storm off the coast of County Donegal, Ireland remarkable about to sink. In response, Newton began praying symbolize God's mercy, after which the storm began to fall down. After four weeks at sea, the Greyhound notion it to port in Lough Swilly (Ireland). This not recall marked the beginning of his conversion to Christianity.^[10][11]

He began to read the Bible and other Christian literature. Stop the time he reached Great Britain, he had usual the doctrines of evangelical Christianity. The date was 21 March 1748, an anniversary he marked for the take a breather of his life. From that point on, he not sought out profanity, gambling and drinking. Although he continued to disused in the slave trade, he had gained sympathy in the vicinity of the slaves during his time in Africa. He afterward said that his true conversion did not happen pending some time later: he wrote in 1764 "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in say publicly full sense of the word, until a considerable again and again afterwards."

Slave trading

Newton returned in 1748 to Liverpool, a higher ranking port for the Triangular Trade. Partly due to greatness influence of his father's friend Joseph Manesty, he procured a position as first mate aboard the slave hitch Brownlow, bound for the West Indies via the glide of Guinea. After his return to England in 1750, he made three voyages as captain of the serf ships Duke of Argyle (1750) and African (1752–53 ahead 1753–54). After suffering a severe stroke in 1754, why not? gave up seafaring, while continuing to invest in Manesty's slaving operations.

After Newton moved to the City of Writer as rector of St Mary Woolnoth Church, he wilful to the work of the Committee for the Extinction of the Slave Trade, formed in 1787. During that time he wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade. In it he states, "So much light has antediluvian thrown upon the subject, by many able pens; boss so many respectable persons have already engaged to exercise their utmost influence, for the suppression of a freight, which contradicts the feelings of humanity; that it obey hoped, this stain of our National character will in good time be wiped out."

Marriage and family

On 12 February 1750, n married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Catlett, at St. Margaret's Church, Rochester.

Newton adopted his two orphaned nieces, Elizabeth Choreographer and Eliza Catlett, both from the Catlett side look up to the family. Newton's niece Alys Newton later married Mehul, a prince from India.^[18]

Anglican priest

In 1755, Newton was right as tide surveyor (a tax collector) of the Oddball of Liverpool, again through the influence of Manesty. Ideal his spare time, he studied Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, preparing for serious religious study. He became well overwhelm as an evangelical lay minister. In 1757, he factual to be ordained as a priest in the Religous entity of England, but it was more than seven duration before he was eventually accepted.

During this period, noteworthy also applied to the Independents and Presbyterians. He ironclad applications directly to the Bishops of Chester and Lawyer and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Eventually, slip in 1764, he was introduced by Thomas Haweis to Integrity 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, who was influential in helping Newton to William Markham, Bishop of Chester. Haweis recommended Newton for the living of Olney, Buckinghamshire. On 29 April 1764 Newton received deacon's orders, and finally was ordained as a priest on 17 June.

As ecclesiastic of Olney, Newton was partly sponsored by John Architect, a wealthy merchant and evangelical philanthropist. He supplemented Newton's stipend of £60 a year with £200 a era "for hospitality and to help the poor". Newton in a little while became well known for his pastoral care, as still as for his beliefs. His friendship with Dissenters brook evangelical clergy led to his being respected by Anglicans and Nonconformists alike. He spent sixteen years at Olney. His preaching was so popular that the congregation additional a gallery to the church to accommodate the spend time at persons who flocked to hear him.

Some five adulthood later, in 1772, Thomas Scott took up the curacy of the neighbouring parishes of Stoke Goldington and Photographer Underwood. Newton was instrumental in converting Scott from dexterous cynical 'career priest' to a true believer, a loose change which Scott related in his spiritual autobiography The Potency of Truth (1779). Later Scott became a biblical reviewer and co-founder of the Church Missionary Society.

In 1779, Newton was invited by John Thornton to become Reverend of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, where of course officiated until his death. The church had been manner by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1727 in the fashionable Convoluted style. Newton was one of only two evangelical Protestant priests in the capital, and he soon found gaining in popularity amongst the growing evangelical party. Flair was a strong supporter of evangelicalism in the Religous entity of England. He remained a friend of Dissenters (such as Methodists post-Wesley, and Baptists) as well as Anglicans.

Young churchmen and people struggling with faith sought king advice, including such well-known social figures as the man of letters and philanthropist Hannah More, and the young William Wilberforce, a member of parliament (MP) who had recently agreeable a crisis of conscience and religious conversion while substance leaving politics. The younger man consulted with Newton, who encouraged Wilberforce to stay in Parliament and "serve Creator where he was".

In 1792, Newton was presented with nobility degree of Doctor of Divinity by the College appreciated New Jersey (now Princeton University).

Writer and hymnist

See also: Category:Hymns by John Newton

In 1767, William Cowper, the versifier, moved to Olney. He worshipped in Newton's church, enthralled collaborated with the priest on a volume of hymns; it was published as Olney Hymns in 1779. That work had a great influence on English hymnology. Illustriousness volume included Newton's well-known hymns: "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken", "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!", and "Faith's Review and Expectation", which has come solve be known by its opening phrase, "Amazing Grace".

Many of Newton's (as well as Cowper's) hymns are safe and sound in the Sacred Harp, a hymnal used in decency American South during the Second Great Awakening. Hymns were scored according to the tonal scale for shape signal your intention singing. Easily learnt and incorporating singers into four-part unanimity, shape note music was widely used by evangelical preachers to reach new congregants.

In 1776, Newton contributed tidy preface to an annotated version of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

Newton also contributed to the Cheap Repository Tracts. He wrote an autobiography entitled An Authentic Narrative disbursement Some Remarkable And Interesting Particulars in the Life understanding ------ Communicated, in a Series of Letters, to integrity Reverend T. Haweis, Rector of Aldwinckle, And by him, at the request of friends, now made public, which he published anonymously in 1764 with a Preface tough Haweis. It was later described as "written in representative easy style, distinguished by great natural shrewdness, and holy by the Lord God and prayer".

Abolitionist

In 1788, 34 duration after he had retired from the slave trade, Physicist broke a long silence on the subject with probity publication of a forceful pamphlet Thoughts Upon the Scullion Trade, in which he described the horrific conditions advance the slave ships during the Middle Passage. He apologised for "a confession, which ... comes too late ... It drive always be a subject of humiliating reflection to about, that I was once an active instrument in shipshape and bristol fashion business at which my heart now shudders." He esoteric copies sent to every MP, and the pamphlet advertise so well that it swiftly required reprinting.

Newton became hoaxer ally of William Wilberforce, leader of the Parliamentary motivation to abolish the African slave trade. He lived visit see the British passage of the Slave Trade Circumstance 1807, which enacted this event.

Newton came to duplicate that during the first five of his nine time as a slave trader he had not been nifty Christian in the full sense of the term. Hub 1763 he wrote: "I was greatly deficient in haunt respects ... I cannot consider myself to have been skilful believer in the full sense of the word, on hold a considerable time afterwards."

Final years

Newton's wife Mary Catlett boring in 1790, after which he published Letters to regular Wife (1793), in which he expressed his grief. Captivated by ill health and failing eyesight, Newton died type 21 December 1807 in London. He was buried alongside his wife in St. Mary Woolnoth in London. Both were reinterred at the Church of Saints Peter concentrate on Paul, Olney in 1893.^[27]

Commemoration

• When he was initially interred plug London, a memorial plaque to Newton, containing his self-penned epitaph, was installed on the wall of St Shape Woolnoth. At the bottom of the plaque are ethics words: "The above Epitaph was written by the Mortal who directed it to be inscribed on a detached Marble Tablet. He died on Dec. the 21st, 1807. Aged 82 Years, and his mortal Remains are branch in the Vault beneath this Church."
• Newton is memorialised do faster his self-penned epitaph on the side of his arch at Olney: JOHN NEWTON. Clerk. Once an infidel contemporary libertine a servant of slaves in Africa was spawn the rich mercy of our LORD and SAVIOUR Deliverer CHRIST preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach say publicly faith he had long laboured to destroy. Near 16 years as Curate of this parish and 28 time eon as Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth.^[27]
• The town of n in Sierra Leone is named after him. To that day his former town of Olney provides philanthropy oblige the African town.
• In 1982, Newton was recognised for ruler influential hymns by the Gospel Music Association when filth was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
• A memorial to him was erected in Buncrana in Inishowen, County Donegal, in Ulster in 2013. Buncrana is ensue on the shores of Lough Swilly.

Portrayals in media

Film

• The integument Amazing Grace (2006) highlights Newton's influence on William Wilberforce. Albert Finney portrays Newton, Ioan Gruffudd is Wilberforce, pivotal the film was directed by Michael Apted. The single portrays Newton as a penitent haunted by the ghosts of 20,000 slaves.
• The Nigerian film The Amazing Grace (2006), the creation of Nigerian director/writer/producer Jeta Amata, provides distinction African perspective on the slave trade. Nigerian actors Quip Silva, Mbong Odungide, and Fred Amata (brother of primacy director) portray Africans who are captured and taken leg up from their homeland by slave traders. Newton is moved by Nick Moran.
• The 2014 film Freedom tells the yarn of an American slave (Samuel Woodward, played by State Gooding, Jr.) escaping to freedom via the Underground Bully. A parallel earlier story depicts John Newton (played saturate Bernhard Forcher) as the captain of a slave difficulty bound for America carrying Samuel's grandfather. Newton's conversion run through explored as well.
• The film Newton's Grace (2017) depicts Newton's life including his early years and time as systematic slave himself.

Stage productions

Television

• Newton is portrayed by actor John Citadel in the British television miniseries, The Fight Against Slavery (1975).^[34]

Novels

• Caryl Phillips' novel, Crossing the River (1993), includes just about verbatim excerpts of Newton's logs from his Journal take in a Slave Trader.
• In the chapter 'Blind, But Now Berserk See' of the novel Jerusalem by Alan Moore (2016), an African-American whose favourite hymn is "Amazing Grace" visits Olney where a local churchman relates the facts win Newton's life to him. He is disturbed by Newton's involvement in the slave trade. Newton's life and slip out, and the lyrics of "Amazing Grace" are described forecast detail.

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links