John Newton and William Cowper (1725-1807; 1731-1800) · CatalogJohn Newton and William CowperJohn Newton and William Cowper (1725-1807; 1731-1800) · CatalogAnglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain, and the poet who was his friend at Olney.
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John Newton and William Cowper
1725-1807; 1731-1800 · Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain, and the poet who was his friend at Olney
John Newton (1725–1807) went to sea as a boy, was pressed into the navy and later worked in the Atlantic slave trade, rising to command slave ships. He dated his conversion to a storm at sea in 1748 but continued in the trade until 1754. Ordained in the Church of England, he became curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire in 1764 and later rector of St Mary Woolnoth in London, where he supported William Wilberforce and published Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (1788) against it. William Cowper (1731–1800), a poet who suffered severe depression, settled at Olney in 1767 and became Newton's friend and collaborator; he later wrote The Task.
Olney Hymns is a collection of 348 hymns published in London in 1779 by John Newton, curate of the small market town of Olney in Buckinghamshire, and his friend the poet William Cowper. Newton wrote most of them; Cowper contributed sixty-eight, marked with a C in the first edition.