Draft:Russell Scott (minister)
Russell Scott (1760–1834) was an English nonconformist minister, prominent in the 1790s as a supporter of the Political Martyrs group of radicals, and in later life as a leading Unitarian.
Early life
[edit]The younger brother of Mary Scott, he was the son of the linen merchant John Scott of Milborne Port. He was educated at Daventry Academy and the Independent College, Homerton, and trained as a minister at Hoxton Academy.[1][2] He then sought medical training, as useful for a minister in a place where medical help was hard to find.[3] He studied medicine under William Hawes. In all, this student period was a decade, to 1785.[4]
During his period in London, Sott met Theophilus Lindsey, who already knew his sister Mary.[3] A 1782 letter from Lindsey, to his friend William Tayleur, mentions Scott as attending the Essex Street Chapel, and having moved from the orthodox Homerton to the liberal Hoxton in line with a change of views. He described the Scott family background as strict Calvinist. Lindsey at this point thought of him as a "good Unitarian".[5]
Scott began as a dissenting minister informally at Milborne Port. He was at Wrington, also in Somerset, from 1783 to 1788, being ordained there in 1787.[6]
The High Street Chapel in Portsmouth was associated with Sir John Carter and his son John Bonham-Carter MP.[7] Scott was pastor there from 1788.[8] The congregation was self-described as Unitarian by 1819.[9]
Associate of radicals
[edit]Scott became associated with the radical reformers often known as the "Scottish Martyrs" (a misnomer since three were English), five men who were sentenced to transportation to Australia. It was a result of their involvement in the Edinburgh conventions held in 1792, and in 1793 after the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, run by the London Corresponding Society. Theophilus Lindsey was concerned about the repression, particularly as it affected Joseph Priestley and younger Unitarians such as Jeremiah Joyce, and his numerous letters for 1794 document related events.[10]
In early February 1794 Thomas Muir was a convict on the transport ship Surprize lying off Portsmouth, where he was joined by Thomas Fyshe Palmer from the prison hulk Stanislaus moored on the River Thames off Woolwich.[11][12] The pair had been in Newgate Gaol, London, where the Unitarian group of Theophilus Lindsey, Joseph Priestley and William Russell had tried to visit them, but had been too late. Lindsey asked Scott to visit them, which he did, bringing money and books.[11] In March, when Maurice Margarot and William Skirving were also on the Surprize with Muir and Palmer, Scott visited again.[13]. He similarly supported Joseph Gerrald in 1795, who was transported on the Sovereign.[14]
Later life
[edit]Scott contributed in 1795 to a major hymn book for rational dissenters, A Collection of Hymns and Psalms for Private and Public Worship, edited by Andrew Kippis and others, which went through many editions in the early 19th century.[15][16] In 1822 Scott published a book, An Analytical Investigation of the Scriptural Claims of the Devil, based on a lecture series he had given in 1820–1 in Portsmouth.[17] When William Johnson Fox moved to South Place Chapel in 1824, Scott gave the inaugural service.[18]
Family
[edit]Scott married Sophia Hawes (1761–1828), eldest daughter of William Hawes.[19] Their only daughter Sophia Russell Scott married John Edward Taylor in 1824, and died in 1832 aged 38; they had four children.[20][21] Taylor was the son of Mary Taylor née Scott, Russell's sister, and this was a first cousin marriage.[1]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b Griffin, Julia B. (28 October 2024). Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, Part I. Vol. 1. Taylor & Francis. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-040-24869-0.
- ^ Whelan, Timothy (28 August 2024). Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, Part I. Vol. 4. Taylor & Francis. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-040-24816-4.
- ^ a b Lindsey, Theophilus (2007). G. M. Ditchfield (ed.). The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) Vol.1 1747–1788. Boydell Press. p. lxxxiv. ISBN 9781843833444.
- ^ Whelan, T. (2 February 2016). Other British Voices: Women, Poetry, and Religion, 1766-1840. Springer. p. 146. ISBN 978-1-137-34361-1.
- ^ Lindsey, Theophilus (2007). G. M. Ditchfield (ed.). The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) Vol.1 1747–1788. Boydell Press. p. 359. ISBN 9781843833444.
- ^ Lindsey, Theophilus (2007). G. M. Ditchfield (ed.). The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) Vol.1 1747–1788. Boydell Press. p. 533 note 3. ISBN 9781843833444.
- ^ MacLachlan, Herbert (1935). Records of a Family. Manchester University Press. p. 3.
- ^ Whelan, Timothy D. (2008). Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1808. Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru. p. xxxv. ISBN 978-1-86225-050-5.
- ^ The Christian Life. Christian Life. 1887. p. 99.
- ^ Lindsey, Theophilus (2012). G. M. Ditchfield (ed.). The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) Vol. 2 1789–1808. Boydell Press. p. xlii. ISBN 9781843837428.
- ^ a b Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. Vol. 2. University Press of America. p. 551 and note 50. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
- ^ The Belfast Monthly Magazine. Smyth and Lyons. 1812. p. 459.
- ^ McLachlan, Herbert (1950). Essays and Addresses. Manchester University Press. p. 76.
- ^ Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. Vol. 2. University Press of America. p. 661 note 661. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
- ^ Smith, Valerie (2021). Rational Dissenters in Late Eighteenth-century England: 'an Ardent Desire of Truth'. Boydell & Brewer. p. 63. ISBN 978-1-78327-566-3.
- ^ John Julian (1907). A Dictionary of Hymnology. Vol. 1. John Murray. p. 625.
- ^ "This Day is Published, price 14s. bds". Hampshire Chronicle. 9 September 1822. p. 1.
- ^ "The Story of South Place 1793 - 1952". Conway Hall. 16 September 2014.
- ^ Jones, Robert Tudur; Bebbington, David William; Dix, Kenneth; Ruston, Alan (2006). Protestant Nonconformist Texts: The nineteenth century. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-7546-3850-6.
- ^ "Died". Saint James's Chronicle. 8 May 1832. p. 1.
- ^ Taylor, Geoffrey. "Taylor, John Edward (1791–1844)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27062. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)