James Biggs

James Biggs (fl. 1770-1830) was a Dissenting minister at Devizes. He succeeded John Fenner, uncle of Henry Crabb Robinson, as minister of the Presbyterian congregation in 1796, remaining at Devizes until his death in 1830. Biggs, originally from Trowbridge, was an evangelical Calvinist and had received his pastoral training at Bristol Baptist College. He came to Devizes from Alcester, and shortly thereafter, the Baptists began to attend his preaching at the Presbyterian meeting. With Biggs’s help they formed a separate Baptist congregation and for the next 27 years both congregations met in the same chapel under Biggs (despite a number of the Presbyterian members having adopted Arianism during the ministry of Fenner). They held separate church meetings, however, and called themselves the United Society.  See Beryl and John Hurley, The New Baptist Church, Devizes. Brief History and Membership Book 1805-1945 (Devizes: New Baptist Church and Wiltshire Family History Society, 1991), 1; R. B. Pugh, History of Devizes (Trowbridge: Wiltshire County Council, 2001), 205.