Stephen Weaver Browne

Stephen Weaver Browne [Brown] (c. 1769-1832), was originally from Swaffam, Norfolk, near Norwich. He studied for the Anglican ministry at Pembroke College, Cambridge; he was admitted as a pensioner in 1785, formally matriculated in 1786, and graduated with a B.A. in 1790. He briefly served as curate at Harleston, Norfolk, but in the aftermath of the French Revolution, he joined with other radicals advocating political reform in England, leaving the Anglican communion at that time. His activities during the late 1790s are largely unknown; after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 he went to France, but was detained there by Napoleon until 1814. Upon his return to England, he ministered for a time to the French Protestant Church in Norwich, and briefly thereafter to a dissenting congregation on the Isle of Wight before becoming in May 1819 the evening Lecturer to the congregation of the Old Meeting (Unitarian), Birmingham (Joseph Priestley’s former church).  He closed his ministry in London, first at the Presbyterian congregation in Monkwell Street, London, preaching there from 1821 to 1824, and then for two years at a new Presbyterian congregation in York Street, St James’s Square, London, preaching occasionally as well at the Unitarian chapel in Essex St. He remained in London after his retirement, living in the Featherstone Buildings, Holborn, until his death on 13 January 1832. Among his publications are Remarks on a Charge delivered to the Clergy of his Diocese by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln (1795), The Duties of Christian Ministers (1819), and Corruptions of Christianity (1819). See Browne’s obituary in Unitarian Chronicle 1 (1832), 32; see also J. A. Venn, Alumni  Cantabrigienses.  Part II: From 1752 to 1900, 6 vols (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1922-54), vol. 1, 417; George Carter, Unitarian Biographical Dictionary (London: Unitarian Christian Publishing Office, 1902), 23; George Eyre Evans, Midland Churches: A History of the Congregations on the Roll of the Midland Christian Union  (Dudley: Herald Printing Works, 1899), p. 50; John Reynell Wreford, Sketch of the History of Presbyterian Nonconformity in Birmingham (Birmingham: John Bolton, 1832), 46-8; Catherine Hutton Beale, Memorials of the Old Meeting House  and Burial Ground, Birmingham (Birmingham, 1882), 49.