William Bull

William Bull (1738-1814) was born near Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. He entered Daventry Academy in 1760, where many students had already adopted Arianism. He remained a decided Calvinist his entire life, however. In 1764 he succeeded James Belsham as pastor of the Independent congregation at Newport Pagnell. Shortly after his arrival there, he opened a small academy and soon became friends with John Newton, then vicar at Olney. With the help of Newton and some of his Evangelical friends, such as William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton, Bull expanded his small school into an Academy for training ministers in 1783. His circle of Anglican Evangelicals expanded to include Zachary Macaulay, Thomas Babington, and many others, a group that later became known as the “Clapham Sect.” Bull served from 1797 to 1814 as the first President of the Bedfordshire Union of Christians.  His wife, Hannah (d. 1814), was the sister of Mrs. Mary Andrews of Olney, in whose house John Sutcliff lived between 1775 and 1795. See Josiah Bull, Memorials of the Rev. William Bull of Newport Pagnell (London: Nisbet, 1865); Michael A. G. Haykin, One Heart and One Soul: John Sutcliff of Olney, His Friends and his Times (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1994),115.