Thomas Burkitt

Thomas Burkitt (1756-1833) was born in St. Ives, Huntingtonshire, and educated at Daventry Academy between 1785-80.  He then pastored Great Meeting (Independent) at Hinckley, Leicestershire, from 1780-83, after which he removed to the Old Meeting, Buckingham, from 1783-96.  He came to Bedford that year and pastored the Second Church (Independent) from 1796 to 1804.  He worked closely with and Hillyard at the Bunyan meeting and preached there as late as 1819.   He removed to Kenilworth, Warwickshire, in 1804 and remained there until his retirement in 1816, at which time he mainly tutored some in a school.  He died at Coventry in 1833.  After Joshua Symonds death, a third church was formed in Bedford which became Mill Street Baptist in 1792, where William Smith was a prominent member until 1799 (3).  The first pastor was Thomas Ranger, who left in 1796 and was replaced by Daniel Morrell, who was ordained in May 1798, with Mr. Burkitt (pastor of the Independent chapel there) participating (5).  Samuel Kilpin, then a student at Bristol, gave out the hymns (6).  When the Bedfordshire Union began in 1797, preaching lectures where initiated in Kempston and other surrounding villages.  At that time (1797-99), there were three congregations in Bedford: the Old Meeting (Baptist), with Hillyard as minister; the Independent chapel, with Thomas Burkitt as pastor, who had come from Buckenham [Buckingham]; and the New Meeting (Baptist), with Morell as pastor [see Rippon’s Baptist Annual Register, vol. 3 (London, 1801), 1-2] (6).  Rippon writes, “Hence on the Lord’s day at one or other of the meeting-houses in Bedford it is common to give out five or six notices of preaching in different villages on the following days of the week.  Nor are the exertions of these exemplary ministers confined here. Besides their own labours they avail themselves of the talents of the pious and discreet in their churches.  They have thirty gifted persons or more who are encouraged to promote Village Worship.  Some of them can lead a tune, some can decently read a sermon, and all can pray.  Two or three together, commonly one from each church, when the Lord’s day afternoon service is over, walk to the villages.  The have visited five or six--Clapham, Biddenham, Bromham, Harrowden and other places, the consequence of which is that prayer meetings and Village Readings are established and in some places increasingly attended, while in the old congregations new faces are constantly seen and multitudes are praying that gospel ministers throughout the land would lay themselves out as they might inVillage Preaching and for the encouragement of Village Reading” (vol.  3, p. 2).  George Pincharde replaced Morrell by 1802 (7).  Page references above are from H. G. Tibbutt’s Mill Street Baptist Church, Bedford, 1792-1963  (Bedford, 1964).