Nicholas Clayton 

Nicholas  Clayton (1733-1797) was the son of Samuel and Elizabeth Clayton. He was a former student of Philip Doddridge (class of 1748) and he also studied at Glasgow (he later received an honorary D.D. from Edinburgh) before commencing his ministry at Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1759. He served as minister at the Independent chapel at the Octagon in Liverpool, 1763-76, and at Benn's Garden, Liverpool, 1776-81; he became a tutor at Warrington Academy in 1781, but in 1785 returned to the ministry at High Pavement, Nottingham, serving for a time under George Walker before becoming pastor of the congregation, a position he retained until 1794, when he returned in retirement to Liverpool.  (For more on Clayton, see John Crosby Warren, The High Pavement chapel, Nottingham, A Biographical Catalogue of Portraits [Nottingham, n.d.], p. 12; see also some 126 letters by Clayton now belonging to the Unitarian Collection (formerly kept in. the archives of the Manchester Unitarian College) at John Rylands University Library of Manchester). He corresponded with Mrs. Mercy Doddridge and her daughter, Mary, in the 1750s, some from Glasgow, during which time he courted Mary, a courtship that did not materialize in marriage. Nicholas Clayton subscribed to Volume 4 of Doddridge's Family Expositor in 1753, as did his mother at Enfield Park, the only two Claytons to subscribe to that volume. A Mr. Clayton subscribed to Volume 5 in 1756, most likely Nicholas once again. He appears in 16 letters in Nuttall's Calendar, of which he was a correspondent for 7 of them. For his appearance in the Doddridge Family Letters, ed. Timothy Whelan, click here.