Benjamin Francis

Benjamin Francis (1734-1799), after completing his studies at Bristol Academy, ministered initially at Chipping Sodbury (1756-1759) before settling at Horsley, where he remained the rest of his life. He was a noted hymn writer, and was unanimously called to replace John Gill at Carter Lane in London in 1772, but decided to remain at Horsley. He contributed numerous poems to religious magazines, especially in the 1790s to John Rippon’s Baptist Annual Register. His elegies on the deaths of noted Baptist ministers were some of his best work. His poems The Salopian Zealot and The Oracle were advertised in Rippon’s Register, 1798 and 1800. See Raymond Brown, The English Baptists of the Eighteenth Century (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1986), 94; Michael A. G. Haykin, “Benjamin Francis (1734-1799),” in The British Particular Baptists, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, 5 vols (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 1998-2019), 2:17-29; Roger Hayden, Continuity and Change: Evangelical Calvinism among Eighteenth-Century Baptist Ministers trained at Bristol Academy, 1690–1791 (London: Baptist Historical Society, for Roger Hayden, 2006), 55-57, 128-131, 175-194, 234.