William Hartley

William Hartley (1740-1822) was born in Wadsworth, Heptonstall, near Halifax, Yorkshire. He was influenced early in life by his mother, a Methodist, and regularly attended Society meetings. Richard Smith, who preceded John Fawcett at Wainsgate, was another early influence upon Hartley. Shortly after his marriage to a Miss Halliwell in 1761, Hartley heard Dan Taylor, a General Baptist, preach a sermon that awakened him to an experiential awareness of his sin. He joined Taylor’s congregation, but his own reading of the Bible led Hartley to a Calvinist position. He left Taylor’s society and returned to John Fawcett’s at Wainsgate, where he was baptized and joined the church. Under Fawcett, Hartley was called to the ministry, and in 1771 removed to Halifax, where he faced many “unhappy circumstances” during his tenure there, including the death of his wife in December 1771. He was ordained in August 1772, and within a few years proposed to a woman in the church, but his choice of companion did not suit many in the church, and he was forced to resign. According to an anonymous obituary in the Baptist Magazine, “This interference, especially when the person he chose was an approved member of the church, was culpable in the highest degree.” He left in August 1776, and remarried that October. He removed to Bingley in late 1779, and in 1790 accepted a call to the church at Tuthill-stairs, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Before officially settling there, however, he returned once again to his old church at Halifax. He removed to Lockwood in 1795, and remained there ten years, before finally assuming the pastorate of the Newcastle church, which was once again destitute. After one year at Newcastle, he removed to Stockton-on-Tees, where he ministered until his death in 1822. As the obituary in the Baptist Magazine noted, “Ministers who pass through the world with less trial and affliction than the subject of this Memoir, may learn from his case, to whom they are to attribute their superior comforts. A more holy man than our deceased friend is probably not to be found on earth.” See Baptist Magazine 14 (1822), 500, 504.