James Newton

James Newton. (1733-1790) was originally from the Maze Pond church in Southwark. He became the assistant pastor to John Tommas at the Baptist congregation in the Pithay, Bristol, in early 1758, where he would remain until his death in 1790. He also served for many years as the classical tutor at Bristol Academy. During his time in Bristol, Newton boarded in the home of Robert Cottle, Joseph Cottle’s father. Cottle considered him his “most revered and honoured friend,” a scholar whose “learning was his least recommendation.” “Many an evening,” Cottle remarks in his Reminiscences, “do I recollect to have listened in wonderment to colloquisms and disputations carried on in Latin between Mr. Newton and John Henderson.” Newton was also Hannah More's private instructor in Latin and assisted in editing of many of her works. He willed his library to the Museum at the Baptist Academy. He also composed a number of hymns. See Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (London:  Houlston and Stoneman, 1847), 53; Henry Sweetser Burrage, Baptist Hymn Writers and their Hymns (Portland, ME: Brown, Thurston, and Co., 1888), 64-65.