Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith spent several years as pastor of the Third Meeting (Independent) in Bedford, serving as Flower’s agent for the Intelligencer from 1793 to 1796. Smith left that year to pastor the Independent chapel at Foulmire, near Cambridge, where he remained until October 1800. He then returned to his former church in Bedford, only to die four months later, leaving behind a widow and seven orphans. In a letter from Flower to Robert Aspland, dated 12 February 1809, Flower relates the following anecdote about Rev. Smith: “William Clayton’s [Flower’s nephew] Ordination service is to be published; and I hope, as it will with propriety come under your cognizance in your Review, that you will notice the folly of attributing an expression in a parlour, used by Mr. [Robert] Hall (about spirits being liquid death, &c) in one of his jocular strains, to an ordination service. The expression was used by Mr. Smith, of Foulmire, in conversation.  Mr. Smith was very fond of smoking, and would sip over a glass of brandy and water, but was never known to be intemperate” (Aspland, Memoir 240).  See Church Book of Bunyan Meeting f.237; Gilmour and Hurst 81; BAR 3.348; CI 7 February 1801.