Josiah Thompson

Josiah Thompson (1724-1806) was born at Shrewsbury. He was ordained in February 1746 at the Baptist church in Unicorn Yard, London. He resigned in 1761 (he had been assisted by Caleb Evans from 1757-1759) and removed to Bury Street, where in 1764 he succeeded Thomas Porter as the afternoon preacher in the Independent church in Bury Street. After a few years, he retired to Clapham, where he lived off a considerable inheritance until his death in 1806. He did not preach mucdh after his move to Clapham, but was asked three times to present addresses before the King on behalf of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers. His chief work, which was never published but exists in manuscript at Dr. Williams’s Library, was “The State of the Dissenting Interest in the Several Counties of England and Wales . . . The First Part, c. 1774.”  In this work Thompson acquired information on over 600 dissenting congregations in England and Wales at the time of the application to parliament in 1772 for the relief of dissenting ministers. See Walter Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses, in London, Westminster, and Southwark; Including the Lives of Their Ministers, from the Rise of Nonconformity to the Present Time, 4 vols. (London: W. Wilson for W. Button, 1808–1814), 1:326; 4:236.