Joshua Toulmin

Joshua Toulmin (1740-1815) was a Unitarian minister and historian. He was trained for the ministry as an Independent, and though he had already adopted some heterodox opinions, he still began his ministry at Colyton in a Calvinistic church. After only a year, though, he removed to the General Baptist chapel Mary Street, Taunton, where he remained for forty years, becoming a leading Unitarian minister and author. Toulmin’s congregation in Taunton was originally a member of the Western Baptist Association of Particular Baptists, but by 1733 Joseph Jeffries, minister at that time, became an Arian and the church ceased participating in the Association, becoming eventually associated with the General Baptists.  In 1814 a Particular Baptist congregation began meeting, all former members of the Wellington church.  They called Richard Harsey as their first pastor (he too was a member of the Wellington church) in 1815. He was an active political reformer during the 1780s and ’90s. In 1814 he became senior pastor, working with John Kentish, at the New Meeting, Birmingham, Joseph Priestley’s former congregation. Toulmin published over sixty books and numerous periodical pieces, including The History of the Town of Taunton (1791), his republication of Daniel Neal’s The History of the Puritans (1793-97), and An Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters in England (1814).  See David L. Wykes, “Joshua Toulmin (1740-1815) of Taunton: Baptist Minister, Historian and Religious Radical,” Baptist Quarterly 39 (2001-2002), 224-243; Douglas Jackman, Baptists in the West Country (Dorchester: Western Baptist Association, [1953]), 41-42.