Caleb Warhurst

Caleb Warhurst was ordained in 1756 and began to assist James Winterbottom at the Baptist meeting at Coldhouse, in Manchester. Upon Winterbottom’s death in 1759, Warhurst, an Independent and friend of John Newton, became pastor, remaining there until April 1762, when a group of Independents broke from the Baptists at Coldhouse and formed a new meeting in Cannon Street, with Warhurst as pastor. John Byrom of Manchester records in his diary that Newton, then worshiping mostly with the Independents, came to the opening of the Cannon Street chapel on 20 April 1762. Warhurst died in 1765.  A letter from Titus Knight (and nine other members of the church at Halifax) to Caleb Warhurst at Manchester, 3 June 1763, requests that Warhurst visit Halifax to assist a Bro. Edwards in ordaining a Mr. Knight (MS., Congregational Library, MSS. II. Misc. Letters 1669-1819, a. 40, f. 13, Dr. Williams’s Library, London). Warhurst was succeeded at Cannon Street by Timothy Priestley, brother of Joseph Priestley, the Unitarian. See Robert Halley, Lancashire: Its Puritanism and Nonconformity (Manchester: Tubbs and Brook, 1872), 519; William Urwick, Historical Sketches of Nonconformity in the County Palatine of Chester (London: S. Fletcher, 1864), 293.