William Winterbotham

William Winterbotham (1763-1829) was initially an assistant to Philip Gibbs at Plymouth, 1789-93, during which time he was tried and convicted of seditious libel as a result of two political sermons preached in 1792. He served a four-year sentence in Newgate Prison, after which he returned to Plymouth, working once again with Gibbs before removing to Shortwood, Gloucestershire, in 1804. He inserted three of Dyer’s poems into his Selection of Poems, Sacred and Moral (1796). Winterbotham, former assistant pastor at How’s Lane, Plymouth, served a four-year sentence in Newgate for preaching two ‘seditious’ sermons in late 1792 (one of the lawyers representing him at his trial was his fellow church member and Cottle’s brother-in-law, Samuel Saunders). While in Newgate, Winterbotham published, besides his Selection, two important historical works: An Historical, Geographical, and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire (1795) and An Historical, Geographical, Commercial, and Philosophical View of the American United States (4 vols, 1795). In the Advertisement to his Selection of Poems, Winterbotham contended that he was ‘principally guided by a sincere attachment to Christianity and genuine Liberty’ (Winterbotham, Selection, non-paginated), an expression not only of the moral and didactic nature of art reflected by most Baptist writers in the eighteenth century but also the overriding political and social concerns that united Winterbotham and countless Baptists who sought political reform in England during the 1790s. See John Rippon, ed., Baptist Annual Register for 1794, 1795, 1796–1797 (London: Dilly, Button, and Thomas, [1798]), ii, 340; William Winterbotham, Selection of Poems, Sacred and Moral, 2 vols (London: Printed for the Editor, and sold by H.D. Symonds, & W. Button, 1796), i, 1–4; ii, 102–07, 148–51. Winterbotham also included hymns by Anne Steele.