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John Newton (July 24, 1725 – December 21, 1807) was an an Anglican clergyman who had, at one time, been a slaveship master. He is best known as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Conversion to Christianity 3 Anglican priest 4 Abolitionist 5 Writer and hymnist 6 Final years 7 Trivia 8 References 9 External links

Newton was born in Wapping, London, the son of John Newton, a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth Newton (née Seatclife). His mother died of tuberculosis when he was a child. Newton spent 2 years at boarding school, at the age of 11 he went to sea with his father and sailed with him on a total of six voyages until the elder Newton retired in 1742.

In 1743 Newton's father had planned for him to take up a position at a sugar plantation in Jamaica but on his way he was pressed into naval service, and became a midshipman aboard the HMS Harwich. Having attempted to desert, Newton was recaptured, put in irons, and reduced to the rank of a common seaman. At his own request, Newton was exchanged into service on a slave ship bound for West Africa which eventually took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused suffering starvation, illness and exposure. It was this period that Newton later remembered as the time he was "once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa." Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton’s father to look out for him on the captain's next voyage.

Returning to England in 1748 aboard the slave trading ship Greyhound via the Atlantic triangle trade route, the ship and crew encountered a severe storm, which threatened to overwhelm them. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and, as the vessel filled with water, prayed for God’s mercy and said the Lord's prayer. It was this experience which he was later to mark as the beginnings of his conversion to Christianity. Even while the ship limped home in need of repair, and with little in the way of provisions, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature and, by the time they reached Britain, he had mentally assented to the doctrines of Christianity. The date was May 12, 1748, an anniversary he observed for the rest of his life. From that point on, he avoided religious taboos such as profanity, gambling, and drinking, but he continued to participate in the slave trade for the next several years. He would later say, however, that his true heart conversion did not happen until some time later ("I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word) till a considerable time afterwards."

Newton returned to Liverpool, England and, partly due to the influence of Joseph Manestay, a friend of his father’s, obtained a position as first mate aboard a slave trading vessel, the Brownlow, bound for the West Indies via the coast of Guinea. During the first leg of this voyage, while in west Africa (1748-49), Newton saw for the first time the inadequacy of his new spiritual life and, suffering from the effects of a violent fever, threw himself totally on the mercy of God. He was later to claim that this experience was the true conversion and the turning point in his search for God, and that he knew for the first time a total peace.

Newton, however, continued to be active in the slave trade. After his return to England in 1750, he made three further voyages as master of the slave-trading ships Duke of Argyle (1750) and the African (1752-53 and 1753-54).

In 1754 after a serious illness, Newton gave up seafaring altogether.

In 1755 Newton became tide surveyor of the port of Liverpool, again through the influence of Manestay and, in his spare time, was able to study Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. He became well-known as an evangelical lay minister, and applied for the Anglican priesthood in 1757, although it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted and ordained into the Church of England. Such had been his frustration during this period of rejection that he had sought also to apply to the Methodists, Independents and Presbyterians, as well as directly to the Bishops of Chester and Lincoln and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Eventually, in 1764, he was introduced by Thomas Haweis to Lord Dartmouth, who was influential in recommending Newton to the Bishop of Chester, and who had suggested him for the living of Olney, Buckinghamshire. On 29 April 1764 Newton received deacon’s orders, and finally became a priest on 17 June.

As curate of Olney, Newton was partly sponsored by the evangelical philanthropist John Thornton, who supplemented his stipend of £60 a year with £200 a year "for hospitality and to help the poor". He soon became well-known for his pastoral care, as much as for his beliefs, and his friendship with dissenters and evangelical clergy caused him to be respected by Anglicans and non-conformists alike. He was to spend sixteen years at Olney, during which time so popular was his preaching that the church had a gallery added to accommodate the large numbers who flocked to hear him.

Some five years later, in 1772, Thomas Scott, later to become a biblical commentator and co-founder of the Church Missionary Society, took up the curacy of the neighbouring parishes of Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood. Newton was instrumental in converting Scott from a cynical 'career priest' to a true believer, a conversion Scott related in his spiritual autobiography The Force Of Truth (1779).

In 1779 Newton was invited by the wealthy Christian merchant John Thornton to become Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, where he officiated until his death. The church had been built by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1727 in the fashionable Baroque style. Newton then became one of only two evangelical preachers in the capital, and he soon found himself gaining in popularity amongst the growing evangelical party. He was a strong supporter of evangelicalism in the Church of England, and was a friend of the dissenting clergy as well as of the ministry of his own church.

Many young churchmen and others enquiring about their faith visited him and sought advice from him, including the great and the good of Georgian society, among them the writer and philanthropist Hannah More and the young M.P., William Wilberforce, who had recently undergone a crisis of conscience and religious conversion experience, and was contemplating leaving politics.

John Newton has been criticised by some modern writers for continuing to participate in the slave trade while, at the same time, holding to strong Christian convictions. This has often been characterised as hypocrisy. But this should be seen in the light of his own estimation of the true timing of his Christian conversion. Writing about the definite change that had happened to him in 1748, Newton would later write:

'I was greatly deficient in many respects...I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word) till a considerable time afterwards."

After what he felt was his true conversion to Christianity, he came to deeply regret and repent of his personal involvement in the slave trade, and he later joined William Wilberforce in the campaign for abolition. In 1787 he wrote a tract supporting the campaign, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.

Among his greatest contributions to history was encouraging Wilberforce, a Member of Parliament for Hull, to stay in Parliament and "serve God where he was", rather than enter the ministry. Wilberforce heeded the ex-slaveship captain's advice, and spent the next five decades successfully working for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.

In 1767 William Cowper, the poet, moved to Olney. He worshipped in the church, and collaborated with Newton on producing a volume of hymns, which was eventually published as Olney Hymns in 1779. This work was to have a great influence on English hymnology. The volume included Newton's well -known hymns "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken", "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!", "Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare", "Approach, My Soul, the Mercy-seat", and "Amazing Grace".

Many of Newton's (as well as Cowper's) hymns are preserved in the Sacred Harp.

Newton had married his sweetheart Mary Catlett (whom he had known since his teenage years) in 1750. After her death in 1790 he published his Letters to a Wife in 1793, in which he expressed his grief. His faculties gradually deteriorating and his sight having failed, he died on December 21, 1807. He was buried beside his wife in St Mary Woolnoth, and both bodies were reinterred at Olney in 1893. Olney has a museum to commemorate its most famous son.

The town of Newton, Sierra Leone is named after John Newton. To this day there is a philanthropic link between John Newton's church of Olney and Newton, Sierra Leone.

In his book Bury The Chains, Adam Hochschild describes at length John Newton's time in the slave trade, and, three decades later, his very belated conversion to the abolitionist cause.

Newton was recognized for his hymns of longstanding influence by the Gospel Music Association in 1982 when he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

Caryl Phillips's novel Crossing the River (1993) includes nearly verbatim excerpts from Newton's books.

Newton is played by the actor Albert Finney in the 2007 film Amazing Grace.

'African Snow', a play by Murray Watts, takes place in Newton's mind. It was first produced at the York Theatre Royal in April 2007. Newton was played by Roger Alborough.

• Bennett, H.L. John Newton in Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 1894)
• Hindmarsh, D. Bruce. John Newton in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 2004)
• Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan, 2005)

• "But Now I See" An Autobiography and Narrative, Compiled Chiefly From His Diary And Other Unpublished Documents. By Josiah Bull, M.A., First Published In 1868, (Reprinted by) Banner of Truth Trust, 1998 Public Domain
• The Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney
• Amazing Grace: John Newton information.
• Olney-Newton, Sierra Leone Project
• Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade By John Newton. Published in 1788. Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection. {Reprinted by}Cornell University Library Digital Collections