Thomas Spencer (minister)

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Thomas Spencer (1791–1811) was an English Congregational minister.

Born in Hertford on January 21, 1791, he was the second son of a worsted-weaver. His mother died when he was five. He left school at 13 to help his father and was briefly apprenticed to a glover in The Poultry, London, where he met Thomas Wilson, who helped him join the Hoxton Dissenters’ Training College for Ministers. He prepared there by studying Hebrew and even abridged John Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon.

Spencer began preaching publicly in June 1807 at Collier’s End near Hertford, at age 16, and soon preached in nearby villages and Hertford. At barely 17 he preached at Hoxton against the rules. He became a popular preacher around London, and in December 1808 he preached at Lady Huntingdon’s chapel in Brighton. On January 10, 1809, he spoke to a large congregation from Rowland Hill’s pulpit in Surrey Chapel, Southwark.

In the summer of 1810 he visited Liverpool, and on September 26 he accepted the pastorate of Newington Chapel there. He began his duties in February 1811 and was ordained on June 27, 1811, in the Byrom Street chapel. He preached first for about 65–75 minutes, but medical advice later shortened his sermons to about 45 minutes. A new chapel for 2,000 people was built, with the foundation stone laid on April 15.

Tragically, Spencer drowned while bathing near the Herculaneum Pottery on August 5, 1811, and was buried in Liverpool on August 13. Many funeral sermons and elegies followed. An elegy by James Montgomery was added to the memoirs written by his Liverpool successor, Thomas Raffles. An engraving by Blood accompanied four poems by Ellen Robinson on his death.

Posthumously, Twenty-one Sermons was published in 1829, with another edition in 1830; an American edition appeared in 1856. A volume of his tracts was published in 1853.