Daventry Academy

Daventry Academy was a dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It moved to many locations, but was most associated with Daventry, where its most famous pupil was Joseph Priestley. It had a high reputation, and in time it was amalgamated into New College London.

History

An academy was started in Market Harborough and Philip Doddridge was chosen as its first principal. Soon thereafter it attracted the support of the Coward Trust, funded through the philanthropy of William Coward (died 1738), a London merchant who used his money to train ministers for the "protestant dissenters". After the death of Doddridge in 1751, the trustees took over the academy. This establishment moved to Northampton, Daventry, back to Northampton, then to Wymondley, and finally in 1833 to London.

Northampton

While known as the Northampton Academy several notable English Unitarian ministers were trained there including Hugh Farmer and Lant Carpenter who studied there for a year (1797), before the academy was closed by the trustees in 1798. The school, which was supposed to teach an Arian Christology, was closed due to growing Socinian influence in the Northampton Academy.^[1] The school was then relocated back to Daventry, one of several relocations.

London

In the second quarter of the 18th century it was "undoubtedly one of the best dissenting academies", according to Priestley's most recent biographers.^[2]

Its final home was built by Thomas Cubitt the year before, and was located in Byng Place, south of the Catholic Apostolic Church. "Here it took the name of Coward College and remained as a residential College for Theological Students until May, 1850" when, with Highbury College and the theological function of Homerton College, it became New College London.

People associated with it

Two of its principals were the Rev. Thomas Morell and Dr. Thomas William Jenkyn.^[3] Caleb Ashworth (died 1775) and Samuel Clark (died 1769) took over after Doddridge died in 1751.^[2]

Joseph Priestley studied theology there in the 1750s. Because he had already read widely, Priestley was allowed to skip the first two years of coursework. He continued his intense study; this, together with the liberal atmosphere of the school, shifted his theology further leftward and he became a Rational Dissenter. Abhorring dogma and religious mysticism, Rational Dissenters emphasized the rational analysis of the natural world and the Bible.^[4]

References

1. ↑ Larsen, Timothy A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians 2011 "Lant Carpenter recurringly found himself in Unitarian contexts in which he was considered the liberal. At the age of seventeen, he entered Northampton Academy. Here, Arianism was taught (the belief that Jesus was the incarnation of a pre-existent, exalted being who is, ... Lant Carpenter, however, was identified as 'a determined Socinian' ... This conviction was so radical that the trustees eventually took the drastic step of shutting Northampton Academy down for a period in order to keep the liberal, Socinian virus from infecting more students ."
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Joseph Priestley, scientist, philosopher, and theologian. Ed. Isabel Rivers and David L. Wykes. OUP: 2008, p 26
3. ↑ 'Coward College, Byng Place', Survey of London: volume 21: The parish of St Pancras part 3: Tottenham Court Road & neighbourhood (1949), pp. 91. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65179 Date accessed: 15 January 2010. The article itself states in its references that it depends on "information supplied by the Rev. J. B. Binns, Secretary and Librarian of New College, London, and also the articles on Dr. Doddridge and William Coward in Dictionary of National Biography. The date of the Agreement with Coward's Trustees under which New College was formed was 10th September, 1849."
4. ↑ McEvoy, John G. "Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning". Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 48–49.