William Johnson Fox

FOX, William Johnson. b. Wrentham, Suffolk, 1 March 1786; d. London, 3 June 1864. He was brought up in Norwich, to which his family moved when he was a small child in 1788. He was a clerk in a Bank at Norwich from 1799 to 1806, educating himself in his spare time. With the intention of becoming an Independent minister, he attended the Independent academy at Homerton, near London, serving briefly as a minister to a congregation at Fareham in Hampshire. After leaving Homerton in 1810 he moved towards Unitarianism, like many other Independents of the time, becoming a pastor of a Unitarian church at Chichester in 1812. His fine preaching attracted attention, and he was invited to lead a...