Reverend Jabez Bunting

  General Notes:

Only son of William Bunting, and firstborn child. Born 13.5.1779. Baptised 18.7.1779. By some accounts he attended Manchester Grammar School. At 16 he started work as secretary to Dr. Thomas Percival (1740-1804), father of a school friend, and a distinguished medical man and Fellow of the Royal Society. Jabez began studying medicine, for four years, but in 1799 he became a probationary Methodist minister. He arrived in London at the City Road chapel (postcode now EC1Y 1AA) in August 1803. In 1804 he was press-ganged on his way to Deptford and put aboard a man-of-war, but got off. By the Methodist conference of 1805 he had returned to Manchester. He delivered complex matters to congregations in plain terms. Also he sank his private personality in his official character. A brilliant preacher, but especially an organisational genius. Rigid, demanding and authoritarian, he possessed a natural vehemence, and he centralised authority through the expulsion of possible critics. The dominant figure in orthodox Wesleyan Methodism in the first half of the 1800s, he was President of the Methodist conference an unparalleled four times 1820-24, 1828-32, 1836-40 and 1844-48. In 1818 he was given the degree of A.M. (M.A.) by Marischal College Aberdeen, and in 1834 that of D.D. by Wesleyan University of Middletown, Connecticut, United States. Hence from the following year when this became generally known he is widely known as Dr. Bunting. Yet "Though an intelligent man, Bunting contributed nothing to biblical or theological scholarship" (Bibliography 4). Strains made it hard for him to maintain personal relationships. Retired 1851, though he continued working as a consultant. Died 16.6.1858 and buried at City Road on June 22^nd, by special permission of the Home Secretary as that burial place had been closed four years earlier.

Jabez married Sarah Maclardie, daughter of Aeneas Maclardie and Ann Ayres, on 24 Jan 1804 in Prestbury, Cheshire, England. (Sarah Maclardie was born on 26 Feb 1782 in Macclesfield, Cheshire and died on 29 Sep 1835.)

Jabez next married Elizabeth Green in Aug 1837 in Clutton, Somerset. (Elizabeth Green was born circa 1784.)