Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/207

Asland  merged in the 'congregational,' but in Lewis's 'History of the Congregational Church, Cockermouth, being Selections from its own Records' (1870), Aspinwall's name nowhere occurs: nor have recent inquiries succeeded in finding the slightest memorial of him in Cockermouth, although the existence of the presbyterian church there has been thoroughly verified. Unluckily the date of his death is not given. The following books were published by him : 1. 'A Discourse of the Principal Points touching Baptism, so far as Scripture Light directs.' 2. 'The Legislative Power Christ's Peculiar Prerogative.' 3. 'A Presage of sundry Sad Calamities yet to come.' 4. 'The Abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath or the Sabbath of the 7th Day of the Week.' Palmer is strangely inaccurate in the following addition to Calamy: 'There is a small folio volume of sermons on the whole Epistle of Paul to Philemon, with the name of William Aspinwall prefixed, which the editor supposes to be by the same person. It is a valuable work' (Nonconf. Mem. iii. 100). 'Valuable' certainly; but it does not consist of 'sermons,' and the author was not Aspinwall, but William Attersoll [q. v.]. Our William Aspinwall (as also Peter Aspinwall, of Heaton, Lancashire) is sometimes confounded with William Aspinwall, the ejected minister of Formby, who afterwards conformed, as well as with a contemporary quaker divine (of the same names) who had been persecuted in New England, and wrote vehemently of his wrongs and tenets.

[Halley's Lancashire, its Puritanism and Nonconformity, 1872, p. 370; Tillinghast's Elijah's Mantle or Remains, 1658, book-catalogue at end.]  ASPLAND, ROBERT (1782–1845), unitarian divine, son of Robert Aspland by his second wife, Hannah Brook, was born at Wicken, Cambridgeshire, 13 Jan. 1782. His first schooling was obtained at the Soham grammar school under John Aspland, a relative. In his twelfth year, 1794, he was placed first at Islington, then at Highgate, and in August 1795 was sent to Well Street, Hackney, where he stayed till midsummer 1797. In April 1797 Aspland was publicly baptised at the baptist chapel, Devonshire Square, and was elected to a Ward scholarship at the Bristol Academy as a student for the baptist ministry. He was placed in November under the Rev. Joseph Hughes (afterwards founder of the Bible Society), then residing, not in the academy, but at Battersea, in charge of a small baptist congregation. Staying at Battersea only a few months, but long enough to give his tutor reasons for doubting the ‘soundness’ of his doctrine, Aspland went home to Wicken in the summer of 1798, becoming popular there and in the adjacent villages as the boy-preacher, and reached Bristol on 31 July to find himself assigned to Dr. Ryland, the theological tutor. He proceeded in due course, October 1799, to Marischal College, Aberdeen; but, his ‘unsoundness’ becoming more and more manifest, he was excised from membership at the chapel at Devonshire Square 29 Oct. 1800, and he quitted the university and relinquished his scholarship at the same moment.

Aspland at this juncture was offered a share in a trade. He knew a prosperous dealer in artists' colours in St. Martin's Lane, London, whose daughter, Sara Middleton, he afterwards married; and taking a part in his future father-in-law's business in the week, he devoted his Sundays to preaching for any London preacher in want of sudden help. Amongst the pulpits thus opened to him was that of the General Baptists (otherwise Unitarians) in Worship Street, City; the pastor of this church, the Rev. John Evans, recommended him to the General Baptists at Newport, Isle of Wight, then unprovided with a minister; Aspland visited them 17 April 1801, and was requested to remain. His marriage followed in May; he became secretary to the South Unitarian Society in 1803; he published a sermon, entitled ‘Divine Judgments,’ in 1804; and he left Newport February 1805 to take charge of a larger congregation at Norton, Derbyshire. Passing through London on his way thither, however, he was invited to be minister at the Gravel Pit chapel, Hackney; and merely going to Derbyshire till he could be honourably released from his engagement there, he returned to Hackney for 7 July 1805, taking possession on that day of a pulpit which he retained for forty years.

Aspland established, or aided in the establishment of, several unitarian periodicals and societies. The first of these was the ‘Monthly Repository,’ containing biographical sketches, theological disquisitions, political criticism, &c. This Aspland edited, and he had the opening number ready for February 1806. In the same month he was instrumental in establishing the Unitarian Fund, with himself as secretary. He took an additional secretaryship in 1809, when he succeeded in forming the Christian Tract Society. In 1810 he brought out ‘A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Unitarian Worship,’ used subsequently in his own chapel, though not without some opposition. In 1811 he became one of the trustees