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 A HISTORY OF LONDON Thus the aggregate of Nonconformist places of worship in the county of London, including mission rooms but excluding Roman Catholic and foreign churches, amounts to 1,487. It is impossible to indicate all the leading ministers of London Nonconformity during the last half-century. Only a few of the most eminent can be named. Among the Presbyterians were John Gumming, D.D., James Hamilton, D.D., John Edmund, D.D., and John Macfarlane, LL.D. Prominent Independents were Samuel Martin, John Kennedy, D.D., Henry Allon, D.D., John Stoughton, D.D. (the historian of Congregationalism), and Joseph Parker, D.D. Of the Baptists, C. Stanford, D.D., W. Landels, D.D., Jabez Burns, D.D., W. Brock, D.D., J. P. Chown, and C. H. Spurgeon were distinguished. C. Newman Hall, D.D., occupied a unique position at Surrey Chapel and afterwards at Christ Church ; while the Unitarian James Martineau, D.D., was acknowledged, even by the most orthodox, as one of the great religious teachers of the age. The system of itinerancy makes it generally inaccurate to include Methodist ' travelling preachers ' among London ministers, but an exception must be made in favour of the Wesleyan Hugh Price Hughes, who by the institution of the ' Sisters of the People ' brought a new and hopeful element into the life of the Nonconformist churches. Throughout the dark days of persecution under Charles II the London Nonconformists were mindful of the future. Excluded from the national universities, they established private academies in which young men could obtain a liberal education. No less than five of these were located within the Bills of Mortality, all presided over by graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, and all training students who should become pastors of dissenting congrega- tions. Two of these academies were at Newington Green, one conducted by the learned Thcophilus Gale, M.A., and John Rowe, M.A., the other by Charles Morton, M.A. ; ^'" Daniel Defoe was a pupil of the latter. There were two academies in Islington ; one conducted by Ralph Button, M.A., the most eminent of whose pupils was Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls under George I ; the other by Thomas Doolittel, M.A., minister of the congregation in Monkwell Street, among whose pupils were Edmund Calamy, biographer of the ejected ministers, and Matthew Henry the commentator. The other academy was at Wapping, conducted by Edward Veal, whose most distinguished pupil was Samuel Wesley, afterwards rector of Epworth. These academies did not outlast the century. Towards 1700, however, the Congregational Fund Board undertook the training of young men for the ministry. At first candidates were placed under private tuition, but about 1 70 1 Dr. Chauncey, having resigned his pastorate in Mark Lane, was constituted tutor of a regular academy.^" Its original seat is uncertain, but after Chauncey's death in 17 12 it was located in Tenter Alley, Moorfields, and was conducted by T. Ridgeley, D.D., John Eames, F.R.S., and J. Densham. Eames died and Densham retired in 1744 ; and the academy was then united with another which had been commenced by an association called The King's Head Society in 1730. The Plasterers' Hall in Addle Street was adapted for the use of the students, who were instructed by Dr. Zephaniah Marryatt. In "^ Bogue and Bennett, Hist, of Dissenters (2nd ed.), i, 321-36. "" Ibid, i, 313-15 ; ii, 215-20, 517 ; MS. in New Coll. Lib.