Charles Wellbeloved | |
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Born | April 6, 1769 Denmark Street, St Giles, London |
Died | August 29, 1858 Monkgate, York, |
Charles Wellbeloved (6 April 1769 – 29 August 1858) was an English Unitarian divine and archaeologist.
Charles Wellbeloved, only child of John Wellbeloved (1742–1787), by his wife Elizabeth Plaw, was born in Denmark Street, St Giles, London, on 6 April 1769, and baptised on 25 April at St. Giles-in-the-Fields. Owing to domestic unhappiness he was brought up from the age of four by his grandfather, Charles Wellbeloved (1713–1782), a country gentleman at Mortlake, Surrey, an Anglican, and the friend and follower of John Wesley. He got the best part of his early education from a clergyman named Delafosse at Richmond. In 1783 he was placed with a firm of drapers on Holborn Hill, but only learned "how to tie up a parcel".
In 1785 he became a student at Homerton Academy under Benjamin Davies. Among his fellow-students were William Field and David Jones (1765–1816). Jones was expelled for heresy in 1786; his opinions had influenced Wellbeloved, who was allowed to finish the session of 1787, but not to return. In September 1787 he followed Jones to New College, Hackney, under Abraham Rees, the cyclopædist, and Andrew Kippis, and subsequently (1789) under Thomas Belsham and (1790) Gilbert Wakefield. Here he formed a close friendship with Arthur Aikin, who entered in 1789. He attended the ministry of Richard Price (1723–1791).
He married his wife Ann Kinder (d. 31 January 1823) on 1 July 1793, at St. Mary's, Stoke Newington, with whom he had several children. Their youngest son, Robert Wellbeloved (15 July 1803 –21 Feb. 1856), married heiress Sarah Scott on 17 February 1830 and assumed the name and arms of Scott on her father's death in 1832. Robert was a deputy-lieutenant for Worcestershire and M.P. for Walsall (1841–46). His youngest daughter, Emma (d. 29 July 1842), married (1831) Sir James Carter, chief justice of New Brunswick.