William Henry Herford

William Henry Herford (1820–1908) was an English Unitarian minister and educator.

Born at Coventry, 20 October 1820, he was fourth son in a family of six sons and three daughters of John Herford and his first wife, Sarah, daughter of Edward Smith of Birmingham (uncle of Joshua Toulmin Smith); Brooke Herford was a younger brother. His father, a liberal and Unitarian, became a wine merchant in Manchester in 1822, residing at Altrincham, where his wife ran a girls' school.

After attending a school kept by Charles Wallace, Unitarian minister at Hale Barns, Herford was from 1831 to 1834 a day boy at Shrewsbury School under Samuel Butler. From 1834 to 1836 he was at Manchester grammar school. Then, destined for the Unitarian ministry, he was prepared for entry at the ministerial college at York by John Relly Beard.

From 1837 to 1840 Herford studied at Manchester College, York, and while there came into contact with German philosophy and theology. He moved with the college from York to Manchester in the summer of 1840, and thus came under the influence of three new professors, Francis Newman, James Martineau, and John James Tayler, the last of whom he regarded as his "spiritual father". Graduating B.A. of London University in the autumn of 1840, he began to preach in Unitarian pulpits, but declined a permanent engagement as minister at Lancaster in order to accept a scholarship for three years' study in Germany.

In 1842 Herford went to Bonn University, where he attended the courses of Ernst Moritz Arndt, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, and formed a close friendship with his contemporary Wilhelm Ihne. After two years there he spent eight months in Berlin, where he was admitted to the family circles of August Neander and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg. In the summer of 1845 he accepted an invitation from a Unitarian congregation at Lancaster, where he remained a year.

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