William Tong (minister)

William Tong (1662–1727) was an English Presbyterian minister, at the heart of the subscription debate of 1718.

He was born on 24 June 1662, probably at Eccles near Manchester, where his father (a relative of Robert Warton Hall) was buried. His mother was early left a widow with three children. Tong began his education with a view to the law, but his mother's influence turned him to the ministry. He entered the Rathmell Academy of Richard Frankland, then at Natland, on 2 March 1681, and was Frankland's most distinguished student.

Early in 1685 he was licensed to preach. For two years he acted as chaplain in Shropshire to Thomas Corbet of Stanwardine and Rowland Hunt of Boreatton, becoming acquainted with Philip Henry. Until threatened with prosecution, he preached occasionally at the chapel of Cockshut, in the parish of Ellesmere. At the beginning of March 1687 he took a three months' engagement at Chester, pending the arrival of Matthew Henry. His services were conducted, noon and night, in the house of Anthony Henthorn; and were so successful that they were then transferred to a large outbuilding.

From Chester he was called to be the first pastor of a newly formed dissenting congregation at Knutsford, Cheshire. He was ordained on 4 November 1687, and procured the building of the existing meeting-house in Brook Street (opened 1688–9). On the deaths (22 October 1689) of Obadiah Grew, and Jarvis Bryan (27 December 1689), he was called to be co-pastor with Thomas Shewell (died 19 Jan. 1693) at the Great Meeting-house, Coventry. Here he ministered for nearly thirteen years from 1690. He had as colleagues, after Shewell, Joshua Oldfield and John Warren (died 15 September 1742). He escaped the prosecutions which were brought against Oldfield, though he assisted him in academy teaching, and the bursaries from the presbyterian fund were paid through him.

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