MARTIN

See also:

• MARTIN MADAN (1726-1790)

MADAN (1726-1790)  , English writer, was educated at Westminster School, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1746 . In 1748 he was called to the bar, and for some time lived a very gay life, until he was persuaded to change his ways on hearing a sermon by John Wesley . He took holy orders, and was appointed chaplain to the Lock Hospital, London . He was closely connected with the Calvinistic Methodist movement supported by the countess of Huntingdon, and from time to time acted as an itinerant preacher . He was a first cousin of William Cowper, with whom he had some correspondence on religious matters . In 1767 much adverse comment was aroused by his support of his friend Thomas Haweis in a controversy arising out of the latter's possession of the living of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire (see Monthly Review, xxxvii . 382, 390, 465) . In 178o Madan raised more serious storm of opposition by the publication of his Thelyphthora, or A Treatise on Female Ruin, in which he advocated polygamy as the remedy for the evils he deplored . The author was no doubt sincere in his arguments, which he based chiefly on scriptural authority; but his book called forth many angry replies . Nineteen attacks on it are catalogued by Falconer Madan in Dict . Nat . Biog .

Madan resigned his chaplainship and retired to

Epsom, where he produced, among other works, A New and Literal Translation of Juvenal and Persius (1789) .