JOHN

See also:

• JOHN STOUGHTON (1807-1897)

STOUGHTON (1807-1897)  , English Nonconformist divine, was born at Norwich on the 18th of November 1807 . His father was an Episcopalian, his mother a member of the Society of Friends . Stoughton was educated at Norwich Grammar School, and, after an interval of legal study, at High-bury Congregational College . In 1833 he became minister at Windsor, in 1843 at Kensington; in 1856 he was elected chair-man of the Congregational Union . From 1872 to 1884 he was professor of historical theology in New College, Hampstead . He died at Ealing on the 24th of October 1897 . Stoughton was no controversialist, but did a good deal of sound historical work which was published in Church and State 1660-1663 (London, 1862); Ecclesiastical History of England 1640--166o (4 vols., London, 1867-187o); Religion in England under Queen Anne and the Georges (2 vols., 1878); Religion in England from 1800 to 188o (2 vols., 1884) . He contributed an account of Nonconformist modes of celebrating the Lord's Supper to the ritual commission of 1870, arranged a conference on co-operation between Anglicans and dissenters (presided over by Archbishop Tait) in 1876, was one of Dean Stanley's lecturers in Westminster Abbey and a pall-bearer at his funeral . He was elected to the Athenaeum Club in 1874 on the nomination of Matthew Arnold . Besides the books already mentioned he wrote a number of more popular works, among which Homes and Haunts of Luther (1875), The Italian Reformers (1881), and The Spanish Reformers (1883) are conspicuous . His Recollections of a Long Life (1894) furnish interesting autobiographical material .