William Huntington

He was born near Cranbrook in Kent in 1745, the son of a labourer. Having acquired a smattering of learning at the local grammar school, he was successively errand boy, ostler, cobbler, coal-heaver, tramp, and itinerant preacher. Taking a circuit that embraced many Sussex towns and villages he eventually reached London.

From that time he added the initials S.S. to his signature, meaning that he was a Sinner Saved. In speech he was blunt, and vulgar, but he had the genius of personality and entirely commanded the hearts and purses of his congregation.

His New Providence Chapel in Gray's Inn Lane, London, for the last 25 years of his life was packed by devout followers of the faith. The prophet of the pulpit, they called him.

 

But nothing shook the faith of his believers. If Rowland Hill and Other pulpit worthies attacked him, he retorted with cyclonic abuse in the pulpit and in pamphlets and books. He was invincible; he declared the good he received to result from the direct intervention of God, his ills to proceed directly from Satan.

Filling many pulpits and twenty great volumes with his writings, Huntington carried all with a high and prosperous hand to the last, and dying in 1813 on a visit to Tunbridge Wells was brought here for burial with an epitaph composed by himself:

Here lies the coal-heaver who departed this life in the 69th year of his age, beloved of his God but abhorred of men. The omniscient Judge at the Grand Assize shall ratify and confirm this to the confusion of many thousands, for England and its metropolis shall know that there hath been a prophet among them.

 

 

 

 

 

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