Habakkuk Crabb

Habakkuk Crabb (1750-94) attended Daventry Academy at the same time as John Ludd Fenner (1751-1833), who served as minister to congregations in Devizes and Taunton, and Thomas Belsham, the latter eventually becoming minister at the Gravel Pit Unitarian congregation in Hackney. Fenner would marry Crabb’s sister in 1781. Crabb’s other sister, Jemima, married Henry Robinson of Bury St. Edmunds in 1766, the parents of the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867). Habakkuk Crabb was ordained in 1772 at Stowmarket; after somewhat unsuccessful pastorates of Independent congregations in Stowmarket and Cirencester, he came to assist Fenner in his school at Devizes in mid-summer 1787, during the time his nephew, Crabb Robinson, was attending. Habakkuk Crabb left Devizes in January 1789 for his home church at Wattisfield, where he would pastor until August 1790, having divided the congregation, unfortunately, over his Arianism.  He then removed to the Independent congregation at Royston, where he remained until his death on Christmas day 1794. Robert Hall delivered the address at his gravesite. John Duncan writes of Rev. Crabb: “He was born at Wattisfield in 1750, was the son of a deacon of the Church, entered the Academy at Daventry 1766, invited to Stowmarket 1771, removed to Cirencester in 1776, assistant at Devizes from 1787 and invited to Wattisfield 1789.  He came and settled Feb. 25th apparently in much peace and harmony, but as some difficulties arose in consequence of a difference in sentiments between himself and the people he resigned his charge Aug. 15th 1790 and settled at Royston Herts, in 1790 where he died Dec. 25. 1794.” See J. Duncan, Rev. Thomas Harmer, 1714-1788 [1959], 25; also See Christopher J. Wright,  “Crabb Robinson’s School Days: Daily Life in a late Eighteenth Century Unitarian School,” Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 16 (1975), 1-11.