James Stonhouse

Dr. James Stonhouse (1716-95) spent twenty years as a physician at Coventry and Northampton, at which time he was generally a critic of Christianity. He was converted and soon became friends with the Independent minister, Philip Doddridge, the evangelical clergyman, James Hervey, and the famous evangelist, George Whitefield. He eventually took orders and moved to Bristol in 1763, where he became Lecturer at All Saints Church. He was also appointed by Lord Radnor of Salisbury as rector of Little Cheverell, near Devizes, Wiltshire. He published numerous tracts in the 1770s. He became Sir James Stonhouse in 1792. In his early years in Bristol, Stonhouse lived next door to Hannah More and her sisters in Park Street. He was an accomplished man of letters, and soon became Hannah More’s literary advisor, assisting in some of her early publications and introducing her to literary figures in London, Northampton and then Bristol. He was a subscriber to 7 sets of Volume 4 of Dodddridge's Family Expositor in 1753. His first wife, Anne, died on 1 December 1747; he remarried in 1754, this time to Mercy Doddridge's close friend and companion, Sarah Ekins.