Thomas Waldegrave

Thomas Waldegrave (1732-1812) was originally from Norwich and a Catholic by birth. He became a dissenter after attending the Old Meeting  (Independent) in Norwich as a teenager and hearing Whitefield preach. In 1756 he became one of the first students to attend James Scott’s Heckmondwike Academy. While at Heckmondwike, Waldegrave began preaching at nearby Tockholes, and was ordained there in 1762. He remained at Tockholes until 1771, when he moved to the Independent meeting at Whiting Street, Bury St. Edmunds. A young Henry Crabb Robinson heard Waldegrave preach on many occasions, but was largely unimpressed with the evangelical Waldegrave, describing him some years later as “an ignorant, noisy, ranting preacher.” Around 1800 Waldegrave’s mental faculties began to fail and Charles Dewhirst, a student from Hoxton Academy, replaced him on 28 May 1801. See Evangelical Magazine 22 (1814), 262-267; J. Duncan, “History of the Congregational Church in Bury St. Edmunds (Its First 150 Years)”  (Typescript, Dr. Williams’s Library, London, 5106.5K.39); Thomas Sadler, ed., Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London and New York: Macmillan, 1872), 1.5; Clyde Binfield, “Six Letters of Robert Robinson: A Suggested Context and a Noble Footnote,” Baptist Quarterly 40 (2003), 51-54.