Author: BATTY, Christopher
Biography:
BATTY, Christopher (1716-97: ancestry.co.uk)
He was the second son of Egidius (Gyles or Giles) Batty (1682-1764) of Newby Cote, near Settle in Yorkshire, and his wife Maria Robinson. His elder brother was William Batty (q.v.); a younger brother, Laurence, was admitted to St. Catharine’s, Cambridge, in 1738. He was baptised in the established church at Clapham, Yorkshire, on 21 Feb. 1716 but Batty, like his elder brother, became an Inghamite—that is, a follower of Benjamin Ingham who had organised his connexion as a separate denomination in 1756. He became an itinerant preacher and suffered persecution. Batty married Alice Redman (1729-94) on 27 Dec. 1759; William Batty and Benjamin Ingham were witnesses. They had at least two sons and two daughters. He died at Kendal, Westmoreland, on 19 Apr. 1797 and was buried by the chapel in Kendal on 21 Apr. With James Allen he wrote A Collection of Hymns (Kendal, 1757), reissued as Christian Songs in 1805. Allen, son of Oswald Allen and his wife Margaret Metcalfe, was born at Hawes on 24 June 1734 and baptised on 14 July. Educated at Threshfield school, he was admitted to St. John's, Cambridge, on 10 June 1751 but did not take a degree. Instead, he joined the Inghamite connexion and built a chapel at Gayle, Hawes, where he preached until his death. He married Margaret Wilson at Clapham, Yorkshire, on 12 Jan. 1763; they had ten children. Allen died at Gayle on 31 Oct. 1804 and was buried in the cemetery of his own chapel. (ODNB [for Benjamin Ingham]; ancestry.co.uk 30 May 2023, 3 Aug. 2025; ACAD; Joseph Belcher, Historical Sketches of Hymns, Their Writers, and Their Influence [1859]; A. C. H. Seynour, The Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntington [1841]) SR