Author: Langford, Robert
Biography:
LANGFORD, Robert (1774-1836: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 28 Oct. 1774 and baptised on 4 Dec. at Taunton Independent, Somerset, the son of James Langford and his wife Elizabeth Lake, who had married in 1767. He received an elementary, strictly religious education but did not go to a dissenting academy and therefore lacked a classical education. His parents moved to London around 1780 and joined the Independent Meeting House in White’s Row, Spitalfields. He underwent a conversion experience at eighteen and began to prepare for the ministry. From 1799 he began to preach variously at Thames Ditton, Turnham Green, Deptford, Southgate, and other congregations. He preached a sermon at his house in Gibraltar Walk, Bethnal Green, in 1808, and was asked to cease itinerant preaching and become the minister in Bethnal Green. He was ordained 7 June 1809 at Holywell Mount Chapel. He preached in rooms and houses for about two years before becoming minister at a newly-built chapel near Bonner’s Fields, Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, East London, in September 1811, subsequently known as the Ebenezer Chapel. He remained there until his death and spent in all twenty-eight years in Bethnal Green. He was described as “a Calvinist of the old school, [who] stood equally aloof from Antinomianism and Arminianism” but “was a great admirer of the poets, and of these, Milton, Young, and Watts were his favourites” (Evangelical Magazine). He died on 17 Apr. 1836 after a three-year-long debilitating illness and was buried at St. Thomas’s Square, Hackney, on 25 Apr. His funeral was attended by a large crowd and local dissenting dignitaries gave various addresses and led prayers. He does not appear to have married. Hymns (1820) is his only known publication. (ancestry.co.uk 19 Dec. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 19 Dec. 2022; Evangelical Magazine and Missionary ChronicleNov. 1836, 559-61) AA