Author: Medley, Samuel
Biography:
MEDLEY, Samuel (1738-99: ODNB)
The author of the familiar hymn "I know that my Redeemer lives" had schoolteaching and Dissent in the family. His father, Guy Medley, kept a boarding school in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, where Samuel was born. His mother, Elizabeth Medley, was the daughter of William Tonge, a schoolmaster in Enfield. Either the father or the maternal grandfather (sources differ) served as a deacon at the Eagle Street Particular Baptist Church in Holborn, London. After leaving an apprenticeship in London to join the navy in 1755, Medley was badly injured and invalided out. He experienced conversion in 1760, joined the Eagle Street congregation, and began to study for the ministry. In 1762 he married Mary Gill and started a school in Soho; the couple had four children. For some time after he was ordained (1768) and became the minister of a church in Watford, he combined pastoral duties with teaching, but from the time that he accepted a call to Liverpool in 1772, he was able to devote himself entirely to the church. He became a leader among the Northern Baptists and was considered a great preacher. He died and is buried in Liverpool. His son Samuel, a successful London painter, edited his works (including a significant number of poems) with a memoir in 1800; his daughter Sarah Medley (q.v.) edited the expanded 2nd edn. of 1833. (ODNB 8 Apr. 2020; ancestry.com 8 Apr. 2020; Edwin F. Hatfield, The Poets of the Church [1884] 416-18) HJ
Other Names:
- S. Medley