Author: Smyth, Edward
Biography:
SMYTH, Edward (1746/7-1823: ODNB)
He was the son of the Rev. John Smyth of Limerick, Chancellor of Connor in the Church of Ireland, and his wife Anne Drysdale. His uncle Arthur Smyth was the Archbishop of Dublin. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, 1764-70, and ordained in 1770, the same year that he married Agnes Higginson of Lisburn. She was fifteen at the time of the marriage. They had five children but just two survived to adulthood. He took up a curacy in Ballyculter, County Down. Agnes’s fervent evangelicalism greatly influenced the direction of Smyth’s own beliefs and preaching but his benefactor, Lord Bangor, was displeased particularly when Smyth publicly accused him of adultery. Smyth was subjected to a trial and, despite being acquitted, lost both his living and, in 1777, his license. Agnes’s increasingly poor health took them to Bath in 1779 where John Wesley (q.v.) invited him to preach at the Methodist chapel; in 1782 Wesley made him one of his London curates. Agnes died at Bath in 1783 and Smyth returned to Ireland where his brother William Smyth built Dublin’s Bethesda chapel. Edward Smyth was appointed co-chaplain of the chapel with John Walker. In 1785 he married Elizabeth Dawson with whom he had at least two sons. In 1790 the family moved to Manchester where Smyth was curate at two newly built chapels of ease: first at St. Clement’s in Lever Street and then, in 1804, at St. Luke’s, Chorlton upon Medlock, Lancashire. Smyth prospered in Manchester but in 1817 he was struck with paralysis and died at home at Chorlton Hall on 6 Feb. 1823. (ODNB 18 Nov. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 18 Nov. 2021)