Author: Wood, Thomas
Biography:
WOOD, Thomas (1765-1826: Whitby Authors)
He was baptised on 21 Apr. 1765 at Flixton, near Manchester, the son of James Wood and his wife Ellen (maiden name unknown). Nothing is known of his education but by the time he was nineteen he had undergone conversion; he was appointed an itinerant minister by John Wesley in 1787. He travelled the Huddersfield Circuit (1804-6), Whitby Circuit (1799-1801), and Liverpool Circuit (1823-5). He also wrote two prose works while at Huddersfield: The Progress of Christianity (1805) and a celebratory discourse on the Battle of Trafalgar, Victory and Death (1806). Other works attack Unitarianism and Socinianism: Socianism Anti-Scriptural (1808) and Observations on Orthodox Christianity and Socinian Error(1813). A short two-page poem was appended to The Divine Conduct and Goodness as Exemplified in the Life of David (1800). Hymns, from Various Authors, to be Sung in Methodist Chapels (Whitby 1801) consisted substantially of his own compositions. Shortly before his death he published an ambitious history of Christianity in Britain, The Parish Church; or, Religion in Britain (1825), posthumously published in an expanded edition as The Origin, Learning, Religion and Customs of the Ancient Britons: With an Account of the Introduction of Christianity into Britain (1846). He died at Newcastle upon Tyne on 8 Jan. 1826. (Whitby Authors, 39; Manchester Courier 14 Jan. 1826; Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine Feb. 1826, 142, and Sept. 1826, 643; George Osborn, Outlines of Wesleyan Bibliography [1869], 204-6) AA
Other Names:
- T. Wood