William Enfield was a British Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 minister who published a bestselling book on elocution

Elocution

Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone.-History:In Western classical rhetoric, elocution was one of the five core disciplines of pronunciation, which was the art of delivering speeches. Orators were trained not only on proper diction, but on the proper...

 entitled The Speaker (1774).

Life

Enfield was born in Sudbury, Suffolk

Sudbury, Suffolk

Sudbury is a small, ancient market town in the county of Suffolk, England, on the River Stour, from Colchester and from London.-Early history:...

 to William and Ann Enfield. In 1758, he entered Daventry Academy

Daventry Academy

Daventry Academy was a dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It moved to many locations, but was most associated with Daventry, where its most famous pupil was Joseph Priestley...

 at the behest of his teacher and minister, William Hextal. In 1763 he became the minister at Benn's Garden Chapel in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, a wealthy and well-connected congregation. In 1767 Enfield married Mary Holland, the daughter of a local draper

Draper

Draper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer, of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...

, and together they had five children. In 1770 he moved to Warrington

Warrington

Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...

 to be the minister of the Cairo Street Chapel and a tutor of rhetoric and modern languages at Warrington Academy

Warrington Academy

Warrington Academy, active as a teaching establishment from 1756 to 1782, was a prominent dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by those who dissented from the state church in England...

. He remained there until 1785, when he was called to be the minister of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich

Octagon Chapel, Norwich

The Octagon Chapel is a Unitarian Chapel located in Colegate in Norwich, Norfolk, England. It is home to a growing liberal religious community, welcoming people of all religious faiths and none. The congregation is a member of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.The chapel...

.

Enfield died on 3 November 1797.

Works

Despite being a Unitarian, Enfield still respected the Established Church and supported the government intertwined with it. When fellow Unitarian Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

 attacked these institutions, Enfield published Remarks on Several Late Publications in a Letter to Dr. Priestley (1770). Enfield believed that Dissenters

English Dissenters

English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....

 would eventually win recognition from the government and decried Priestley's abrasive strategy. Priestley replied in a dismissive pamphlet, but the two still remained friends. Eventually, after the failure of the Feathers Tavern Petition, Enfield changed his position, agreeing with Priestley that Dissenting civil rights were too slow in coming.

Throughout his career, Enfield focused more on ethics than on theology in his many published sermons and essays. He was also a contributor to the Monthly Magazine and at his death had just started a biographical dictionary project with John Aikin

John Aikin

John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...

, a friend from Warrington. Like Aikin and Priestley, Enfield wanted to remain current in many disciplines. Believing that natural philosophy

Natural philosophy

Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...

 was essential to his students, he studied mathematics one summer and subsequently published a textbook dedicated to Priestley: Institutes of Natural Philosophy, Theoretical and Experimental (1783).

His most successful work, however, was The Speaker (1774), an anthology of literary extracts intended to teach elocution

Elocution

Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone.-History:In Western classical rhetoric, elocution was one of the five core disciplines of pronunciation, which was the art of delivering speeches. Orators were trained not only on proper diction, but on the proper...

, and produced first for his Warrington pupils. He published a sequel, Exercises in Elocution in 1780. Enfield's Speaker remained in print until the middle of the nineteenth century and inspired other anthologies, such as Mary Wollstonecraft's

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

 The Female Speaker.

External links

• An Essay towards the History of Leverpool (1774), work by Enfield based on material from George Perry
  George Perry (engineer)
  George Perry was an English engineer, ironmaster, merchant, draughtsman and cartographer.-Biography:Perry was a native of Somerset and was related to Micajah Perry, Lord Mayor of London in 1747. His family was well known in the area and Perry was "intended for the church"...