Thomas Taylor

Thomas Taylor (1738–1816), was an English Wesleyan minister and writer, former president of the Wesleyan conference. Biography Thomas Taylor was the son of Thomas Taylor, a tanner, was born on 11 Nov. 1738 at Royds Green in the parish of Rothwell, Yorkshire. His parents died before he was six years old, and most of his boyhood was passed in an unruly manner. When he was seventeen he heard George Whitefield preach, but the good impression received was not lasting. Three years later he was ‘convinced of sin’, joined the Methodists, and began to preach. He met John Wesley at Birstall in 1761, and by his advice attended the conference in London that year, when he was appointed the first travelling preacher of the connexion in Wales. A graphic account of his experiences in Glamorganshire and Pembrokeshire, and afterwards in various parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, is given in his "Autobiography". Like many other early Methodists, he had a full share of hardships and persecutions. He continued an itinerant minister until 1816, a period of fifty-five years. He was president of the conference in 1796 and 1809. On the former occasion Alexander Kilham, the founder of the "Methodist New Connexion," was expelled from the society. James Everett, in his Wesleyan Takings (p. 345), says of Taylor: "Large in stature, plain features; a useful preacher; natural temper short and peevish, but subdued by divine grace; with a few drawbacks, a fine specimen of the old school." He was a close student, and mastered the original languages of the Bible.