Richard Haynes

Richard Haynes d 1768 

According to Robert Oliver, a subsequent pastor at Bradford on Avon, Richard Haynes was baptised in May 1741 and was an early convert of the Revival in Bourton under Beddome. In 1747, he received permission to preach in other churches after successfully exercising his preaching gifts at Bourton. Haynes lived at Burford, and preached both there and in Oxford, before receiving a call to Bradford on Avon in 1750. 

Taking up the pastorate there, he had a fruitful ministry until his premature death in 1768. Although he had no formal ministerial training the church at Bourton recorded that they considered him to be a 'remarkable' man of 'a savoury spirit'. Hayden says he started a work in Bath in 1755 (perhaps a little earlier). 

Summing up his ministry many years later William Hawkins wrote that "He was ordained on the 25th April, 1750. He appears to have been sound in the faith and consistent in discipline. His ministry was greatly honoured for eighteen years, when he suddenly died, having been called from earth to heaven while at his dinner on the 17th May, 1768." 

Even while a pastor Haynes continued in his work as a clothier, taking on an apprentice (Richard Briggs) in 1760. Haynes appears to have left £600 in his will, including gifts of £100 and £150 to be invested and the interest used by trustees to benefit, respectively, Baptist churches in Bradford, Westbury Leigh (8 miles south) and Whitchurch, Hants (Whitchurch is over 50 miles away from Bradford, the connection was established in 1759 when fellow clothier Charles Cole (1733-1813) went there as pastor, having been converted, baptised and brought into membership in Bradford three years before. He produced a small collection of hymns in 1789) and to Baptist churches in Malmesbury (20 miles north) and Melksham (7 miles east).