Family Tree

A family tree featuring Benjamin Beddome can be found here online.
Here we learn that
1. John Beddome was born 1675 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire and died 1757 in Pithay, Bristol. He married Rachel Brandon in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire, England.

Their children were:
i. Martha Beddome, born in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.

ii. John Beddome, born 1716 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.
iii. Benjamin Brandon Beddome, born 1717 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire; died 1795 in Bourton on Water, Gloucestershire. He married Elizabeth Boswell 1749 in Bourton on Water.
iv. Joseph Beddome, born 1718 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.
v. Rachel Beddome, born 1719 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.
vi. Mary Beddome, born 1720 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.
vii. Bernard Beddome, born 1721 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.
viii. Sarah Beddome, born 1727 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.
ix. Caleb Beddome, born 1729 in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire.

2. John Beddome (1675-1757) had a father, probably called Benjamin and his mother was Mary Tibbetts. This Benjamin was born 1655 in Stratford on Avon and died 1682 in Stratford on Avon. A note in a family tree at Bristol Baptist College suggests that he was a shoemaker who lived at 3 Sheep Street, Stratford. He married in 1675. Besides John Beddome (1675-1757) they had Mary Beddome (d 1677 in Stratford on Avon) and Mary Tibbetts Beddome.

3. This Benjamin, father of John, was the son of another probably Benjamin and a Susannah (nee Barnard, I discover elsewhere). This Benjamin was born 1620 in Stratford on Avon and died 1680 in Stratford on Avon. The Bristol family tree suggest he was a joiner at the same address. He married Susannah 1643 in Stratford on Avon.
Their children were:
i. Charles Beddome, born in Stratford on Avon.

ii. John Beddome, born 1647 in Stratford on Avon.
iii. Elizabeth Beddome, born 1656 in Stratford on Avon.
iv. Susanna Beddome, born 1659 in Stratford on Avon.
v. Katharin Beddome, born 1665 in Stratford on Avon.
vi. Emmet Beddome, born 1650.
vii. Benjamin? Beddome, born 1655 in Stratford on Avon; died 1682 in Stratford on Avon.
viii. John Beddome, died 1646 in Stratford on Avon.
ix. Benjamin Beddome, died 1650.

4. Going back further again, this Benjamin was the son of a John and Emme. This John was born about 1600 in Stratford on Avon and died 1646 in Stratford on Avon. The Bristol document suggests that among other things he was a schoolteacher. he had also been town clerk. He married Emme in 1617 in Stratford on Avon.

5. The online document also states that the children of our Benjamin Beddome (1717-1795) were:

i. John Reynolds Beddome, born 1750. He died 1769 (Bristol document)
ii. Samuel Beddome, born 1756. He married Jane Wilkins of Cirencester in Clapham in 1781 (Bristol document). He died 1815.
iii. Foskett Beddome, born 1758. This is the one who drowned at Deptford in 1784.
iv. Boswell Brandon Beddome, born 1763.
v. Elizabeth Beddome, born 1765.
vi. Richard Beddome, born 1769.

vii. Josephus Beddome, born 1779. He married Sophie Petrie (in Clapham 1804 says the Bristol document).
(There is also viii. Benjamin (1753-1778) who became a medical doctor according to the Bristol manuscript. He is the one died young from a "putrid fever" in Edinburgh).

Also a Joseph was born in 1768. He appears to ahve died from whooping coughon OCtober 17, 1775, aged seven. Another child was born in 1775 (a tenth Snooke calls him).

6. As for Beddome's grandchildren we know (from the Bristol manuscript) that Samuel and Jane had six children (Mary Ann who married William Binnings, Elizabeth who married Rev J W Charlesworth of a long line of Anglican clerics, Benjamin, Samuel Archdale, Jane and Richard) and Josephus and Sophia had seven (John Reynolds, William Wilkins, Anne whose second marriage was to Olinthus Gilbert Gregory [1774-1841] the author of a brief memoir affixed to an edition of Beddome's sermons, Boswell Brandon, Samuel, Jane and Sophia).

7. The son of Elizabeth and Rev Charlesworth was Samuel Beddome Charlesworth, Rector of Limpsfield. He married his first cousin Maria Beddome daughter of wealthy barrister Richard (1818). They had three daughters. The youngest Maud Elizabeth (1865-1948) was married to the leading Salvationist Ballington Booth, son of William Booth.

Character and influence

There appears to be no portrait of Beddome in existence and no physical description of the man. We get some idea of his character from the description given by the scholarly and eloquent Robert Hall Junior (1764-1831) in his preface to the collected hymns. We should bear in mind, however, that this is a young man’s description of an eminent man of an older generation.
Hall speaks of his personal acquaintance with Beddome but he was only 31 when the latter died, there being an age gap of nearly 50 years. No doubt the input of Hall’s father, Robert Hall Senior (1728-1791) is significant. The Preface is simply signed R Hall, Leicester and it could possibly be the work of Richard Hall but the former suggestion seems far more likely. Hall was pastor at Harvey Lane, Leicester, 1806-1826. The frontispiece includes ‘Rev R Hall AM’ the same form used in his collected works. Hall gained his MA from King’s College, Aberdeen. The memoir with the works is by Olinthus Gregory, [see pic] mathematician and father-in-law to Samuel Beddome, Benjamin Beddome’s grandson.
'Mr Beddome was on many accounts an extraordinary person. His mind was cast in an original mould; his conceptions on every subject were eminently his own; and where the stamina were the same as other men’s, (as must often be the case with the most original thinkers) a peculiarity marked the mode of their exhibition .… Though he spent the principal part of his long life in a village retirement, he was eminent for his colloquial powers, in which he displayed the urbanity of the gentleman, and the erudition of the scholar, combined with a more copious vein of attic salt than any person it has been my lot to know.'
(Robert Hall, Recommendatory preface, Hymns adapted to public worship or family devotion, London, Burton & Briggs and Button & Son, 1818)
As for Beddome’s abiding influence, besides his later published hymns and sermons and his immediate influence on the Bourton congregation (Brooks, 63, ‘As a pastor Mr Beddome seems to have been no less excellent than as a preacher’) and beyond, there was that which came in the shape of men converted under his ministry who later became ministers themselves. As Derrick Holmes remarks (42) the extent of Beddome’s influence on each individual we are about to mention cannot be properly ascertained without more information than we presently have but he must have had some influence on each of the following.
Richard Haines from Burford was converted, shortly before Ryland, who we mentioned in an earlier post, in the 1741 awakening. He began to preach in 1747 and went on to pastor at Bradford-on-Avon from 1750. (The letter of dismissal is in the Bourton old church book, 43. See Appendix 12 in Holmes. Haines ministered at Bradford until his sudden but not wholly unexpected death, 1768. The final year was particularly blessed with some 24 being converted.)
John Ryland Senior became ‘a master preacher’ and ‘a giant in the land’. He was set apart to the ministry in 1746. Following studies in Bristol, he pastored the Castle Hill church, Warwick, where Beddome had once been a frequent visitor. In 1750 he moved to Northampton where he ministered with much success until retirement to Enfield, 1785, where he had a school originally begun in Warwick and carried on in Northampton. (Peter Naylor, John Collett Ryland (1723-1792), BPB 1, 200, 201)
There were several others. Richard Strange became pastor at Stratton, Wiltshire in 1752. Little is known of him. (Presumably he was son to deacon Joseph Strange, mentioned by Holmes, 60, 61. Was Nanny his sister? Cf fn 43).
John Reynolds (1730-1792) from Farmington, baptised in 1743 aged 14, studied in Bristol and for several years often deputised for Beddome. In this period his more settled ministry appears to have been at Cirencester, Cheltenham and Oxford. (Holmes, 46). In 1766 he became minister at Cripplegate, London. He succeeded High Calvinist John Brine (1703-1765) and is buried next to him in Bunhll Fields. Of Reynolds’ ministry The Baptist Register 1794-1797 says ‘Nothing very remarkable attended’ it but he had a marked ‘solicitude for the conversion of souls’, 44. Like Beddome and Ryland he was awarded an MA by the college in Providence, Rhode Island. His father, John Reynolds Senior, who died in 1758 was ‘the oracle of the town’. (Cf Holmes, 60, 61n).
We have mentioned Nathanael Rawlings, from Moreton-in-the-Marsh, baptised in 1750. Another Bristol student, he became pastor in Trowbridge in 1765. His call seems to have been a rather drawn out affair lasting from 1763-1766. He also seems to have had financial difficulties getting through college. See Holmes, 47-49. Rawlings ministered in Trowbridge, 1765-1771, when there was a disruption, and again from 1778 until his death, 1809.
Alexander Paine was a former Methodist preacher who joined the Bourton church in the Autumn of 1775, the same year that he was baptised at Fairford by Mr Davis. His name first came before the Bourton church in 1778 but there was no call until 1780, there clearly being some doubts over his suitability. The church at Bewdley considered calling him for some while but he eventually became minister at Bengeworth from November 1780. (One wonders if the Bengeworth congregation were better able to cope with the remaining Methodist traits in Paine).
Thomas Coles, Beddome’s eventual successor, was baptised and joined the church at the age of 15 or 16. He headed off to study at Bristol 10 days before Beddome died. He went on to gain an MA from the Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1800. He eventually succeeded Beddome the following year and pastored the church until 1840. (In the intervening period he turned down a call to Cannon Street, Birmingham and worked with Abraham Booth 1734-1806 at Prescott Street, London). His youth does not rule out Beddome’s influence. Even at the age of 11 he was taking extended notes of Beddome’s sermons and at 13 was reading them back at the midweek meeting (Cf Brooks, 82).

ODNB Entry

The entry for Beddome in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is by Wesleyan Methodist W B Lowther and was revised by Karen E Smith. It is as follows:

Beddome, Benjamin (1717–1795), Particular Baptist minister and hymn writer, the son of John Beddome (d 1757), Baptist minister, and Rachel Brandon, was born at Henley in Arden, Warwickshire, on 23 January 1717. He was baptized in 1739 at the Baptist church at Prescott Street, Goodman's Fields, London, by Samuel Wilson. He studied under Bernard Foskett at Bristol Academy, where he established a close friendship with Caleb Evans and John Ash, and later at the Independent academy at Mile End in Middlesex. In 1740 he became pastor at the Baptist church in Bourton on the Water, Gloucestershire, where he remained for 55 years. He was ordained in 1743, when Joseph Stennett preached the sermon and Bernard Foskett gave the charge. On 11 December 1749 he married Elizabeth Boswell (1732–1784), daughter of Richard Boswell, Baptist deacon of Bourton, at Gloucester; they had three sons, John, Benjamin, and Foskett, all of whom predeceased him. [and others who lived]

Beddome is best-known as a writer of hymns, of which he composed more than 800, published as Hymns Adopted to Public Worship or Family Devotion in 1818. His hymns were intended to be sung after his sermons, as they illustrated the truths on which he had been preaching. He was a noted preacher, whose labours were ‘unremitted and evangelical’, and, ‘though his voice was low, his delivery was forcible and demanded attention’ (Rippon, 320–21). He was a leader in the Midland Baptist Association and wrote an association letter in 1765. He also wrote an Exposition on the Baptist Catechism (1752; repr. 1776). Three posthumous volumes of his sermons were also printed. In 1770 he was awarded an MA degree by Providence College in Rhode Island in recognition of his literary gifts.

Beddome died at Bourton, the scene of his lifelong labours, on [Wednesday] 23 September 1795, aged seventy-eight years, and was buried in the Baptist meeting-house graveyard there. According to the Cambridge Intelligencer (12 September 1795), which noticed his death, he was a BD.*

*The Cambridge Intelligencer was a weekly newspaper, appearing from 1793-1803, and edited by Benjamin Flower. It has been called "the most vigorous and outspoken liberal periodical of its day" and was more like a national paper than a provincial one. Olinthus Gregory who married Beddome's grand daughter Anne in 1809 was editor for six months in 1798.