Thomas Haweis was born to Thomas and Bridgeman (Willyams) Haweis in Redruth, Cornwall, England on January 1, 1734. His father died in 1744, leading him to relocate with his mother to Carnanton, where they lived with her widowed brother and his son. Haweis attended Truro Grammar School under George Conon and then apprenticed briefly to a surgeon. After being converted under the preaching of Samuel Walker, Haweis felt called to ministry. He studied at Oxford beginning in 1755 and obtained ordination as a deacon in 1757. His first appointment was as Curate of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford. Although his Evangelical preaching raised controversy, Haweis was ordained a priest the following year. By 1762 he had gained many political enemies in Oxford. John Hume, the newly appointed Bishop of Oxford, expelled him from the city, promising to appoint him to another location of his choosing.
Haweis went to London and met a sympathetic friend in Martin Madan, who offered him a position as Assistant Chaplain in the Lock Hospital, a center for the treatment of venereal diseases. Through Madan he learned of an open position at the parish of All-Saints, Aldwincle, in 1764. This position he took and held for the rest of his life. Controversy continued to dog him: John Kimpton, who sponsored the position and had fallen into debt, attempted to oust him. Madan and others defended Haweis, while Kimpton was saved from debtors’ prison by Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, who purchased the sponsorship of Aldwincle herself in 1768.
During the same period, Haweis courted Judith Wordsworth, a widow he had known when he ministered at Lock Hospital. They married on January 3, 1771. He returned to college studies at her insistence and earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from Cambridge in 1772, followed by an M.D. in 1776. Their marriage was happy but brief: Judith died unexpectedly in 1786.
Lady Huntingdon appointed Haweis Chaplain in 1774. When she reluctantly joined her churches with the Dissenters in 1783, it was against his advice, and he left her service. In 1788, Haweis remarried; his second wife, Jennett Payne Orton, had been a close friend of Lady Huntingdon and helped effect a reconciliation. Lady Huntingdon sponsored a missionary venture to Tahiti at Haweis’s request, with Haweis himself undertaking the education of the two candidates. He attempted to send his missionaries with Captain William Bligh, of
When Lady Huntingdon died in 1791, Haweis served as a trustee and executor of her estate. He then returned to Aldwincle and resumed efforts to send missionaries to Tahiti. Thomas Haweis was one of the founders of the London Missionary Society, which in 1796 sent the ship
Thomas Haweis’s second wife, Jennett, died in 1799. Three years later he married Elizabeth “Bessy” McDowall, who survived him. In 1808 Haweis retired to Bath, where he died on February 11, 1820. He was buried in Bath Abbey.
His publications included
Sources:
Julian, John. “Thomas Haweis” in John Julian, ed.,
Wood, Arthur Skevington.
Wood, Arthur Skevington. “Thomas Haweis” in Donald M. Lewis, ed.,
The Thomas Haweis papers at Bridwell Library consist of six letters written by the Rev. Thomas Haweis, 174 pieces of correspondence received by him, and related documents that he left to his son, the Rev. J. O. W. Haweis, who arranged and bound the collection in 1872, adding some materials that were created after his father’s death. These manuscripts and engravings contain insights into the personal and professional lives of the Haweises from the 1760s to the 1820s. Topics of special interest represented in the collection include the early years of the Missionary Society (later known as The London Missionary Society) and Thomas Haweis’s position with Lady Huntingdon.
The collection is organized in two series:
Bridwell Library’s digital collection on Thomas Haweis and Bridwell Library’s digital collection of Letters of Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon may be viewed at website
Provenance documents, a descriptive inventory of the collection by Wanda W. Smith (circa 2005), and a detailed catalogue of the collection written by Gareth Lloyd in 2005 are available for study in the Bridwell Library Archives Subject Files.
Haweis materials in other repositories include:
The collection is open for research use. Patrons must sign the Acknowledgement of Legal Responsibility and Privacy Rights form before using this collection.
Permission to publish materials must be obtained from the Director of the Bridwell Library.
It is the responsibility of the user to obtain copyright authorization.
This collection is indexed under the following terms in the Southern Methodist University Libraries' online catalog. Researchers desiring related materials may search the catalog using these terms.
[Identification of item], Thomas Haweis papers, Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.
Purchased from two sources in 2004: Pickering & Chatto, London, and Humber Books, South Humberside, England.
The Thomas Haweis papers were originally inventoried and arranged as a single series by Wanda W. Smith prior to 2006. In 2012 the collection was rehoused, re-Fileed, digitized, and re-arranged as two series.
Processed by Timothy S. G. Binkley in 2012 with assistance from Rachel Tillay. Biographical note written by Heather M. Oglevie.
Timothy S. G. Binkley and Heather M. Oglevie.
Ada Negraru, 2012
This series proceeds in alphabetical order. All but six of the letters are incoming correspondence. Letter descriptions in this finding aid are simplified versions extracted from Wanda W. Smith’s annotated inventory. For detailed item-level descriptions, see the Archives Subject File for Thomas Haweis.
The supplemental documents in this collection include all items that cannot be classified as letters including notes, receipts, certificates, writing samples, a sermon, a folio on Lutheranism, engravings, and the manuscript title page and preface to J. O. W. Haweis’s scrapbooks of his father’s letters. The series concludes with the empty binding from the original scrapbook volume purchased by Bridwell Library in 2004.