Newington Green - Nonconformists and The Dissenting Academies

Nonconformists and The Dissenting Academies

The area became the home of English Dissenters during the 17th century. Following the religious upheavals after the Restoration, some Protestants chose to remain in England and maintain their faith openly, but they had to live with the restrictions the state placed upon them. They moved to places tolerant of them; often they set up educational establishments, known in general as dissenting academies, which were intellectually and morally more rigorous than the universities. One such place was Newington Green, then still an agricultural village, but conveniently near London.) Oliver Cromwell's family had links there: his great-granddaughter Mary was born at the Green on 11 April 1691.

A critical mass of "dissident intellectuals, pedagogues with reforming ideas and Dissenters" and "the well-to-do edge of radical Protestantism" clustered around Newington Green, and other villages nearby such as Stoke Newington and Hackney. Not all of these free-thinkers were Unitarians: other notables include the Quaker physician John Coakley Lettsome and the Anglican pacifist Vicesimus Knox.

One such academy was set up on north of the Green, run by Charles Morton. One of the academy's students was Daniel Defoe, the writer, journalist and spy famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Another pupil was the controversial poet Samuel Wesley, father of John Wesley, the great religious leader. A later schoolmaster was the Rev. James Burgh, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the green in 1750 and sent his pupils to the church there.