Joseph Fawcett

Who was Joseph Fawcett?

Joseph Fawcett was an 18th-century English Presbyterian minister and poet.

Fawcett began his education at Reverend French's school in Ware, Hertfordshire and in 1774 entered the dissenting academy at Daventry. At the school, he practiced his preaching on thorn bushes. In 1780 Fawcett was called to be the morning preacher at Marsh Street Presbyterian Chapel in Walthamstow, east of London. His adoption of Unitarianism led to a schism in the congregation and he resigned in 1787. On 23 September 1782, Fawcett married the daughter of his schoolteacher, Charlotte French.

In 1785 he began a series of Sunday evening lectures at the Old Jewry meeting house in the City of London. This series established Fawcett as one of the most popular Dissenting preachers of the time. He supposedly drew "the largest and most genteel London audience that ever assembled in a dissenting place of worship". He appealed to a broad audience, including Anglicans, actors such as Sarah Siddons and the Kembles. William Wordsworth admired his sermons, although he felt that Fawcett was unstable, and is alleged to have modelled the "Solitary" in his poem "The Excursion" after him.