An influential PM minister, born on 31 July 1844 at Low Moor, Bradford. During his childhood his family moved to Barnsley, where he became a local preacher. Recommended for the ministry, he spent a year at Elmfield College under the principalship of John Petty, whose daughter he subsequently married. Most of his itinerancy was in Yorkshire circuits, especially in Hull.. He held a series of connexional posts, including that of Financial Secretary to the Missionary Society, 1893; Book Steward, 1895-1900, Secretary of the Church Extension Society, 1901-1909, and Secretary to the General Chapel Fund. He was President of the Conference in 1902, and of the National Free Church Council in 1912. He was also a director of Chapel Aid. For the last twelve years of his life he was Secretary to Sir William Hartley's Philanthropic Fund. His literary output included a biography of R.S. Blackburn, his Hartley Lecture on Christian Beneficence (1905), and a series of services of song, including The Pioneers of Primitive Methodism. He died on 14 February 1915 while staying at Crewe and was interred at Southport, where he had lived in retirement.