Beilby Porteus - Early Life

Early Life

Although the Porteus family was of Scottish ancestry, his parents were Virginian planters who had returned to England during the difficult times and economic problems in that province during the early eighteenth century and who in 1720, for the sake of his father Robert’s health, eventually relocated to York, where Beilby was born in 1731, last but one of nineteen children. Educated at York and Ripon, he was a classics scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1752. In 1759 he won the Seatonian Prize for his poem Death: A Poetical Essay, a work for which he is still remembered.

He was ordained as a priest in 1757, and in 1762 was appointed as domestic chaplain to Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, acting as his personal assistant at Lambeth Palace for six years. It was during these years that it is thought he became more aware of the conditions of the enslaved Africans in the American colonies and the British West Indies. He corresponded with clergy and missionaries, receiving reports on the appalling conditions facing the slaves from Revd James Ramsay in the West Indies and from Granville Sharp, the English lawyer who had supported the cases of freed slaves in England.

In 1769 Beilby Porteus was appointed as chaplain to King George III. He is listed as one of the lenten preachers at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall in 1771, 1773 and 1774. He was also Rector of Lambeth (a living shared between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Crown) from 1767–77, and later Master of St Cross, Winchester (1776–77).

He was concerned about trends within the Church of England towards what he regarded as the watering-down of the truth of Scripture and stood for doctrinal purity and opposed the anti-subscription movement, composed of theologians and scholars who, as he saw it, would have watered down cardinal Christian doctrines and beliefs and were also in favour of allowing clergy the option of subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. At the same time he was prepared to suggest a compromise of a revision to some of the Articles. Always a Church of England man, he was, however, happy to work with Methodists and dissenters and recognised their major contributions in evangelism and education.