page_title: Theophilus Lindsey
section_title: Vicar of Catterick
hierarchical_section_title: Theophilus Lindsey / Vicar of Catterick
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of a 15th century font at the Church of St Anne, Catterick, North Yorkshire, England.
context_page_description: Theophilus Lindsey was an English theologian and clergyman who founded the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the country, at Essex Street Chapel.
context_section_description: In 1763 Lindsey went to the Church of St Anne, Catterick in North Yorkshire. He owed the living, in the gift of the Crown, to the influence of the Earl of Huntingdon. 
  According to Catharine Harrison, daughter of Jeremiah Harrison who had been the previous vicar, the wishes of Hannah Lindsey to be closer to her Blackburne relations had much to do with the move. The parish had at around this time about 400 households, and a local Catholic gentry family, represented by Sir Henry Lawson, 4th Baronet at Brough Hall. Lindsey was wary of Catholic influence. There was some Methodist belief, but hardly any dissenting nonconformity.  Around 1764 Lindsey founded a Sunday school. Hannah ran a dispensary and encouraged inoculation. 
  Entertaining anti-Trinitarian views, Lindsey was troubled by their inconsistency with Anglican belief. On Lindsey's own account, he was influenced by William Robertson and his Attempt to explain the words reason, substance, person, creeds, orthodoxy, Catholic-church, subscription, and Index expurgatorius of 1766, with letter to his diocesan bishop from 1760 in the later editions. From 1769 the close friendship of Joseph Priestley served to foster Lindsey's scruples. Lindsey was writing to him in Leeds by 1772.
caption: 15th century font in the Church of St Anne, Catterick
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Chrome OS Gallery App", "Image DateTime": "2018:08:26 17:31:43", "Image ExifOffset": "104", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "394", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "599"}