John Newton
Musician · 1725–1807 · London, England
Best known for
Songwriter
John Newton was an eighteenth-century English Anglican clergyman, hymn writer, and — in his later years — abolitionist whose “Amazing Grace” is among the most-recorded hymns in the English-speaking world. A former Atlantic slave-trade ship captain, he turned to the church after a 1748 conversion experience and spent the back half of his life writing hymns and campaigning, alongside William Wilberforce, against the trade he had once worked.
Assisted by AI.
Spot something off? Help us fix it.
- Born July 24, 1725, in Wapping, London, the son of a Mediterranean sea captain and a devout Independent mother who died of tuberculosis when he was six.
- Went to sea as a young man and worked the Atlantic slave trade, eventually captaining slave ships and investing in the business.
- Steered his ship through a fierce storm on March 10, 1748; the experience set in motion a religious conversion he later credited as the seed of “Amazing Grace.”
- Ordained a Church of England clergyman in 1764 and took up the curacy at Olney, Buckinghamshire.
- Wrote “Amazing Grace” to illustrate a sermon delivered on New Year’s Day 1773.
- Collaborated with the poet William Cowper on the Olney Hymns (1779), which included 280 hymns by Newton, among them “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” and “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds.”
- Joined William Wilberforce’s abolitionist campaign in the 1780s and wrote and preached against the slave trade until his death.
- Died December 21, 1807, in London, nine months after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act abolishing the trade in the British Empire.
