Biography

He was born at Warminster

Warminster

Warminster is a town in western Wiltshire, England, by-passed by the A36, and near Frome and Westbury. It has a population of about 17,000. The River Were runs through the town and can be seen running through the middle of the town park. The Minster Church of St Denys sits on the River Were...

, in Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, in 1737. As a youth he spent a mere pleasure-seeking life. In his twenty-fourth year, however, he was seized with a passionate desire to be a preacher of the gospel, and was admitted to the Countess of Huntingdon's college at Treveca in South Wales. There he remained until a regular theological course was completed. He received ‘license,' and for a number of years preached in the chapels of the countess's ‘connection'—semi-Methodist, semi-episcopal. In September 1771 he was sent by Lady Huntingdon, with a Joseph Cook

Joseph Cook

Sir Joseph Cook, GCMG was an Australian politician and the sixth Prime Minister of Australia. Born as Joseph Cooke and working in the coal mines of Silverdale, Staffordshire during his early life, he emigrated to Lithgow, New South Wales during the late 1880s, and became General-Secretary of the...

, to Margate

Margate

-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....

, in the Isle of Thanet

Isle of Thanet

The Isle of Thanet lies at the most easterly point of Kent, England. While in the past it was separated from the mainland by the nearly -wide River Wantsum, it is no longer an island ....

. They were utter strangers in the place. They began to address any who would listen to them in the open air. The numbers increased from month to month. About this time occurred in Dover a schism among the Wesleyan Methodists, and the malcontents invited the two missionary evangelists thither. Aldridge preached for the first time in the market-place on a Sunday. The opposition was violent. But a presbyterian meeting-house that had been closed having been obtained, he officiated in it while he resided at Dover

Dover

Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...

. Later, the two preachers supplied Margate and Dover alternately. In the midst of his usefulness the Countess of Huntingdon appointed Mr. Aldridge to ‘supply' tbe Mulberry Garden chapel in Wapping

Wapping

Wapping is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets which forms part of the Docklands to the east of the City of London. It is situated between the north bank of the River Thames and the ancient thoroughfare simply called The Highway...

. There his ministry proved so remarkable a success that the large congregation united in a petition to her ladyship to ‘continue him as their minister.' The despotic lady—as was her wont—refused the appeal of the people. This led to Mr. Aldridge severing himself from the countess's ‘connexion.' Jewry-street chapel (Calvinistic Methodist) being then vacant, he was ‘called' to it, accepted the invitation, and remained its devoted and beloved minister for upwards of twenty years. He died on 28 February 1797. Like so many nonconformist ministers he was buried in Bunhill-fields. The two literary-theological memorials of Aldridge are his ‘Doctrine of the Trinity, Stated, Proved, and Defended,' and a funeral sermon on the death of the Countess of Huntingdon. The former is occasionally most powerful in its reasoning.