Gosport Academy

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Gosport, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
Surname/tag: England

The Gosport Academy was established by David Bogue MA DD (1750-1825) to train dissenting ministers. His first student was in 1777 when he took a student into his own house. In 1789 he received funding from George Welch a wealthy London banker to train itinerant evangelical preachers and the academy grew. In 1800 the London Missionary Society adopted the Gosport Academy to be its official missionary training seminary.

David Bogue was the only tutor at Gosport Academy until August 1817, when his son, David Bogue Jr, an alumnus of Gosport Academy, joined his father in order to serve as classical tutor. David Bogue Jr resigned from this position four years later, after which it was filled by Theophilus Eastman, another Gosport graduate, who remained until the elder Bogue died in 1825. With Bogue's death, the London Missionary Society appointed Ebenezer Henderson as superintendent and resident tutor of Gosport Academy. However, in 1826 the academy closed, mainly due to the withdrawal of funding by the London Missionary Society, which had decided to establish a new seminary on the premises of the then vacant Hoxton Independent Academy, near the Society's headquarters in London.

In its lifetime, David Bogue's Gosport Academy educated more than two hundred men, over half of whom were London Missionary Society missionary candidates. Among Bogue's more celebrated students were James Bennett, theological tutor at Rotherham Independent College and historian of dissent, Robert Morrison, who first translated the Bible into Chinese, and John Angell James, minister of the important Congregational Church at Carr's Lane, Birmingham.

See the Dissenting Academies on line Gosport Academy for more details

• Dissenting Academies Online: Gosport Academy