Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Urwick, Thomas
URWICK, THOMAS (1727–1807), independent divine, second son of Samuel Urwick of Shrewsbury, by his wife, Mary Wright, was born at Shelton, near Shrewsbury, on 8 Dec. 1727. The family were lineal descendants of the Urwicks of Furness [see under Urswick, Christopher]. Thomas was educated in the Shrewsbury grammar school. He was also under the tuition of Job Orton [q. v.], whose ministry his parents attended, and, encouraged by him, Urwick entered in 1747 the college at Northampton, under the direction of Philip Doddridge [q. v.] After the death of Doddridge in 1751 he went to the university of Glasgow, and finished his academic studies under William Leechman [q. v.] In 1754 he became assistant to Joseph Carpenter, minister of Angel Street, Worcester, and continued in that position during Dr. Allen's pastorate. In 1764 he was chosen sole pastor, and was ordained the following year. He filled the duties of the pastorate without an assistant for eleven years with much success. In 1775, to the regret of the congregation, he resigned, and undertook a small pastorate at Narborough, near Leicester. But in 1779 he was invited to succeed Dr. Philip Furneaux [q. v.] as pastor of the influential congregation at Clapham. He was chosen one of the trustees of William Coward (1657?–1725) [q. v.] for the academy in which he had been educated, and was also elected a trustee of Dr. Williams's library. When Joseph Lancaster [q. v.], the founder of the British or Lancasterian system of education, secretly ran away from home as a boy to enlist in the navy, Urwick happened to learn of the escapade from the boy's mother, discovered his whereabouts, and restored him to his family. He was assisted in later years by James Philipps, who succeeded him. He died on 26 Feb. 1807 at Balham Hill. His wife, Mary Smith, whom he married at Worcester in 1767, died on 17 June 1791. The remains of both lie in a tomb on the north side of Clapham churchyard. Besides some separately issued sermons, Urwick published ‘The proper Improvement of Divine Chastening recommended to National Attention’ (1800). There is a portrait of Urwick in pastels in the Coward trustees' room, New College, Hampstead, a photograph of which (with memoir) is given in Urwick's ‘Nonconformity in Worcester,’ pp. 100–8.
[Walter Wilson's MSS. M. 4, in Dr. Williams's Library, containing a memoir of Urwick by T. Taylor of Carter's Lane; Monthly Repository, 1807, ii. 161; Gent. Mag. 1807, i. 282, 371–3.]