Newton, JOHN, the friend of Cowper, was born in London, 24th July (o.s.) 1725. He had little schooling, and, as his father was master of a trading ship, the boy joined him at eleven and sailed under him for six years. Next impressed on board a man-of-war, he was made midshipman, but was degraded and cruelly treated for an attempt to escape. He was allowed at Madeira to exchange into an African trader, joined a slaver at Sierra Leone, and sailed with her for two years, returning to England in 1747. He next sailed to Guinea and the West Indies as mate on a Liverpool slaver, married in 1750, and made several voyages of the same nature as master, giving his leisure to study. In 1755 he renounced his calling to become tide-surveyor at Liverpool. His religious opinions had already undergone an important change, which led him to apply in 1758 to the Archbishop of York for holy orders, but without success. In 1764 he was offered the curacy of Olney, and he was at once ordained deacon, and next year priest, by the Bishop of Lincoln. Hither the poet Cowper came about four years later, and an extraordinary friendship quickly sprang up between the two men. Newton was a burning Calvinist, and it cannot be doubted that the converted slaver's influence was to a great extent disadvantageous to the sensitive nature of the poet. Newton left Olney in 1779 to become rector of St Mary Woolnoth, London, and here he died, December 31, 1807. Newton's prose-works, Omicron (1762), Cardiphonia (1781), &c., are now but little read, save his vigorous and interesting Authentic Narrative of some Interesting and Remarkable Particulars in his own Life. But his name can never be forgotten from its association with Cowper, and from some of his Olney Hymns, which have been taken to the heart by the English-speaking religious world. Of these need only be named here: 'Approach, my soul, the mercy-seat;' 'How sweet the name of Jesus sounds;' 'One there is above all others;' and 'Quiet, Lord, my froward heart.'
See the Life by Richard Cecil (1808), prefixed to a collected edition of Newton's works (6 vols. 1816); Thomas Wright, The Town of Cowper (1886); and other works cited at COWPER.