William Coward (1648–1738) was a London merchant in the Jamaica trade, remembered for his support of English Dissenters, particularly his educational philanthropy.
Property was left in trust "for the education and training up of young men ... between 15 and 22, to qualify them for the ministry of the gospel among the protestant dissenters."
In the London region (in fact east of the city as it then was, in the area of Hackney) there was an academy run first by David Jennings, a Bury Street lecturer and another of the original trustees, then taken over by Samuel Morton Savage, who moved it after 1762 from his own residence in Wellclose Square to Hoxton Square.
The London establishment relied on the Coward Trust after withdrawal of support from the Independent or Congregational Fund Board, and for some period had no students underwritten by the Presbyterian Fund Board;[5] it never achieved the same reputation as Daventry, despite having Andrew Kippis and Abraham Rees (a former pupil of Jennings) as tutors.
In 1833, following several moves, it relocated to London, to Byng Place, south of the Catholic Apostolic Church, where its final home had been built by Thomas Cubitt the year before.