The son of Henry Winder (d. 1733), farmer, by a daughter of Adam Bird of Penruddock, he was born at Hutton John, parish of Greystoke, Cumberland, on 15 May 1693.
[2] In 1714 Winder succeeded Edward Rothwell as minister of the independent congregation at Tunley, Lancashire, and was ordained at St. Helen's on 11 September 1716, Christopher Bassnett preaching on the occasion.
The first entry in the extant minutes of the Warrington classis (22 April 1719) records his admission to that body, ‘upon his making an acknowledgment of his breaking in upon the rules of it, in the way & manner of his coming to Liverpoole.’ A strong advocate of non-subscription in the controversy then active both in England and in Ireland, he brought round his congregation to that view.
His ministry was successful; a new chapel was built for him in Benn's Garden, Red Cross Street, and opened in July 1727.
[2] In September 1746 Winder suffered a stroke of paralysis, and never again entered the pulpit, though he preached twice from the reading-desk in January 1747, and occasionally assisted at the sacrament in that year.
A letter (now lost) giving an account (6 August 1723) of the non-subscription debates in the Belfast sub-synod, which Winder had attended as a visitor, was printed in the Christian Moderator, October 1827 (p. 274), from a copy by John Scott Porter, then minister at Toxteth Park chapel, Liverpool.
[2] For young Shawe's use, Winder drew up (about 1733), but did not publish, ‘a short general system of chronology’ on ‘the Newtonian plan.’ This was the germ of his bulky work, the result of twelve years' labour, A Critical and Chronological History of the Rise, Progress, Declension, and Revival of Knowledge, chiefly Religious.
§ 3, is a eulogy of British liberties, with evident reference to the events of 1745, during which Winder had helped to raise a regiment for the defence of Liverpool.