John Disney (Unitarian)

John Disney (1746–1816) was an English Unitarian minister and biographical writer, initially an Anglican clergyman active against subscription to the Thirty Nine Articles.

[1][2] Sympathies with the latitudinarians were early; Disney appeared as a writer in April 1768 in defence of The Confessional, by Francis Blackburne.

[1] Disney became an active member of the association formed on 17 July 1771 to promote a petition to parliament for relief of the clergy from subscription.

On 5 June 1775 the University of Edinburgh made him D.D., through the influence of Bishop Law with Principal William Robertson; in 1778 he was admitted a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

He was an energetic magistrate, and while staying at Flintham Hall, near Newark, the seat of his eldest brother Lewis Disney, he joined in 1780 the Nottingham county committee for retrenchment and parliamentary reform.

The services at Essex Street Chapel had been conducted by means of a modified common prayer-book, on the basis of a revision made by Samuel Clarke.

[1] A collection of controversial literature occasioned by Blackburne's Confessional, arranged by Disney in fourteen volumes, was deposited in Dr. Williams's library, of which he had been a trustee from 1796 to 1806.