The Dissenters included nonconformist Protestants who could not in good conscience subscribe to the articles of the Church of England, but also Quakers, Roman Catholics, and Jews.
[3] After finishing his education at Leiden, Samuel Jones moved to Gloucester, opening his academy in the Barton Street house of Henry Wintle, a Presbyterian.
[6] Persecution of the Academy continued, however; following the Henry Sacheverell affair and the attempted passing of Schism bills in parliament, Jones's house was attacked by rioters on the day of the coronation of George I.
[9] These students included future conformists of great eminence, such as Thomas Secker (later Archbishop of Canterbury), as well as major dissenting theologians and controversialists, such as Samuel Chandler.
Contemporaneously with Secker were the later Church of England bishops Joseph Butler and Isaac Maddox, and John Bowes, later Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Mr. Griffith is more than ordinary serious and grave, and improves more in every thing than one could expect from a man who seems to be not much under forty; particularly in Greek and Hebrew he has made a great progress.
What Mr. Jones dictated to us was but short, containing a clear and brief account of the matter, references to the places where it was more fully treated of, and remarks on, or explications of the authors cited, when need required.
I was designed for one of their number, but rather chose to read Logic once more; both because I was utterly unacquainted with it when I came to this place, and because the others having all, except Mr. Francis, been at other academies will be obliged to make rather more haste than those in a lower class, and consequently cannot have so god or large accounts of any thing, nor so much time to study every head.
"I began to learn Hebrew as soon as I came hither, and find myself able now to construe, and give some grammatical account of about twenty verses in the easier parts of the Bible after less than an hour's preparation.
The principal things contained in them are about the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowels, the Incorruption of the Scriptures, ancient Divisions of the Bible, an account of the Talmud, Masora, and Cabala.
We have gone through all that is commonly taught of Algebra and Proportion, with the six first books of Euclid, which is all Mr. Jones designs for the gentlemen I mentioned above, but he intends to read something more to the class that comes after them.
We pass our time very agreeably betwixt study and conversation with our tutor, who is always ready to discourse freely of any thing that is useful, and allows us either then or at lecture all imaginable liberty of making objections against his opinion, and prosecuting them as far as we can.