[2] During his early ministry he endured persecution including imprisonment and the impressment of several of his hearers into the Royal Navy.

[1] After his term as President of the Methodist Conference, Thompson was involved with the sacramental controversy of the early 1790s.

His pen drafted the Plan of Pacification of 1795,[1] which arose out of disputes between the Methodist societies and the Church of England over the status of travelling preachers and the administration of the sacraments, fomenting their separation.

[2] He was buried at St Mary's Church, Whittall Street, Birmingham (demolished in the late 1920s).

A tablet, formerly in that church, and now in St Martin in the Bull Ring, reads: In memory of the Rev.