He was educated at Worcester under Thomas Belsher, and in 1812 entered Hoxton Academy to study for the Congregational ministry under Robert Simpson.
He undertook the converting of Roman Catholics, took the lead in philanthropic movements, and acted as secretary of the famine committee in 1824–5.
[1] Urwick was called in 1826 to the pastorate of the chapel in York Street, Dublin that had been built in 1808 by the Countess of Huntingdon's connexion.
[1] Preaching throughout Ireland, Urwick founded an Irish Congregational home mission, of which he acted as honorary secretary for some years; he agitated for home rule in church matters against the opposition of the Irish Evangelical Society of London with its paid officers.
[1] Fifty years of Urwick's residence and work in Ireland was celebrated in November 1865, when a cheque for £2,000 was presented to him by Irish churches; some of it he gave to charities.
The Saviour's Right to Divine Worship took the form of letters on the Unitarian controversy addressed to James Armstrong, then William Hamilton Drummond's colleague in Strand Street.
He marked the bicentenary of the Act of Uniformity 1662 by Independency in Dublin in the Olden Time (1862), giving the lives of Samuel Winter, provost of Trinity College, Dublin, from 1650 to 1660; John Rogers of St. Bride's, John Murcot, and Samuel Mather.
His last book, Biographic Sketches of James Digges La Touche, the patron of Sunday schools in Ireland, appeared after his death.