Murray

JAMES MURRAY (1732 - 1782)

The author of Sermons to Asses (1768) studied in Edinburgh, was minister in Alnwick in 1761, and by 1764 was minister of the High Bridge meeting-house in Newcastle. There he became a close friend of Thomas Spence (q.v.) and his family. He was a very popular preacher and a strict Congregationalist. He was also a wit, though in deadly earnest when it came to religious principle. He called John Wesley (q.v.) 'that low and puny tadpole in divinity'.

Murray also wrote A History of the Churches of England and Scotland and A History of the American War (1778). He was an outspoken egalitarian democrat, frequently in trouble, and a constant thorn in the flesh of the Newcastle establishment. At the time of his London trip, he seems to have been in danger of arrest, having preached from the text: 'He that hath not a sword, let him sell his garments and buy one.'

Murray wrote a little book called The Travels of the Imagination; a True Journey from Newcastle to London in 1772. It gives an interesting glimpse of the Tyne ferry which plied between the Swirle, in Sandgate and the southern bank, while the Tyne Bridge was being restored after the flood of 1771. Of the ferry, Murray remarks that it took a year to cross. Of the ferryman he says: ' You wait the pleasure of a little arbitrary bashaw, who will not move one foot beyond the rules of his own authority, or mitigate the sentences passed upon those who are condemned to travel in a stage-coach within a ferry-boat.'

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
JAMES MURRAY (1732 - 1782) The author of Sermons to Asses (1768) studied in Edinburgh, was minister in Alnwick in 1761, and by 1764 was minister of the High Bridge meeting-house in Newcastle. There he became a close friend of Thomas Spence (q.v.) and his family. He was a very popular preacher and a strict Congregationalist. He was also a wit, though in deadly earnest when it came to religious principle. He called John Wesley (q.v.) 'that low and puny tadpole in divinity'. Murray also wrote A History of the Churches of England and Scotland and A History of the American War (1778). He was an outspoken egalitarian democrat, frequently in trouble, and a constant thorn in the flesh of the Newcastle establishment. At the time of his London trip, he seems to have been in danger of arrest, having preached from the text: 'He that hath not a sword, let him sell his garments and buy one.' Murray wrote a little book called The Travels of the Imagination; a True Journey from Newcastle to London in 1772. It gives an interesting glimpse of the Tyne ferry which plied between the Swirle, in Sandgate and the southern bank, while the Tyne Bridge was being restored after the flood of 1771. Of the ferry, Murray remarks that it took a year to cross. Of the ferryman he says: ' You wait the pleasure of a little arbitrary bashaw, who will not move one foot beyond the rules of his own authority, or mitigate the sentences passed upon those who are condemned to travel in a stage-coach within a ferry-boat.'
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