John Gambold

The ODNB tells us that John Gambold (1711–1771) was a bishop of the Moravian church, born 10 April 1711 at the rectory, Puncheston, Pembrokeshire, he was the eldest of the five children of William Gambold (1672–1728), rector of Puncheston with Llanychâr, and Elizabeth (d 1744). Initially educated by his father, he entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a servitor 1726. His father's death and deathbed exhortations 1728 profoundly affected him, turning a wild teenager who loved reading poetry and drama into a man concerned only about his salvation. For over a year he was ‘in a despairing mood and totally neglected all care of his person and clothes’. By March 1730 he was sufficiently improved to desire like-minded company. He introduced himself to his fellow Christ Church undergraduate Charles Wesley and became one of the Oxford Methodists. Although he participated in their meetings and prison visiting, he preferred to remain in his room, reading and meditating on the fathers, especially mystical writers. Ordained in September 1733, in 1735 he became vicar of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, where he was looked after by his sister Martha (1713–1741) and, for about two years (1736–8), by the Wesleys' sister Kezziah. He performed his parochial duties conscientiously, but otherwise shut himself away, devoting himself to the Greek fathers, philosophical speculation and mysticism. By October 1738 he had even given up the fathers and described himself as ‘almost swallowed up with melancholy’, ‘peevish … by an hypochondriac constitution, and an internal religion ending in despondency’.

It was moving from Oxford Methodism, with its emphasis on fasting, liturgical prayer, and good works, to a Lutheran reliance on justification by faith alone, as taught by the Moravian church, which was to rescue Gambold from melancholy. He had read Luther in the mid-1730s but his gradual change of position was prompted by the Moravian Peter Böhler, when he visited Oxford in February 1738. In 1739 Gambold met the Moravian leader Count Zinzendorf in Oxford. By now he ‘thought the Brethren peculiarly happy and their Doctrine true but could not apply it to myself’. In April 1740 he described himself as still ‘mostly pensive and dejected, surrounded with solitude, sickness and silence, … contracting an abjectness, that blunts every finer sentiment, and damps every nobler ardor of the soul’. That year he did, however, compose a dramatic poem, The Martyrdom of Ignatius (published 1773).

In December 1740 Gambold's brother Hector (1714–1788) gave him an attractive account of his life in London with members of the Moravian-led Fetter Lane Society. Gambold went and experienced it for himself, and was drawn into the Moravian circle. This resulted in July 1741 in a breach with the Wesleys. Despite occasional meetings, the friendship was never restored. In Gambold's December 1741 university sermon, published as Christianity, Tidings of Joy, he spoke of baptismal regeneration in high Anglican fashion but the Moravians' emphasis on faith, their spirituality and community life were the answer to his depression. In October 1742 he finally resigned his living and moved to London. On 31 October he was received, as a founder member, into the London Moravian congregation. Writing to his parishioners, he stressed that his resignation did not imply criticism of the Church of England's liturgy or constitution. It was simply that he needed the sort of daily fellowship and pastoral care which the Moravian church offered and which he could find nowhere else.In December 1742 Gambold became a teacher at the Moravian boarding-school at Broadoaks, a manor house near Thaxted, Essex, where he married Elizabeth Walker (1719–1803) on 14 May 1743. Of their five children, one son and one daughter reached adulthood. In the autumn they moved to Haverfordwest, where Gambold kept a school and preached in local churches. Gambold had felt happy in the gentle but intense atmosphere of the Moravian school, describing himself in April 1743 as ‘at peace’ but was not suited to schoolmastering. By his own admission he had never loved children, found their concerns trivial, and preferred silent solitude. In Haverfordwest he was ‘too feeble’ to keep order and unwilling to punish. The venture failed.

In November 1744 Gambold returned to London. It helped the Moravians' image to have a learned Anglican priest as the stated preacher at their Fetter Lane Chapel, which Gambold remained until 1768. He also interpreted when Zinzendorf preached; his translation was both precise and praised by the count as of ‘heavenly beauty’. In the autumn of 1746 Gambold was Zinzendorf's intermediary in abortive negotiations with Archbishop John Potter for recognition of the Moravians as a society within the Church of England under Potter's personal oversight, helping to develop the proposals. A visit to the Moravian centre at Herrnhaag in Wetteravia for the 1747 general synod served to seal his commitment to the current Moravian spirituality and community life.

In 1742 Gambold had published anonymously an edition of the Greek text of the New Testament. His editing and translation skills were now employed in the service of the Moravian church. Beginning with Acta fratrum unitatis in Anglia (1749) he became the chief translator and editor of a series of books designed to promote the Moravians' image in England, including Zinzendorf's Maxims (1751). Assisted by James Hutton, he was responsible for most of the literary defence mounted when they came under attack between 1753 and 1755. He was the editor of Peremtorisches Bedencken (1753), A Modest Plea for the Church of the Brethren (1754), The Representation of the Committee of the English Congregations in Union with the Moravian Church (with Hutton, 1754), and probably also The Plain Case of the Representatives of the People Known by the Name of the Unitas Fratrum (1754). Hutton's Essay towards Giving some Just Ideas of the Personal Character of Count Zinzendorff (1755) included a letter about the count by Gambold. Later Gambold revised the translation of David Cranz's History of Greenland (1767). He also used his editorial skills commercially, acting as proof-reader and editor for the publisher William Bowyer.

Gambold also played a considerable part in the preparation of the Moravians' Londoner Gesangbuch of 1754, and edited A Collection of Hymns (2 vols., 1754), to which he contributed 11 translations and 28 original hymns, A Hymnbook for the Children (1756), and A Collection of Hymns (1769). Assisted by Ludolf Ernst Schlicht, he also edited the 1759 Litany Book. His sermon The Reasonableness and Extent of Religious Reverence was published in 1756, and his Short Summary of Christian Doctrine in 1765.

In November 1754 Gambold was consecrated the first English Moravian bishop. As such he consecrated chapels in Bristol and Kingswood (1757) and Leominster (1761). In 1764 he attended the Moravian church's constitutive general synod (following Zinzendorf's death), and inaugurated the congregations in Haverfordwest in 1763 and Cootehill, co. Cavan, during a visitation to Ireland in 1765. When his health failed in 1768 Gambold returned to Haverfordwest as minister of the congregation there. Despite breathlessness, dropsy, and increasing pain he remained in office until his death in Haverfordwest on 13 September 1771.

Lewis Morris said of Gambold, ‘Such were the bishops of primitive times’. In becoming a Moravian, Gambold had embraced poverty; in 1759 Richard Morris even thought he ‘delights in appearing poor and slovenly’. To John Wesley, Gambold was one of the ‘most sensible men in England’. In his edition of Gambold's Works (1789) Benjamin La Trobe wrote

Such a Bishop would have been justly esteemed an honour to any church, whether ancient or modern, if disinterestedness of spirit, humility of mind, devotion of heart, a benevolent disposition to all men, and a voluntary submission to the service not only of the church in general, but of every member thereof though in their most inferior status, be the proper qualifications and distinguished ornaments of the christian episcopacy.

Gambold was much loved.