Life

The son of Joseph Mottershead, yeoman, he was born near Stockport

Stockport

Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, on 17 August 1688. He was educated at Attercliffe Academy

Attercliffe Academy

Attercliffe Academy was a Dissenting academy set up in the north of England by Timothy Jollie.Richard Frankland had founded Rathmell Academy at Rathmell, but was forced to move several times. The school moved to Attercliffe, a suburb of Sheffield, Yorkshire, leaving it at the end of July 1689, in...

 under Timothy Jollie

Timothy Jollie

Timothy Jollie, , was a nonconformist minister and notable educator in the north of England.-Biography:Timothy Jollie, son of Thomas Jollie, was born at Altham, Lancashire, about 1659. On 27 August 1673 he entered the dissenting academy of Richard Frankland at Rathmell, Yorkshire...

, and afterwards studied for a year under Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry was an English commentator on the Bible and Presbyterian minister.-Life:He was born at Broad Oak, a farmhouse on the borders of Flintshire and Shropshire. His father, Philip Henry, had just been ejected under the Act of Uniformity 1662...

 at Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

.

After license he preached (1710–12) at Kingsley, in the parish of Frodsham

Frodsham

Frodsham is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. Its population is 8,982. It is approximately south of Runcorn, 16 miles south of Liverpool, and approximately south-west of Manchester...

, Cheshire. On 5 August 1712 he was ordained at Knutsford

Knutsford

Knutsford is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority area of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, in North West England...

 as successor to Samuel Lawrence

Samuel Lawrence

Samuel Lawrence was a Canadian politician and trade unionist.Lawrence was born in Somerset, England and went to work in a quarry at the age of 12 and became a shop steward in the mason's union at the age of 17. He entered politics running for election in Battersea in London. Known as "Mr...

 at Nantwich

Nantwich

Nantwich is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The town gives its name to the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich...

. Matthew Henry visited him in 1713, and died at his house in 1714. In 1717 Mottershead became minister of Cross Street Chapel, Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, and held this post till his death. His colleagues were Joshua Jones, John Seddon

John Seddon (Unitarian)

-Life:The son of Peter Seddon , dissenting minister at Penrith, Cumberland , and Cockey Moor in the parish of Middleton, Lancashire , he was born in 1719 at Lomax Fold, Little Lever, in the parish of Bolton, Lancashire. On his father's death, Seddon's education was undertaken by the congregation of...

, and Robert Gore (1748–1779).

When the Young Pretender entered Manchester in November 1745, Mottershead was selected as hostage

Hostage

A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...

 for a monetary fine; but he had a warning in good time and made his escape. During his long ministry at Manchester, Mottershead, whom Robert Halley

Robert Halley

Robert Halley was an English Congregationalist minister and abolitionist. He was noted for his association with the politics of Repeal of the Corn Laws, and became Classical Tutor at Highbury College and Principal of New College, St John's Wood, London.-Early life :Robert Halley was born in...

 calls ‘a very quiet peaceable man,’ passed from Calvinism

Calvinism

Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...

 to a type of Arianism

Arianism

Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...

. About 1756 there was a secession from the congregation owing to the Socinian tenets of Seddon, his colleague and son-in-law.

Mottershead died on 4 November 1771, and was buried near the pulpit in his meeting-house. His portrait, by Henry Pickering, was engraved by William Pether.

Works

Mottershead published, besides two sermons (1719–1745), ‘Religious Discourses,’ &c., Glasgow, 1759. Under the signature ‘Theophilus’ he contributed essays to Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

's Theological Repository

Theological Repository

The Theological Repository was a periodical founded and edited from 1769 to 1771 by the eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley...

, 1769, i. 173, sq., 225 sq., and 1771, iii. 112 sq. He also published a revised edition of Matthew Henry's ‘Plain Catechism’ (no date).

Family

He married, first, at Kingsley, the eldest daughter of Bennett of Hapsford

Hapsford

Hapsford is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is located on the A5117 road, with Helsby to the east and the village of Elton, near Ellesmere Port, to the north west. Junction 14 of the M56 motorway and...

, Cheshire; she died in October 1718, leaving four children:

• his only son was educated at Edinburgh as a physician, but took Anglican orders, acted as curate in Manchester, and was lost at sea as chaplain of a man-of-war;
• his eldest daughter married (February 1743) Seddon, his colleague;
• his second daughter, Sarah, married John Jones, founder of the banking house of Jones, Loyd, & Co., whose grandson was Samuel Jones Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone.

He married, secondly, in January 1721, Margaret (d. 31 Jan. 1740), widow of Nathaniel Glaskell of Manchester; he was her third husband. He married, thirdly, in June 1742, Abigail (d. 28 Dec. 1753), daughter of Chewning Blackmore (see under William Blackmore (minister)

William Blackmore (minister)

-Life:Blackmore came of an Essex family, and was the second son of William Blackmore of London, a member of the Fishmongers' Company, whose elder son, Sir John Blackmore, knight, was in the confidence of Oliver Cromwell, and became governor of St. Helena after the Restoration. William was educated...

).