Whitefield, George

Whitefield, George (1714–70). Evangelist. Born at the Bell Inn, Gloucester, which his father kept, Whitefield entered Pembroke College, Oxford, as a servitor in 1732. Attracted by the Oxford methodists, he openly joined them in 1735. Ordained deacon and then priest January 1739), he went to America for the first of seven visits in 1738. His breakthrough as an evangelist came in February 1739 when he preached in the open air to 200 Kingswood colliers. His championship of predestination interrupted his friendship with Wesley in the late 1740s and the breach between Calvinist and Arminian methodists remained unhealed. In 1744 he met Lady Huntingdon, proving no match for her ‘tip‐top gentility’. He visited Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as well as America, where he died, worn out, at Newbury Port, New Hampshire, in September 1770.