James Allen

Born: June 24, 1734, Gayle, Wensleydale, Yorkshire, England. Died: October 31, 1804. Allen was ed­u­cat­ed with a view to tak­ing Ho­ly Or­ders, first with two dif­fer­ent cler­gy­men at dif­fer­ent times, and then for one year at St. John’s Col­lege, Cam­bridge. Leav­ing Cam­bridge in 1752, he be­came a fol­low­er of Ben­ja­min Ing­ham, found­er of the Ing­ham­ite sect. He sub­se­quent­ly joined him­self to the San­de­man­i­ans, and fin­al­ly built a chap­el on his es­tate at Gayle, min­is­ter­ing there the rest of his life. He pub­lished a small vol­ume, Christ­ian Songs, with 17 hymns, and was the ed­it­or and prin­ci­pal con­trib­u­tor to the 1757 Kendal Hymn Book and the Appendix to the sec­ond edi­tion in 1761.