James Owen

1654-1706. Dissenting Academy* tutor. Born in Wales of a Cavalier family, he was educated at Carmarthen and at Samuel Jones's academy at Brynllywarch. He became a Nonconformist preacher and in 1676 was fined for holding an illegal conventicle. In that year he became private chaplain to Mrs. Baker at Swinney near Oswestry, and had oversight of the Dissenting congregation in the town. Owen was a close friend of Philip Henry,* and both engaged in public debate with Bishop William Lloyd of St. Asaph in 1681. In 1690 Owen opened his academy, and moved it in 1700 to Shrewsbury when he became fellow- minister there to Francis Tallents. Owen had a wide reputation as a tutor who ruled his students strictly and insisted that their conversation should be in Latin. He was in everything a moderate, as his books, Moderation a Virtue (1703) and Moderation still a Virtue (1704), show. He was a Congregationalist with definite Presbyterian sympathies. In theology he favored Richard Baxter's* form of Calvinism. It was Owen who provided the material Edmund Calamy* used in his Account when describing the ministers ejected in Wales. He published books in Welsh, and composed hymns, one or two of which are still in use.

See C. Owen, Some Account of the Life and Writings of James Owen (1709).