Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bunting, William Maclardie
BUNTING, WILLIAM MACLARDIE (1805–1866), Wesleyan minister, the eldest son of the Rev. Dr. d|Jabez|Bunting [q. v.] by his first wife, Sarah Maclardie, was born at Manchester on 23 Nov. 1805. He was educated at the Wesleyan schools at Woodhouse Grove, near Leeds, and Kingswood, and at the grammar school of St. Saviour's, Southwark, under Dr. William Fancourt, and at the early age of eighteen began his course as a preacher. In 1824 he was admitted a probationer, and in 1828 was ‘received in full connexion with the conference.’ He continued his itinerancy until his forty-fourth year, when his health broke down, and he became a supernumerary minister. For many years he took an active part in the proceedings of the Evangelical Alliance, and was for some time one of its honorary secretaries. He held a similar post in the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. He died at his residence, Highgate Rise, 13 Nov. 1866. He was a contributor to the ‘Wesleyan Methodist Magazine,’ and in 1842 edited the ‘Select Letters of Mrs. Agnes Bulmer, author of Messiah's Kingdom, &c.’ After his death a selection of his sermons, letters, hymns, and miscellaneous poetical writings was published, with a portrait, and a biographical introduction by his younger brother, in which his character as a preacher, full of thought and tenderness, and a man of strong personal conviction, yet of liberality of mind and action, is sketched.
[Memorials of the late Rev. William M. Bunting, being selections from his sermons, letters, and poems, edited by the Rev. G. Stringer Rowe, with a Biographical Introduction by Thomas Percival Bunting, 1870.]