the agitation for the Roman catholic claims in 1813. In view of the approaching retirement of John Prior Estlin, LL.D., Carpenter was invited (28 Aug. 1816) to Lewin's Mead Chapel, Bristol, as colleague to John Rowe. The Exeter people made every effort to retain him, but in the summer of 1817 he removed to Bristol. The congregation was large and wealthy [for its earlier history see Bury, Samuel], but had lost cohesion. Carpenter drew its various elements together, developed its religious and philanthropic life, and gave it a hold upon the neglected classes of society. On the resignation of Rowe in 1832, Carpenter obtained as colleague (after a short interval) Robert Brook Aspland, M.A. [q. v.]; in 1837, the year following Aspland's removal, his place was filled by George Armstrong, B.A., a seceder from the church of Ireland. Carpenter did much to widen the spirit of his denomination. With one exception, the earlier unitarian tract and mission societies had been fortified with a preamble branding trinitarianism as ‘idolatrous’ and so limiting the unitarian name as to exclude Arians. As early as 1811, Carpenter endeavoured to expunge the preamble from the rules of the Western Unitarian Society; it took him twenty years to effect this change. But in 1825 three older metropolitan societies were amalgamated into the existing British and Foreign Unitarian Association, and to Carpenter is mainly due the disappearance from its constitution of the restrictive preamble. His polemical publications in reply to Magee and others were commended for their mildness by orthodox critics; for that very reason, perhaps, though able works, few of them were much read. Just before his arrival in Bristol, J. E. Stock, M.D., long a zealous convert to unitarianism (he had drafted the invitation to Carpenter), seceded to the Calvinistic baptists. Soon after this, Charles Abraham Elton, the well-known classical scholar, became a convert, and produced ‘Unitarianism Unassailable,’ and similar publications; but in a few years he published his ‘Second Thoughts’ and rejoined the established church. In 1822 Samuel Charles Fripp, B.A., a clergyman residing at Bristol, who had been a curate in Kent, announced his unitarianism from the Lewin's Mead pulpit, and remained steadfast to his new connections. Of Carpenter's own catechumens a considerable number, including some of his favourite pupils, ultimately joined the church of England. Many of the sterner unitarians regarded his influence as too evangelical. Much independence characterised his views; the rite of baptism he rejected altogether as a superstition, substituting a form of infant dedication. In 1833 the Rajah Rammohun Roy, in whose monotheistic movement Carpenter was strongly interested, visited Bristol, but only to die. Carpenter preached his funeral sermon (afterwards published, with a memoir). He had given up his school in the spring of 1829. Of Carpenter as a schoolmaster there are two sketches by James Martineau, his pupil, and for a time his locum tenens (Memoirs, p. 342; Life of Mary Carpenter, p. 9). No master was ever more adored by his scholars, or more effective in the discipline of character. Bowring says: ‘For many a year I deemed him the wisest and greatest of men, as he certainly was one of the best.’ ‘Christopher North’ (who had been his fellow-student at Glasgow), when appointed in 1820 to the moral philosophy chair at Edinburgh, consulted him about the plan of his lectures and the literature of the subject (see his reply, Memoirs, p. 255). Carpenter is caricatured in Harriet Martineau's ‘Autobiography,’ 1877, vol. i. Till 1836 he took a leading part in all public work in Bristol, acting in politics as an independent liberal, and devoting much time to the encouragement of physical science. He was one of the chief organisers of the Bristol Literary and Philosophical Institution in 1822. By 1839 his constitution was completely exhausted under his unsparing labours. He left home on 22 July and was recommended by London physicians to travel. Accompanied by Freeman, a medical adviser, he went on the continent, but his health did not revive. He was drowned on the night of 5 April 1840 while going by steamer from Leghorn to Marseilles. He was not missed till morning, and it is supposed that he was washed overboard. His body was cast ashore near Porto d'Anzio, about two months afterwards, and was buried on the beach. He married on 25 Dec. 1805 Anna (d. 19 June 1856), daughter of James Penn of Kidderminster, and had six children, of whom the eldest was Mary [q. v.], the fourth William Benjamin [q. v.], and the youngest Philip Pearsall [q. v.] His remaining son is Russell Lant, his biographer.
Of Carpenter there is an excellent portrait drawn by Branwhite, and engraved by Woodman, prefixed to his ‘Memoirs;’ but perhaps the best likeness of him is a small porcelain bust by Bentley, published in 1842. Among his publications, which numbered thirty-eight, besides four posthumous works and several contributed articles and works edited by him (see a full list in ‘Memoirs,’ appendix B), the most noteworthy are:
- ‘Unitarianism the Doctrine of the Gospel,’ 1809, 8vo, 3rd edition 1823 (in the form
