Hall Robert

Hall, Robert (1764-1831), the Baptist preacher, was born near Leicester. He was educated at the Bristol Academy and at King's College, Aberdeen, and became intimate at the latter place with Sir James Mackintosh. In 1785 he began his ministry at Bristol, where he stopped for five years. In 1791 he came to Cambridge, and increased his reputation as an orator by his sermon on Modern Infidelity (1800). For two periods of several months (in 1804-5 and 1805-6) he lost his faculties, and soon after his recovery left Cambridge for Leicester. Here in 1817 he delivered his famous sermon on the death of Princess Charlotte. Besides sermons he published An Apology for the Freedom of the Press (1793) and other works.