Background
Lant Carpenter was born on September 2, 1780 in Kidderminster. He was the third son of George Carpenter and his wife Mary (Hooke).
Lant Carpenter was born on September 2, 1780 in Kidderminster. He was the third son of George Carpenter and his wife Mary (Hooke).
After some months at a nonconformist academy at Northampton, Lant Carpente proceeded to Glasgow University, and then joined the ministry.
In 1805 Lant Carpente became pastor of a chapel in Exeter. He moved to Bristol in 1817, to take up a post as minister at the Unitarian chapel in Lewin's Mead. At both Bristol and Exeter he was also engaged in school work, among his Bristol pupils being Harriet and James Martineau, Samuel Greg, and the Westminster Review's John Bowring.
Lant Carpenter did much to broaden the spirit of English Unitarianism. He believed in the essential lawfulness of the creation. This meant that natural causes were the explanation of the world as we find it. The rite of baptism seemed to him a superstition and he substituted for it a form of infant dedication.
Lant Carpenter married Anna or Hannah Penn, daughter of John Penn and Mary, in 1806 in Worcester.