John Mainwaring John Mainwaring John Mainwaring (1724–1807) was an English theologian and the first biographer of the composer Georg Friedrich Händel in any language. He was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and became rector of the parish of Church Stretton, Shropshire, and, later professor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1760, one year after Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey he published anonymously a biography 'Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel'. More than half of this biography is focused on the years before 1712, when Handel moved to London. Therefore, it is supposed he received information from
Sam Mainwaring life. Mainwaring was raised by his family as a Unitarian. He developed into a quiet yet persuasive public speaker and a tireless worker for activities which he believed important. Mainwaring was a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Late in the 1870s, Mainwaring joined the East London Labour Emancipation League and was an early member of the Social Democratic Federation. However, this group proved to be a disappointment, failing to garner support of an appreciable section of the working class and was believed by many members to overly dominated by the intellectual pretensions and nationalist political views of its patriarch