He was educated at a Quakers’ School, but found the long and sometimes silent meetings very trying, being only a small boy. The visit of some Quaker Missionaries from America seems to have been the chief factor in him committing his life to Christ. On leaving school, he sat under the ministry of Rev. George Clayton (b.1783 d.1862), and sometimes heard such men as John Leifchild (b.1780 d.1862), an independent minister, and Thomas Binney (b.1798 d.1874), a congregational minister. Subsequently, he moved to Plymouth, where he sat under the ministry of Samuel Nicholson of the George Street Baptist Church (1845–1941), which he joined when he was about twenty-five years old.