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Blundell, Peter (c. 1520–1601), clothier and philanthropist, was born in Tiverton, Devon, of humble parentage. As a boy he saw the little community freed from the dominance of the Courtenay earls of Devon, and he lived to see it, untrammelled by either civic or industrial regulation, and somewhat encouraged by the protestant ethic, enter a period of considerable growth and prosperity based on the manufacture of kerseys, the woollen cloths in which the town and its immediate hinterland specialized. Whether the young ...

Fox, William (1736–1826), founder of the Sunday School Society, was born at Clapton, Gloucestershire, on 14 February 1736, the youngest of the eight children of James Fox (d. 1738/9), tenant farmer on Clapton Manor estate. Left fatherless, the eldest son took over the farm, while ...

Hogg, Quintin (1845–1903), merchant and philanthropist, of Scottish descent, fourteenth child and seventh son of Sir James Weir Hogg, first baronet (1790–1876), East India Company chairman and MP, and his wife, Mary Claudine (d. 26 June 1874), daughter of Samuel Swinton of the ...

Owens, John (1790–1846), merchant and philanthropist, was born in Manchester, the eldest son of Owen Owens (1764–1844) and his wife, Sarah (née Humphreys). Two other sons died in infancy. His parents were Welsh, his father being a native of Holywell, Flintshire; they married in 1788 and moved to ...