Frances Stone, 1809
Francis Stone In 1809 Francis Stone, Rector of Cold Norton in Essex, was tried for heresy. He had been educated at Charterhouse School and, from the age of 16, University College, Oxford (1755-1759). In 1760 he was Curate to a relative, Rev Thomas Hunt, at Crawley in Hampshire where he became an Arian. In 1762 he moved to be curate in Worth, Hampshire, and from there to be Rector of St Stephen's Church, Cold Norton, Essex in 1765. [ Biography , Cold Norton Church - the building is later than Stone's day.] Stone had been a fairly prominent supporter of lost causes and a gadfly to those in authority since the 1760s. He espoused liberal theology, and reform in the church based on a critical opinion of the relationship between Church and State. And what he thought, he published. In 1768, in the good company of Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester ( wiki ), the Unitarian Theophilus Lindsay ( wiki ) and others, Stone had been a leading advocate of the Feathers Tavern petition t