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John Newton was an English slave trader who became an Anglican minister, a hymn writer, and later a noted abolitionist. He is best known for the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

Newton was born in London in 1725. He went to sea at a young age and worked on slave ships in the slave trade for several years. He was rescued, returned to sea and the trade, becoming Captain of several slave ships.

After retiring from active sea-faring, he continued to invest in the slave trade. Some years after experiencing a conversion to Christianity, Newton later renounced his trade and became a prominent supporter of abolitionism. Now an evangelical, he was ordained as a Church of England cleric and served as parish priest at Olney, Buckinghamshire, for two decades and wrote hymns. Newton lived to see the British Empire's abolition of the African slave trade in 1807, just months before his death.