The Honourable and Reverend Baptist Noel
(1799-1873)
25 October 1860

Volume 2, sitting number 1524.

The Honourable and Reverend Baptist Wriothesley Noel was an English evangelical clergyman of aristocratic family. Born on 10 July 1799, he was the eighth son of Sir Gerald Noel, 2nd Bt., and of Diane Middleton, Baroness Barham. 

Educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was first called to the Bar by the Inner Temple but entered the Church in 1824 and rapidly became a leader of the Evangelical party, being appointed to one of the most prominent Evangelical Anglican churches in London (St John's, Bedford Row), only three years after his ordination. Noel published some eighty books and pamphlets in his lifetime, chiefly concerned either with social and political reform or with evangelical beliefs and attitudes. He was particularly active in the mission to rescue 'fallen women.'

He was minister of St John's Chapel, in London's Bedford Row from 1827 to 1848 and afterwards became a Baptist minister at the nearby John Street Baptist Church in Bloomsbury. He twice served as President of the Baptist Union. 

On 17 October 1826, he married Jane Baillie, daughter of Peter Baillie of Dochfour House near Inverness. 

The Honourable and Reverend Baptist Noel retired from active ministry in 1868 and spent his remaining years at Stanmore in Middlesex. He died on 19 January 1873.