{{Short description|English Quaker writer and minister}} {{Use British English|date=May 2021}} {{Use dmy dates|date=May 2021}} '''William Pollard''' (1828–1893) was an English Quaker writer and recorded minister. He was a prominent advocate of quietist Quaker theology, during a period of theological dispute within the Society of Friends.
==Early life== Pollard was born at Horsham, Sussex, on 10 June 1828, the ninth child of James Pollard (1789–1851) and his wife, Susannah.<ref name="ODNB">[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22472?docPos=2 Pollard, William (1828–1893)], Charlotte Fell-Smith, rev. K. D. Reynolds, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004.</ref><ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle= Pollard, William |volume= 46 |last= Smith |first= Charlotte Fell |author-link= Charlotte Fell Smith |page= 61 |year= |short=1}}</ref>
He became a junior teacher at the Friends' School, Croydon, in 1843, and in 1849 entered the Flounders Institute at Ackworth, Yorkshire, a Quaker college for training schoolmasters.<ref>[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0013191570090308?journalCode=cedr20 R. Shanks: "The Flounders Institute. A Quaker experiment in teacher training", ''Educational Review'', Vol. 9 (1957), No. 3. Retrieved 26 April 2020.]</ref> He was appointed a master at the Quaker Ackworth School in 1851 and remained there for 16 years.<ref>[https://www.ackworthschool.com/history/ School history. Retrieved 26 April 2020.]</ref><ref name="benbeck">[http://benbeck.co.uk/fh/pollard.html#I3. William Pollard].</ref>
Pollard married Lucy Binns of Bishopwearmouth (now part of Sunderland) on 12 January 1854. They had ten children.<ref name="benbeck"/> Pollard issued several Quaker tracts while he was at Ackworth, including ''Primitive Christianity Revived'' and ''Congregational Worship''. Ill-health obliged him to leave the teaching profession in 1866, but he was first mentioned as a recorded minister in the same year, when the family moved to Reigate.
==''A Reasonable Faith''== From 1866 to 1872, Pollard worked for the photographer Francis Frith. A proponent of liberal, quietist Quaker theology, he was a co-author with Frith and W. E. Turner of the influential book ''A Reasonable Faith'', "by Three Friends" (1884 and 1886). This provoked outcry among the evangelically minded Quakers.<ref name="ODNB"/> In 1871 he published ''Considerations Addressed to the Society of Friends on the Peace Question'', and in 1872 he became secretary and lecturer to the Lancashire and Cheshire International Arbitration Association, a branch of what would become the Peace Society. He held this post for most of the rest of his life.
==Retirement== Around 1872, Pollard and his family moved to Sale, Cheshire.<ref name="benbeck"/> He died on 26 September 1893 at his home, Drayton Lodge, Eccles, Lancashire,<ref name="ODNB"/> and was buried in the Quaker cemetery at Ashton-on-Mersey. He was survived by his wife, five sons and three daughters.<ref name="DNB"/>
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==External links== *[http://benbeck.co.uk/fh/pollard.html#I3. WILLIAM POLLARD Entry on William Pollard, on Ben Beck's website]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollard, William}} Category:1828 births Category:1893 deaths Category:English Quakers
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