KNIBB, REV. WILLIAM, Baptist missionary, was born at Ketter ing in Northamptonshire abont the commencement of the present century. In dne time he was apprenticed to a printer at Bristol, where he early joined a Baptist church. His elder brother, Thomas, left England in December 1822, to undertake the charge of a school connected with one of the Baptist mission churches in Jamaica, where he died In May 1824. The intelligence of his death so excited the zeal of William Knibb, that he offered himself to go out to supply the place of his deceased brother; and, his offer being accepted, he sailed with his wife in November 1824. Towards the close of 1829 he removed, in consequence of delicate health, from Kingston to the north-western part of the islaud, where he took charge of the Ridge land mission, an connection with Savanna-la-Mar; and subsequently became pastor of the mission church at Falmouth. Shortly after Mr. Knibb'a settlement at Falmouth ho was brought into painful notoriety in consequence of the breaking out of an alarming spirit of insurrec tion among the slave population. A notion had by some means been widely circulated among the negroes to the effect that the king of England had determined to emancipate them from slavery, and that the ' free paper,' as they termed the supposed authority for their liberation, had been actually sent to the West Indies, but had been suppressed or held back through the influence of the slaveowners ; and, in consequence of this belief, the slaves upon several estates in Jamaica avowed, towards the latter end of December 1831, their deter. mination to do no work after Christmas. When the missionaries became acquainted with this state of things, they endeavoured to remove the erroneous impression from the minds of such of the negroes as were under their influence, and were so active in their measures as to lead to a report among the disaffected slaves that the white people had bribed Mr. Blyth (a Presbyterian missionary) and Mr. Knibb to withhold their freedom. Insurrectionary movements were, in spite of all the efforts of the missionaries, actually commenced by the negroes, although the interposition of Mr. Knibb, who possessed great influence over the slaves, prevented their rising upon many estates. Notwithstanding this fact both he and his brother missionaries were regarded with great jealousy by the planters, overseers, and others in the slave-holding interest, whose enmity bad been excited by their efforts for ameliorating the condition of the negroes, and by the part they had taken in exposing many cases of gross cruelty and oppression.
On the 1st of January 1832 Mr. Knibb was compelled, without regard to his sacred office, to join the militia, and while on service he was treated with marked indignity. Having, a few days later, memo.. rialised the governor for exemption from military service, he was arrested, and debarred from any communication with his family, upon the plea of alarming intelligence by which, it was pretended, the mis sionaries were implicated in the rebellion. He was released in February, no evidence being obtained to support a criminal prosecution; but in March fresh steps were taken to bring him to trial, though on the day appointed for trial the proceedings were abandoned upon the appear ance of about three hundred witnesses who came forward, upon a few hours' notice, in his defence.
During the continuance of disturbances in the inland Mr. Knlbb's chapel and mission premises at Falmouth were razed to the ground by the men of the St. Ann's regiment, who had used them as barracks for a time ; and as similar outrages had been committed on other missionary stations, it was determined that Mr. Knibb, accompanied by Mr. Burchell, should visit England to explain the circumstances of the mission. They accordingly reached England in the beginning of June. Down to that time the Baptist Missionary Society had care fully avoided taking any part in the question of emancipation, regard ing it as one of the political questions on which it was desirable to observe a rigid neutrality. Mr. Knibb was accordingly cautioned not to commit the society by his proceedings ; but, warmed with outhu aiasm excited to the highest pitch by his personal knowledge of the horrors of the system, he boldly declared that the society's missionary stations in Jamaica could no longer exist without the entire and immediate abolition of slavery ; and, feeling that the time for neu trality was passed, he declared his determination at the annual meeting of the society on the 21st of June, to avow this at the risk of his connection with the society. Mr. Knibb 'carried the meeting, and subsequently the feelings of the greater part of the country with him, and his stirring appeals had no unimportant share iu bringing about the Emancipation Act of 1833.