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.
Pollard was born at Horsham, Sussex, on 10 June 1828, the ninth child of James Pollard (1789–1851) and his wife, Susannah.[1] [2]
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.[3] He was appointed a master at the Quaker Ackworth School in 1851 and remained there for 16 years.[4] [5]
Pollard married Lucy Binns of Bishopwearmouth (now part of Sunderland) on 12 January 1854. They had ten children.[6] 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.
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.[1] 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.
Around 1872, Pollard and his family moved to Sale, Cheshire.[7] He died on 26 September 1893 at his home, Drayton Lodge, Eccles, Lancashire,[1] and was buried in the Quaker cemetery at Ashton-on-Mersey. He was survived by his wife, five sons and three daughters.[2]