There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and in winter Cowper's only exercise was pacing thirty yards of gravel, with the dreary supplement of dumb-bells.

What was the attraction to this "well," this "abyss," as Cowper himself called it, and as, physically and socially, it was?
The attraction was the presence of the Rev.John Newton, then curate of Olney.

The vicar was Moses Brown, an Evangelical and a religious writer, who has even deserved a place among the worthies of the revival; but a family of thirteen children, some of whom it appears too closely resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take advantage of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical polity of those days by becoming a pluralist and a non-resident, so that the curate had Olney to himself.

The patron was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper says, "wore a coronet and prayed." John Newton was one of the shining lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the revival.

His name was great both in the Evangelical churches within the pale of the Establishment, and in the Methodist churches without it.