ENFIELD, a market town of Middlesex, is situated ten miles N.E. of London. A large number of its inhabitants are employed in the royal small arms factory at Enfield Lock, where the rifle now manufactured, however, is not the “Enfield,” but the Martini-Henry. Enfield has the remains of an ancient royal palace, in which Edward VI. kept his court, and where Elizabeth rested on her way to London in order to assume the crown. Near to it is Enfield chase, disforested in 1799 and divided between various parishes and the Crown, and now occupied by several country seats of the more opulent traders of London. The population of Enfield in 1871 was 16,054.
ENFIELD, a town of the United States, in . Hartford co., Connecticut, is situated on the Connecticut river, and on the railway from Hartford to Springfield, 14 miles N. of Hartford. It is connected by a bridge with Suffield, and two miles further down the river there is a bridge by which the railroad crosses to Windsor-Locks. Enfield has a large carpet factory and extensive powder mills. It contains a community of Shakers, who are noted for their stock-raising and their culture of seeds. The population in 1870 was 6322....
ENFIELD, William (1741-1797), a dissenting divine, noted for the number and variety of his literary works, was born at Sudbury in 1741. He received his education at the dissenting academy at Daventry, under the care of Dr Ashworth, where he passed through the usual curriculum of five years. Immediately afterwards he was chosen minister of the congregation of Benn’s Garden, Liverpool, in 1763. During his residence in Liverpool he published two volumes of sermons (1768—1770), as well as a collection of hymns and family prayers, which met with a very favourable reception. In 1770 he was appointed tutor and lecturer on the belles-lettres at Warrington academy, an office which he held till the dissolution of the academy in 1783. On accepting it he obtained the degree of Doctor of Laws from the university of Edinburgh. Simultaneously with his tutorial appointment he held the pastoral charge of the dissenting congregation of Warrington. After an interval of two years spent in private tuition, he was chosen pastor of the dissenting (Unitarian) congregation of Octagon Street, Norwich, where he remained till his death, which took place November 3, 1797, in the 57th year of his age. Of the works of Dr Enfield a considerable number are mere compilations, in which no higher quality is displayed than the taste which dictated the selection. To this class belong the Preachers Directory (1771), the English Preacher (1773-4), the Speaker (1775), and others. The last named work, an elocutionary manual, has passed through numerous editions, and Enfield’s name is better known in connection with it than through any of his other works. Among his original works, however, and especially those published or written at the close of his life, there are some that display considerable powers of thought and great elegance of expression. His posthumous sermons on the principal characters of the Old and New Testaments not only evince the author’s ability as a commentator, but show profound insight into the ethics of history. In theology he was a Socinian. At the recommendation of Dr Bagot, bishop of Norwich, he published an abridgment of Brucker’s History of Philosophy, in 2 vols. 4to. He also wrote a work, entitled the Institutes of Natural Philosophy, Theoretical and Experimental, 4to, 1783, besides a variety of occasional pamphlets and sermons. His last literary employment was in writing for his friend Dr Johu Aikin’s Biographical Dictionary. More than half the lives in the first volume of that work are from his pen.
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