MARTYN, Henry (1781-1812), a celebrated missionary, was born on February 18, 1781, at Truro, Cornwall. He came of a mining family, and his father John Martyn was a “captain” or mine-agent at Gwennap. He received his education at the grammar school of his native town under the famous Dr Cardew, entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in the autumn of 1797, and in 1801, a month before he was twenty years old, was declared senior wrangler, obtaining soon after the first Smith’s prize. Tn the following year he was chosen a fellow of his college. In the autumn of 1801 he was introduced to Charles Simeon, whose ardent disciple he soon became. It was his intention to devote himself to the bar, but in the October term of 1802 he chanced to hear Simeon speaking of the vast amount of good done in India by a single missionary, William Carey; some time afterwards lie read the life of the devoted David Brainerd, the enthusiastic apostle of the Indians of North America, and, “filled with a holy emulation,” resolved to devote his energies to the work of a Christian missionary. On October 22, 1803, he was ordained deacon at Ely, and afterwards priest, and served as Simeon’s curate at the church of Holy Trinity, taking charge of the neighbouring parish of Lolworth. Still full of the thought of working in heathen lands, he designed to volunteer for the Church Missionary Society, but a sudden disaster in Cornwall deprived him and his unmarried sister of all the provision their father had made for them, and rendered it necessary that he should obtain a salary that would support her as well as himself. He accordingly applied for, and obtained, a chaplaincy under the East India Company. He left for India on July 5, 1805....
For some months he was chiefly located at Aldeen, near Serampore; in October 1806 he proceeded to Dinapore, where he laboured for a time amongst the Europeans, and soon found himself able to conduct divine worship among the natives in their own vernacular language, and to establish schools for their instruction. At the end of April 1809 he was ordered up to Cawnpore, where he made his first attempt to preach to the heathen in his own compound, and had to endure frequent interruptions “amidst groans, hissings, curses, blasphemies, and threatenings”; nevertheless he pursued his work among the hundreds who crowded round him, consoling himself that, if he should never see a native convert, God “might design by his patience and continuance in the work to encourage other missionaries.” Meanwhile the great business of his life was being diligently carried on. Day after day he occupied himself with learning new languages, and had already, during his residence at Dinapore, been engaged in revising the sheets of his Hindustani version of the New Testament. He now translated the whole of the New Testament into Hindi also, and into Persian twice over. He translated the Psalms into Persian, the Gospels into Judaeo-Persic, and the prayer book into Hindustani, in spite of the constant interruptions caused by excessive weakness of body, and “the pride, pedantry, and fury of his chief moonshee Sabat.” Ordered by the doctors to take a sea voyage for his health, he got leave to go to Persia and correct his Persian New Testament, whence he made up his mind to go on to Arabia, and there compose an Arabic version. Accordingly, on October 1, 1810, having seen his work at Cawnpore crowned, on the previous day, by the opening of a church, he left for Calcutta, whence he departed on January 7, 1811, for Bombay, which he reached on his thirtieth birthday. From Bombay he set out for Bushire, bearing letters from Malcolm to men of position there, as also at Shiraz and Ispahan. After a killing journey from the coast he reached Shiraz, and was soon plunged into discussion with the disputants of all classes, “Sufi, Mohammedan, Jew, and Jewish-Mohammedan, even Armenian, all anxious to test their powers of argument with the first English priest who had visited them.” Having made an unsuccessful journey to Tebriz to present the shah with his translation of the New Testament, he was seized with a fever, which so thoroughly prostrated his energies that, after a temporary recovery, he found it necessary to seek a change of climate. On September 12, 1812, he started with two Armenian servants, crossed the Araxes, rode from Tebriz to Erivan, from Erivan to Kars, from Kars to Erzeroum, from Erzeroum to Chiflik, urged on from place to place by his cruel Tartar guide, and, though the plague was raging at Tokat, he was compelled to stop there from utter prostration caused by fever. On the 6th of October he died, either from the plague or from the weakness of the disorders which harassed him from day to day.
By his valuable labours as a translator Martyn had placed portions of the Scriptures within the reach of all who could read over one-fourth of the habitable globe, and during his brief life he earned for himself a foremost place among modern missionaries. Macaulay’s lines, written in 1818, testify to the impression made by his enthusiastic career of self-devotion.
See Sargent, Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D., 1819; Wilberforce, Journals and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, 1837; Kaye, Christianity in India, 1859; Yonge, Pioneers and Founders, 1874; and The Church Quarterly for October 1881.
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