Mr. Clayton was educated partly at Homerton College, partly at Edinburgh University; and after the completion of his preparatory studies he spent a short time at Newbury, as assistant to the Rev. John Winter. He had only just come of age when he was invited to the Kensington pastorate. Having won for himself a good report from the people of the Berkshire town, as one who had done his work “with the ability of a theologist and the faithfulness of a minister of Christ,” he was praised by the senior pastor, who wrote to the young man’s father, saying, “I see that he has now a call to depart with a prospect of usefulness by preaching the Gospel in another place. I therefore readily commend him to the Lord, and the word of His grace, and shall rejoice to hear that all our hopes are realized among the people of Kensington.” Mr. Clayton was ordained in Hornton Street Chapel the twenty-first of October, 1801. The Rev. W. Humphreys, of Hammersmith, delivered the introductory discourse, and the charge to the minister was given by his father, the Rev. John Clayton, pastor of the Church assembling in the ancient Weigh House, not far from the London Monument. This gentleman, dignified and courtly, had come under the influence of Lady Huntingdon, and to the time of his death remained attached to the doctrines dear to the countess. His dissent was of a moderate type, and he did not share in political views prevalent amongst his brethren; in that respect his son resembled him. He cultivated friendships with evangelical clergymen, especially Newton and Cecil. When I was about to enter college I received from him counsel and encouragement; and I remember well a discourse which he preached at Norwich fifty years ago, from the words, “Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do.” He had visited the place forty years before, and now came, he said, to see “_how they did_,” and to make inquiries relative to their temporal as well as their spiritual welfare. “Have you made your wills?” asked the venerable patriarch, with his thickly powdered head. “The charge he delivered at Kensington to his son was a most faithful and solemn exposition of ministerial duties, enforced with amazing vigour and pungency of expression; indeed at times there was a trenchant fearlessness of utterance almost amounting to invective against timeserving, hesitating, cowardly preachers who kept back the truth or proclaimed smooth things to gratify graceless spirits.” {29}