WHITEFIELD, GEORGE (1714–1770), English evangelist and itinerant revivalist in America. Born in humble circumstances in Gloucester, England, Whitefield received his bachelor of arts degree from Oxford in 1736, the same year in which Bishop Martin Benson ordained him as deacon in the Church of England. Associated with John and Charles Wesley in an effort to revive a sedate and passionless Anglicanism, Whitefield followed with keen interest the missionary labors of the Wesley brothers in the newly founded colony of Georgia in North America. After nearly three years of preaching in the New World, the Wesleys returned to England discouraged and dismayed by the enormity of the religious challenge abroad. Neither they nor Whitefield's own admirers, however, could discourage the twenty-three-year-old Whitefield from setting out for Georgia on the first of seven voyages to America.

After an absence of less than one year, Whitefield returned to England late in...