Editing Thomas Newcomen (section)

==Religious life==
[[File:Sketch of Newcomin house - Devonshire characters and strange events.jpg|thumb|upright=0.5|left|The Newcomen house in Dartmouth]]
Thomas Newcomen was a lay preacher and a teaching elder in the local [[Baptist]] church. After 1710, he became the pastor of a local group of Baptists. His father had been one of a group who brought the well-known [[Puritan]] minister [[John Flavel]] to Dartmouth. Later one of Newcomen's business contacts in London, Edward Wallin, was another Baptist minister who had connections with the well-known Doctor [[John Gill (theologian)|John Gill]] of [[Southwark St John Horsleydown|Horsleydown, Southwark]].   Newcomen's connection with the [[Baptist]] church at [[Bromsgrove]] materially aided the spread of his steam engine, as the engineers [[Jonathan Hornblower (born 1719)|Jonathan Hornblower Sr.]] and his son were involved in the same church.