Miall was born at Portsmouth to Moses Miall and his wife Sarah, daughter of George Rolph. He was educated at St. Saviour's grammar school for a while and then assisted his father in running a school. He then worked as an usher at a school in Bocking near Braintree and then in Nayland, Suffolk. He joined Wymondley Theological Institution in 1829 after which he became
Congregational minister at
Ware, Hertfordshire (1831) and
Leicester (1834), and in, 1841 founded
The Nonconformist, a weekly newspaper in which he advocated the cause of
disestablishment. Miall saw that if the programme of Nonconformity was to be carried through it must have more effective representation in Parliament. One of the first fruits of his work was the entrance of
John Bright into parliamentary life; and by 1852 forty
Dissenters were members of the
House of Commons. This was due largely to the efforts of the British Anti-State-Church Association, which Miall was instrumental in founding in 1844; it was renamed in 1853 the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, known for short as the Liberation Society. It was never able to secure a Parliamentary majority for disestablishment of the Church of England but the long fight for the abolition of compulsory church-rates was finally successful in 1868, and then in 1870 Miall was prominent in the discussions aroused by the Education Bill. He was at this time
Member of Parliament for
Bradford (1860–1874), having previously sat for
Rochdale from 1852 to 1857. In 1874 he retired from public life, and received from his admirers a present of ten thousand guineas. He died at
Sevenoaks. Miall married Louisa, daughter of Edward Holmes of Clayhill, Enfield, in 1832 and they had two sons and three daughters. ==References==