The Clapham Sect was founded by John Newton (1725-1807) as "a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage" Its members were chiefly prominent and wealthy evangelical Anglicans who shared common political goals concerning the liberation of slaves, the abolition of the slave trade and the reform of the penal system