Rev. Robert Polwhele was an English minister with the Church of England, and had the titled of Vicar of Avenbury, Herefordshire. In 1873 he published a small book titled The English the Descendants of the Twelve Tribes, and in that book, he states that he was first introduced to the Anglo-Israel message by a friend giving him a copy of John Wilson’s book Our Israelitish Origins in the 1840s.