Author: Cobbin, Ingram
Biography:
COBBIN, Ingram (1777-1851: ODNB)
He was born on 10 Dec. 1777 and baptised on 15 Jan. 1778 at St. Martin in the Fields, London, the son of John Cobbin, bookseller, and his wife Ann(e) Brass, who had married at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 2 Feb. 1773. He was apprenticed to a stationer in 1791 and entered Hoxton Academy in 1798 in preparation for a congregationalist ministry. (His AM/MA was almost certainly an honorary title conferred later by a Scottish university, possibly Glasgow.) He married Amelia Finden on 1 Apr. 1800 at St. Pancras, Old Church. They had two sons. He was appointed minister at South Molton , Devon, in 1802, and was later minister at Banbury, Holloway, Putney, Crediton, Worcester, and Lymington, but gave up preaching due to ill health in 1817. He left Crediton for London in 1814 to become assistant secretary to the British and Foreign School Society and in 1819 was appointed the first secretary to the Home Missionary Society. He retired in 1828 due to ill health and lived in Camberwell where he concentrated on writing. He died on 10 Mar. 1851 at Denmark Cottage, Cold Arbour Lane, Kennington, and was buried at Zion Chapel, Merton, Surrey, on 17 Mar. In addition to the works listed here he edited a volume of tributes, Georgiana (1820), on the death of George III and wrote a number of school books, including The Instructive Reader (1831) and Scripture Proverbs for the Young (1838), but it was his works of biblical commentary, such as The Cottage Commentator on the Holy Scriptures (1828) and The Bible Reader’s Hand-Book (1845) which were more widely admired. He had taught himself French while he was in Crediton, and went on to edit The French Preacher (1816), a collection of French sermons, and to translate the Hymns of César Malan (1825). Other works ranged from The Importance of Personal Religion, in Times of National Calamity (1808) to the traditional anti-Catholicism of The Book of Popery: A Manual for Protestants (1840). His Village Hymn Book (1820), cited by several authorities, has not been traced. Daniel Sedgwick (N&Q 29 Nov. 1862, 436) owned a second edition, The Village Hymn Book, for the Use of Village Congregations (London 1824), but that is also not extant. (ODNB 12 Jul. 2022; Evangelical Magazine July 1851, 393-5; SJC 13 Mar. 1851; Julian, 239; Charles Rogers, Lyra Britannica [1867]) AA