Author: East, John
Biography:
EAST, John (1793-1856: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 28 July 1793 at St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, the son of William East and his wife Ann Rippen (or Rippon), who had married in the same church the previous year. He was educated at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford (matric. 1811, BA 1816, MA 1819). He entered the church and was ordained in 1817. He spent most of his clerical career in Somerset as Curate of Stogursey, near Nether Stowey (1819-23), Rector of Croscombe, near Shepton Mallet (1828-37), sometime Lecturer at St. Philip and St. Jacob, Bristol, from 1824, before becoming Curate then Rector at St. Michael’s, Bath (1833-56). He married Ann Day (1799-1836) on 16 Sept. 1823 at St. Philip and St. Jacob, Bristol. They had three children. She died on 21 Sept. 1836. He then married Mary Anne Brookes (1798-1892) on 26 Feb. 1838 at St. Cuthbert’s, Wells, Somerset. They had two children. He died at 9 Belmont, Bath, on 14 Feb. 1856. A monument to him was erected at St. Michael’s in the following year. His largely undistinguished sacred poetry and hymns attracted some attention in his lifetime but it was his attack on the Bath Theatre in a sermon entitled “A Discourse on Theatrical Amusements and Dramatic Literature” delivered in Jan. 1844 at St. Michael’s, with its provocative phrasing of the theatre as being in “the thraldom and tyranny of Satan” which caused offence and outraged replies which he attempted to placate in The Pulpit Justified and the Theatre Condemned (1844) with the accusation (p. 5) that “the Theatre is the common road to the infamous market” (“where female virtue is bought and sold”). (ancestry.co. uk 30 Jul. 2022; CCEd 30 Jul. 2022; Julian, 318; OUCH 27 Sept. 1823, 24 Sept. 1836, 23 Feb. 1856, 14 Feb. 1857; Bristol Mercury 3 Mar. 1838; OJ 1 Feb. 1851) AA