Author: Filkes, John
Biography:
FILKES, John (1749-1830: ancestry.co.uk)
He was the son of Richard Filkes (1709-1810), apothecary, of Woburn, Bedfordshire, and his wife Elizabeth Green(e) (1710-83), who had married in 1731 and had at least eight children. His baptism record appears not to have survived. It is not known where he went to school but he proceeded to Trinity College Oxford (matric. 1767, BA 1771, MA 1774, Fellow 1776, BD 1783). He was ordained deacon (1773) and priest (1778). He chaired an Anti-Slavery meeting on 20 Mar. 1792 at Woburn which resolved that “the African Slave Trade is inconsistent with Christianity, subversive of natural Rights, and disgraceful to a free and enlightened Nation, and ought therefore to be totally suppressed.” Later that year, he was given the college living of Navestock, Essex, where he served as vicar for 38 years (1792-1830). He died there and was buried at St. Thomas’s on 3 June 1830. Sunday, A Poem (1790) was attributed to him in a contemporary hand on the title page of the British Library copy but later cataloguers misread the handwriting and listed it as the work of John Gilkes. He also published two sermons delivered at Navestock: A Sermon, In Behalf of Those Benevolent Institutions Called Friendly Societies (1802) and A Sermon On Suicide (1810). (ancestry.co.uk 7 Oct. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 7 Oct. 2022; CCEd 7 Oct. 2022; Northampton Mercury 24 Mar. 1792; OJ 8 June 1776, 22 Dec. 1792, 19 June 1830; GM June Supplement 1830, 647; BL 11658.h.6) AA
Other Names:
- John Gilkes