Skip to main content

Author: Francis, Benjamin

Biography:

FRANCIS, Benjamin (1734-99: WBIS)

pseudonym Philochristos

He was the youngest son of a clergyman, Enoch Francis. Born in Wales and educated at home, he did not learn English until he was almost twenty and attended a Baptist seminary in Bristol, but he became a popular preacher in Gloucestershire, where he served as a minister from 1758 to the end of his life. With his first wife, a Miss Harris, he had several children but only one daughter who survived infancy--and she predeceased her father. In 1766 he married a Miss Wallis, with whom he had ten children, three of whom outlived him. Besides the hymns and poems on religious subjects recorded here, he published sermons and occasional elegies in English, and two volumes of original hymns in Welsh (1774, 1786). John Ryland preached his funeral sermon, which was published in Bristol for the benefit of the family and includes a short memoir by Francis's son-in-law Thomas Flint. (John Ryland, The Presence of Christ the Source of Eternal Bliss [1800?]; ancestry.com 12 Dec. 2018) HJ

 

Other Names:

  • B. Francis
 

Books written (12):

Conflagration. A Poem in Four Parts.

Bristol: printed by William Pine, 1770

An Elegy on the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield.

6th edn. [?] Bristol/ London: private/ Buckland, [1771]

An Elegy on the Death of the Rev. John Gill, D.D..

London: [private: "for the Author"], [1772]

An Elegiac Poem, Sacred to the Memory of the Rev. Mr. Hugh Evans, M.A. Who Departed this Life, March 28, 1781 . . . ..

Bristol/ London: Cadell, Mills, Evans, and the other booksellers/ Buckland, Macgowan, and Cater, [1781]

The Conflagration: A Poem on the Last Day, in Four Parts.

2nd edn. Bristol/ London/ Shrewsbury/ Swansea: A. Browne and Son/ J. Buckland and R. Bishop/ J. Eddowes/ T. Goodere, 1786

The Socinian Champion; or, Priestleyan Divinity: A Poem.

London: [no publisher: printed "for the Author"], 1788

Conflagration: A Poem on the Last Day, in Four Parts.

New York: printed by S. and J. Loudon, 1789

An Elegy on the Death of the Rev. Caleb Evans, D.D. Who Departed This Life, August 9, 1791, in the Fifty-fourth Year of His Age.

3rd edn. Bristol: [no publisher: printed by William Pine, [1791?]

An Elegy on the Death of the Rev. Samuel Pearce, A.M. . . . .

Bristol/ London: James/ Button, [1799]

The Oracle: Or, a Short Panegyric on Mr. Peter Edwards's Most Admirable Defence of Infant Sprinkling.

Bristol/ London/ Manchester/ Carmarthen: James/ Button/ Thomson/ Daniel, [1799]

The Presence of Christ the Source of Eternal Bliss. A Funeral Discourse Delivered December 22 1799 . . . Occasioned by the Death of Benjamin Francis . . . ..

Bristol/ London: Printed by Ann Bryan Corn-Street Bristol for the benefit of Francis's family and sold by Button in London and James in Bristol, [1799]

An Elegiac Poem, in Three Parts . . . . Occasioned by the Death of His Wife, and Three Children . . . ..

4th edn. Bampton: W. Holloway, 1821