Author: Thomas, Josiah
Biography:
THOMAS, Josiah (1760-1820: ancestry.co.uk)
Pseudonym Christopher Climax
He was born on 20 March 1760, at Weobley, Herefordshire, the son of Walter Thomas and Mary Moore who had married in 1757. He was educated at Weobley school, Charterhouse, and St. John’s College Cambridge (matric. 1778, Scholar 1778, BA 1782, MA 1789). He was ordained deacon (1782) and priest (1784) in the Church of England. He was curate of Sampford Peverell (1782-4) and vicar of St. Merryn, Cornwall (1785-91). He then held a number of rectorships including those of Street, Somerset (1791-1820); Backwell, Somerset (1796-1820); and Kingston Deverill, Wiltshire (1813-1820) before being appointed Archdeacon of Bath and vicar of Christ Church, Walcot, Bath (1817-20). He was appointed a Royal Chaplain in 1813. He married Susanna Isabella Harrington (1762-1835), the daughter of Henry Harrington, a Bath physician, on 22 Feb. 1794, at Walcot St. Swithin, Bath. They had eight children. He died on 27 May 1821 at his residence in Belvedere, Bath, and was buried in the abbey where there is a monumental inscription. His wife, Susanna Isabella, died at Bath on 5 Dec. 1835, aged 73, and also has a memorial in Bath Abbey. In addition to the poems listed here, he published Strictures on Subjects chiefly relating to the Established Religion and the Clergy (1809), Remarks on Some Popular Principles and Notions (1813), and two works which aroused some controversy by calling Evangelicals behind the establishment of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Bath a “sect”: An Address to the Church Missionary Society (1817) and The Church Her Own Enemy (1818). (ancestry.co.uk 20 Aug. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 20 Aug. 2023; CCEd 20 Aug. 2023; Stamford Mercury 14 Mar. 1794; Bath Chronicle 1 June 1820, 10 Dec. 1835; GM June 1820, 565-6) AA