Author: Wilkins, George
Biography:
WILKINS, George (1785-1865: ODNB)
He was born and baptised at Norwich, Norfolk, on 22 May 1785, the third son of Hannah (Willett) Wilkins and William Wilkins, an architect. From the grammar school at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, he went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (matric. 1803, BA 1807, MA 1810, DD 1824), was ordained deacon in 1806 and priest in 1808, and started his parish duties as curate of Plumstead, Norwich, followed by Hadleigh, Suffolk, where he served under the Rev. Edward Auriol Hay Drummond (or Hay-Drummond). His first poem, addressed to Mrs. Hay Drummond, was based on a story she had told him about the re-interment of the body of her first child and was dated from Hadleigh in July 1811. Early in Aug. 1811 he eloped to Gretna Green with their daughter Amelia Auriol Hay (1796-1871), eluding the servant coming after them whose horse dropped dead in the pursuit. The couple married again in Cambridge on 3 Sept. and went on to have 13 children, the first three born at Hadleigh, the next at Lowdham in Nottinghamshire where Wilkins was vicar 1815-1839, and the rest at Nottingham, where he was vicar of the church of St. Mary the Virgin from 1817 until his resignation in 1843. He held a prebendary appointment at Southwell Minster from 1823 and was archdeacon of Nottingham from 1832 until his death at the Rectory House, Southwell, aged 80, on 13 Aug. 1865. His wife lived until 1871 and both of them are buried at the Minster. After the first poem, Wilkins’s publications all had to do directly with his profession, some of them expository and others polemical: several sermons, an exposition of the Gospel (1819), a history of the destruction of Jerusalem (1822), Body and Soul in 2 vols. (1823-4), a letter on proposed church reforms (1832), and some pamphlets against “infidelity” or dissent within the Church. (ODNB 8 June 2024; ancestry.com 8 June 2024; findmypast.com 8 June 2024; CCEd 8 June 2024; Bury and Norwich Post 7 Aug. 1811; Oxford Times 19 Aug. 1865) HJ