Author: Wilks, Samuel Charles
Biography:
WILKS, Samuel Charles (1788-1872: ODNB)
He was born on 11 Dec. 1788 at Church Yard Row, Newington Butts, Lambeth, South London, the eldest of four children of Samuel Charles Wilks and his wife Elizabeth Barber, who had married on 21 Feb. 1788 at St. Matthew, Walsall, Staffs. The later registration of his birth at Dr. Williams’s Library on 21 May 1819, after he had studied at Oxford and entered the established church, is a puzzle. He was educated at St Edmund Hall Oxford (matric. 1810, BA 1814, MA 1816) and was ordained deacon (1813) and priest (1814). He was curate at Chew Stoke from 1813 and at St. Martin’s, Exeter, from 1816. He then became assistant minister to Rev. Basil Woodd (q.v.) at the Bentinck Chapel, Marylebone, and was lecturer at St. Swithin’s, City of London (1814-46). He came to the attention of the Clapham Sect evangelicals with the publication of his 1811 SPCK prize-winning essay, published as Essay on the Signs of Conversion and Unconversion in Ministers of the Church (1814) and succeeded Zachary Macaulay as editor of the Christian Observer (1816-47). He dedicated Christian Essays (1817) to Hannah More (q.v.). He again won the SPCK prize in 1821 for The Influence of a Moral Life in Matters of Faith (1822). Like most members of the Clapham Sect, he was ardent in his support for the established church and its export to the empire by missionary work, and saw no difficulty in reconciling opposition to the slave-trade and Christian cultural domination--as illustrated in Christian Missions an Enlightened Species of Charity (1819) and The Duty of Prompt and Complete Abolition of Colonial Slavery (1830). He was rector of Nursling, near Southampton, Hants. (1847-72). He married Rebecca Emma Langston Earle (1793-1861) on 23 June 1818 at St. Mary, Harrow. They had at least seven children. She died on 23 Feb. 1861 at Nursling rectory and thereafter he continued to live with his unmarried daughter, Alicia, and a couple of servants. He died on 23 Dec. 1872 at Nursling and left an estate of around £5000 to his children. (ODNB 17 Apr. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 17 Apr. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 17 Apr. 2023; CCEd 17 Apr. 2023; Lewis, 2: 1193-4; SJC 27 June 1818; Morning Post 27 Feb. 1861, 26 Dec. 1872) AA