John Cennick

CENNICK, John. b. Reading, Berkshire, 12 December 1718; d. London, 4 July 1755. On one side of the family his grandparents had been Quakers, persecuted for their beliefs, but his parents were members of the Church of England. He was educated at Reading, and brought up strictly, ‘kept constant to daily Prayers’. As a young man he subsequently went through a period of depression. He was trained as a shoemaker. He had an experience of salvation in 7 September 1737, and sought out the Methodists in Oxford. He and his sister became members of the Moravian/Methodist Society in Fetter Lane in 1739, and he began field preaching in the absence of the designated preacher in June 1739. In 1741 he took...