William Hollick

William Hollick (1752-1817) was a prominent leader and deacon (1790-1817) in the Baptist church, St. Andrew’s Street, Cambridge.  Originally a grocer, he moved to the manor house at Hinxton, near Whittlesford, just outside of Cambridge, in 1792 as part of the inheritance he received from his uncle, Ebenezer Hollick, Sr. He later placed stewardship of the house in the hands of Wedd William Nash, William Nash’s son, who subsequently married William Hollick’s daughter, Anne, in 1798. Hollick then moved back to Hinxton and did not resettle in Cambridge until 1806.  While lord of the Hinxton manor, Hollick fought against inclosure of parish lands; he also allowed the ministers at St. Andrew’s Street to perform baptisms in a stream on his property, a practice dating from 1760. Hollick’s father and uncle were subscribers to the Bristol Education Society (which raised funds for Bristol Baptist College) throughout the 1770s and ’80s. His cousin, Ebenezer Hollick, Jr. (1751-1828), inherited the Manor of Whittlesford in 1792 and lived as a country squire the rest of his life. Ebenezer was also a leader in the church at St. Andrew’s Street and a strong supporter of political reform in the 1790s. He was one of the speakers at a county meeting on 25 November 1795 for the purpose of petitioning against the Pitt and Grenville Acts; he was present at Thelwall’s lectures in Yarmouth in August 1796 when Thelwall and his audience were attacked by pro-government mobs; he also read aloud the petition criticizing Pitt and his fellow ministers at the 4 April 1797 meeting in Cambridge, after which his carriage was disabled by the mob.  See A. P. M. Wright, ed., A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 223, 226, 229; Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, Cambridge 1720-1832 (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1991), 132, 136-37; An Account of the Bristol Education Society Anno 1770 (Bristol: M. Ward, 1776), 20, 27; Douglas C. Sparkes, “Baptisms at Whittlesford, Cambs, 1760,” Baptist Quarterly 19 (1961-62), 131-32; Cambridge Intelligencer, 27 August 1796, 29 April 1797.