William Wykes

William Wykes joined J. C. Ryland’s congregation at College Lane in November 1764  while serving as an usher in the academy.  Shortly thereafter, he became member no. 68 in J. C. Ryland’s ‘The Society for Christian Improvement and Good Works’.  On 22 March 1767, about five months after the Secret Society was formed, Wykes was recommended for the ministry by the Northampton church to the London Board of Baptist ministers. The College Lane Church Book notes that, since his admission to the church, ‘We have likewise observed in him such a Growth in Knowledge; and Zeal for the promotion of the Interest of Christ, as to give us good Hopes that our Lord Jesus Christ has designed him for public Usefulness . . . We have not been hasty to push him forwards in the great Work, and even now we are very desirous of your Judgement,---and shall refer him to your Examination; if upon the whole you shall think him worthy of assistance in his preparatory Studies, and the Divine Blessing shall attend him, we shall take a part in your Joy of being the Instruments of providence to give to the Churches a Minister of the Gospel’ (f. 63).  Since he never appeared on the rolls at Bristol Academy, Wykes’s whereabouts for the next year and a half are unknown.   Though Ryland twice in the ‘Account’ refers to Wykes’s preparation and eventual departure for the Academy at Bristol, there is no record of Wykes ever attending the Academy (see Roger Hayden’s dissertation, ‘Evangelical Calvinism among eighteenth-century British Baptists with particular reference to Bernard Foskett, Hugh and Caleb Evans and the Bristol Baptist Academy, 1690-1791’, University of Keele, 1991). Wykes returned to Northampton, however, on 13 November 1768 and was given a testimonial certificate by the church acknowledging his ministerial gifts, signed, among others,  by John Ryland jun, William Button, John Everhard, and Jacob Austin, all his former pupils and members of the secret society (f. 117).  Shortly thereafter he removed to Kingsbridge, Devon, where he pastored the Baptist congregation there until 1776.   John Ryland jun, in a note in the College Lane Church Book, provides a few more details concerning the life of William Wykes, including his education:  ‘W. Wykes became a Minister afterw.d studied under Mr Jenkins in London was several years at Kingsbridge in Devonshire, & sometime at Carlton Oundle & Leicester, died at Northampton in May 1785’ (f.  45).   Joseph Jenkins (1743-1819), before commencing his pastorates at Wrexham (1773), Blandford Street, London (1793), and East Street, Walworth (1798-1819), served as Dr. Samuel Stennett’s successor as tutor for the London Baptist Education Society in 1767.  See W. T. Adey, The History of the Baptist Church, Kingsbridge, Devon (Kingsbridge, 1899), 12-18; also the Baptist Annual Register, vol. 2 (1794-97), p. 299.