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The Revd. Rudolph Baron von Hube.
THE RECTORS WERE THE FOLLOWING:
Hugo de Cressy. Patron, Hugo Fitz Ranulf.
May 20, 1254, Rad. de Cressy. Idem.
Feb. 15, 1294, Hugo de Cressy. Patrons, Will. de Ross and Eustachia his
wife.
Oct. 12, 1317, Sim. de Preston. Patron, Will. de Cantiloupe.
May 12, 1324, Will. de Walkingham (died). Patron, Nic. de Cantiloupe,
mil.
March 10, 1334, John de Monte (died). Idem.
Sept. 15, 1339, Will. de Laxton. Patron, The Assigns of Nic. de Cantiloupe.
LIST OF THE VICARS:
July 20, 1344, Ric. fil. Will. le Clerke de Newthorpe (resigned). Patron,
Prior and Convent of Bellavalle.
Aug. 2, 1349, Will. Bilburgh (resigned). Idem.
Oct. 3, 1349, Will. Cressy (resigned). Idem.
Dec. 21, 1371, Robt. de Tyversholt (died). Idem.
Sep. 2, 1397, Ric. Kendale. Idem.
Tho. Bollesore (died). Idem.
Feb. 6, 1408, Joh. Ottewey (died). Idem.
March 5, 1441, Hugo Tapton, M.A. (resigned). Idem.
July 3, 1445, Joh. Leicester (resigned). Idem.
March 15, 1451, Tho. Dekyn. Idem.
Oct. 16, 1460, Tho. Deakyn (resigned). Idem.
Decr. 10, 1466, Joh. Blande (died). Idem.
Jan. 1501, Robt. Felowe (died). Idem. There is nothing to shew at what
time Robert Felowe died, and we have no further record until Dec. 6, 1544,
when Ric. Halam was appointed under the patronage of the Crown.
April 22, 1570, Elyas Okeden, alias Ellys Okden (died). Patron, Elizth.
Regina
May 9, 1588, Geor. Wolley. Patron, Carolus Morrison, mil.
From that time forward to 1636 all information is again missing, but in that year we meet in the Parchment Register of our parish with the name Samuel Tuke, Vicar. He was probably the Vicar of Greasley who was expelled by the Parliamentarians in the Caroline Wars.
The next signature is that of Robert Smalley, in 1653, who was the Nonconformist minister who held this incumbency until 1662, when at the Restoration he declined to submit to Episcopal Ordination, and set up as an independent minister at Moorgreen in our parish.
From that time forward we have again no information until 1723. Possibly the incumbency may have been held by a Pluralist, as at least once again it was at a later time. The Parish Registers give no information, the Clergy not having signed their names in them during that period, and from 1722 to 1727, both years inclusive, the registers are either altogether missing or are mere tattered fragments on paper.
The next Vicar was William Warburton, in 1723, at that time a young clergyman of whom Dean Hook’s Ecclesiastical Biography gives the following account :—William Warburton was born at Newark on the 14th Decr., 1698, and was there educated. He first studied for the Law, but having served his articles he read for the Ministry. He did not go to any University, but was ordained Deacon in 1723 in the Cathedral of York, by Archbishop Dawes, and remained a Deacon until 1726, when he was ordained Priest in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, by Bishop Gibson. In 1723 he published some miscellaneous translations in prose and verse from Roman authors, with a Latin preface to Sir Robert Sutton. These were styled by Bishop Hurd “Juvenile Essays of his Pen, Hasty and Innocent”; but they so far pleased Sir Robert Sutton that in 1826 he gave Warburton the Vicarage of Greasley, in his native county. In 1728, on the occasion of the King’s visit to Cambridge, through Sir Robert Sutton’s influence his name was placed upon the King’s list, and he received the degree of M.A. In the same year, 1728, Sir Robert Sutton gave him the Rectory of Brand-Broughton, in the Diocese of Lincoln, where he remained till 1746. In 1733 he had been made Chaplain to the Prince of Wales, and in 1753 he was appointed to a Prebendal stall in Gloucester Cathedral. He was also in 1754 made King’s Chaplain, and in 1757 Dean of Bristol; while at the close of 1759 he was made Bishop of Gloucester. He received the Lambeth D.D. degree from Archbishop Herring about 1754.
The foregoing account is supplemented in Gorton’s Biographical Dictionary, with the information that Warburton began in 1727 to distinguish himself as an original writer by his “Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the Causes and Prodigees of Miracles as related by Historians,” which he also dedicated to Sir Robert Sutton, upon which the Rectory of Brand-Broughton was bestowed on him. This remarkable man was therefore only for two years Vicar of this parish, but during that time he had (among others) occasion to give a short written character to a poor boy of Greasley, on whose remarkable career we shall dwell in another part of this book.
There is again nothing to shew who the clergy were that succeeded Warburton at Greasley until 1747, when the burial took place of John Cooper, who died as Vicar of Greasley and Rector of Thorp. It is possible that another pluralist may have succeeded John Cooper, of whom we know nothing, because there are six years after Cooper’s death for which we are not able to account. But in the year 1753 the estate changed hands. It had come from Charles Morrison to Lord Capel by marriage, and from thence through the house of Essex to the Suttons. Sir Robert Sutton sold it to Sir Matthew Lamb in 1753, and in the same year the Rev. William Wright was presented to Greasley, and was for 22 years Vicar of the Parish, his death taking place in 1775. With this last named Incumbent the Vicar’s signatures in the registers began, and were ever afterwards regularly continued. He had for a short time a curate in 1760, named J. Nixon, who became Rector of Nuttall; and another curate, named George Allan, in Jan. 1775, who remained here until July, 1776. We gather from an old parish terrier of this incumbency that the Vicar was entitled to have 4d. a year from every chimney in use in the parish. We should certainly not like to have the benefit of collecting that now.
The next Vicar of Greasley was John Mansell, appointed in 1776, who had for a very short time an assistant named George Sanders in 1797, and then from Nov. 1797 to Sept. 1798, the Rev. John Thompson for his curate. This Vicar left a benefaction for the poor of Greasley, the details of which are specially mentioned by him, together with the hamlets of the parish in which those to be benefitted should live, and what the circumstances should be which should entitle them to doles from his endowment. The Charity Commissioners have departed from the founder’s appointments, and have thrown this charity together with the Rolleston School endowment into one united scheme for administration.
The Rev. John Mansell was in 1798 succeeded in the Incumbency of Greasley by the Rev. Peniston La Tour, who had again the Rev. John Thompson for his assistant from Oct. 1800 to 1805, when the same clergyman became his regular curate, and remained such until the month of April, 1814.
The Rev. John Thompson after that was curate of Eastwood. He was the father of the late Dr. Thompson of Leicester, who married Miss Annie Gelstharp of Moorgreen on April 28th, 1870.
The Rev. John Thompson was succeeded in the curacy of Greasley by the Rev. John Hides in June, 1814, who, five years later, became Vicar of Greasley in 1819, and died, after fully 51 years of ministrations at Greasley, in the year 1866, having during that half century borne here the no slight heat and burden of the day. We can well remember that venerable Vicar, who was well respected here.
The Rev. Charles Steward Upperton, M.A., who succeeded in 1866, resigned the Incumbency in the same year; when in October of the same year, 1866, the present Vicar, the Rev. Rodolph Baron von Hube, was instituted to the Incumbency.