Occupation Chaplain Name Edmund Hickeringill | Died 1708 | |
Education St John's College, Cambridge | ||
Edmund Hickeringill (1631–1708) was an English churchman who lived during the period of the Commonwealth and the Restoration.
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Education and career
Hickeringill was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge in 1647, graduated BA in 1650/1 and was junior fellow at Caius College, Cambridge in 1651–1652. During the First English Civil War he fought on the side of the Roundheads, serving in Robert Lilburne's regiment as a chaplain, as a soldier in Scotland and in the Swedish service, ultimately becoming a captain in Charles Fleetwood's regiment.
He then lived for a time in Jamaica, of which he published an account in 1661. In the same year he was ordained by Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, having already changed his beliefs several times and been a Baptist, Quaker and Deist.
From 1662 until his death in 1708 he was vicar of All Saints' in Colchester.
Controversy
In 1682, Hickeringill published his History of Whiggism.
According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Hickeringill was "an active pamphleteer, and came into collision with Henry Compton, Bishop of London, to whom he had to pay heavy damages for slander in 1682. He made a public recantation in 1684, was excluded from his living in 1685-1688, and ended his career by being convicted of forgery in 1707."