Background
The son of Simon Cantrell (1658–1744), he was educated at Derby School (where a relation, the Rev Thomas Cantrell, 1649–1698, was headmaster) and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
The son of Simon Cantrell (1658–1744), he was educated at Derby School (where a relation, the Rev Thomas Cantrell, 1649–1698, was headmaster) and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
The son of Simon Cantrell (1658–1744), he was educated at Derby School (where a relation, the Rev Thomas Cantrell, 1649–1698, was headmaster) and, Cambridge. He matriculated at Cambridge in 1701, graduated Bachelor in 1705 and Master of Arts in 1710.
Cantrell was ordained a priest at Lichfield in 1709. In 1712, the corporation of Derby gave him the vicarage of Street Alkmund, Derby, a living he kept for more than sixty stormy years, until his death at the age of eighty-nine. Cantrell had a quarrelsome nature, and even before his induction as Vicar of Street Alkmund"s parish he fell out with its vestry, insisting on exercising his right to appoint one of the two churchwardens for the parish.
Within months of his appointment, he was preaching against non-conformity, claiming that:
He refused to bury children baptised by dissenters, which led to a furious controversy in Derby.
In any event, Cantrell"s bishop refused to support his stance. In 1729, he defeated the Corporation of Derby (the patrons of his living) in a legal battle over the parish"s small tithes, which the Corporation had taken away from him for insulting the Mayor of Derby.
When his battles led to the forced sale of much of his library, he was offered the vicarage of Brecon through the influence of Doctor Henry Sacheverell, but declined lieutenant When Cantrell granted a licence for the secret marriage of Annabella Wilmot of Osmaston, Derbyshire, this led to the Ecclesiastical Courts Bill 1733.
Doubt has been cast on the claim in William Hutton"s History of Derby (1791) that at the time of the Jacobite rising in 1745 Cantrell was a Jacobite and drank the health of the Old Pretender.
Cantrell first wife, Constance, was born in 1695 or 1696 and died on 24 May 1725. Their eldest surviving son became the Review William Cantrell (1716–1787), Rector of Stamford, Lincolnshire and Normanton, Derbyshire.
On 2 August 1732, Henry Cantrell married secondly Jane Cradock, a daughter of Joseph Cradock, Rector of Markfield, Leicestershire.
Cantrell was often embattled in defending his clerical rights, including the right to plant trees in the churchyard, to control the contents of the parish register, and so forth, generally claiming the matter in hand was about an important principle and part of a wider defence of clerical rights.