Background
His father John Jennings (1634–1701), a native of Oswestry, Shropshire, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and was ejected from the rectory of Hartley Wespall, Hampshire after the Acting of Uniformity 1662.
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John Jennings
Edit ProfileEducation
John Jennings was educated at Timothy Jollie"s academy at Attercliffe, and succeeded his father as independent minister at Kibworth, where from 1715 he conducted a nonconformist academy.
Career
Jennings through his teaching and pedagogic writings was a major influence on the Dissenting educational tradition. A younger son, David Jennings, became known as tutor of the Coward Trust academy in Wellclose Square. Next year he fell a victim to smallpox, and died at Hinckley on 8 July 1723.
The four years" course of study was documented by Doddridge, who comments on his tutor"s thoroughness of method and liberality of spirit.
Doddridge took Jennings"s theological lectures as the basis of his own. He published:
‘Miscellanea in usum Juventutis Academicæ,’ &c., Northampton, 1721, an interesting handbook to the studies of his academy.
‘Logica in usum,’ &c., Northampton, 1721, includes a system of phonetic shorthand). ‘A Genealogical Table of the Kings of England,’ &c.
Posthumous was ‘Two Discourses,’ &c., 1723, (preface by Isaac Watts).
4th edition, 1754. These were lectures on preaching.
They were recommended by two bishops, and were translated into German. He left four children, Arthur, John, Francis, and Jane. John, ‘the wit of Doddridge"s academy,’ was minister (ordained 12 August 1742) at Saint Ives, Huntingdonshire, and left the ministry about 1756 from a failure of speech.
Jane married John Aikin, and became the mother of Anna Letitia Barbauld.
