Background
He was born at Taunton, Somerset, on 24 April 1718.
He was born at Taunton, Somerset, on 24 April 1718.
By help of the general Baptist fund he studied successively at Taunton, Kendal, and Findern dissenting academies.
John Wiche was baptised on 25 June 1734 by Joseph Jefferies, Baptist minister of Taunton, from whom, and from Thomas Lucas, Baptist minister (1721-1743) of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, he received his early education. At Salisbury, where he was assistant and then minister to a declining Baptist congregation (1743-1746), he became acquainted and corresponded with Thomas Chubb. In 1746 he went to London to consult Joseph Burroughs and James Foster about leaving the ministry.
On their advice he became in December 1746 minister of a small General Baptist congregation at Maidstone, and held this charge till death.
His views at this time were Arian, but in 1760 he became a Socinian, after reading the anonymous ‘Letter on the Logos,’ published in 1759, by Nathaniel Lardner. With Lardner he corresponded from 1762, if not earlier.
Lardner fenced with him about the authorship of the ‘Letter,’ but on 9 June 1768 (six weeks before his death) wrote to inform him that the ‘Papinian’ to whom it had been addressed was John Shute Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington. After the Birmingham riots of 1791 he went to Henry Dundas (afterwards first Viscount Melville), then Home Secretary, with a deputation from Maidstone in Joseph Priestley"s interest.
Though his resources were scanty, he collected a considerable library.
Wiche died at Maidstone on 7 April 1794. George Wiche or Wyche (1767–1799), dissenting minister at Monton, Lancashire, from 1788 to 1795, when he left the ministry and emigrated to America, was John Wiche"s nephew.