John Jennings (tutor)

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John Jennings (c. 1687 – 1723) was an English

dissenting academy at Kibworth, Leicestershire, the original institution that became Daventry Academy. Jennings through his teaching and pedagogic writings was a major influence on the Dissenting
educational tradition.

Life

Jennings’s father, John Jennings (1634–1701), a native of

.

Jennings was educated at Timothy Jollie's academy at Attercliffe,[1] and succeeded his father as independent minister at Kibworth, where from 1715 he conducted a nonconformist academy. His students included Philip Doddridge, who carried on the academy tradition in various locations; others were Sir John Cope and John Mason, the writer on Self-Knowledge. In July 1722 Jennings became minister of the Presbyterian congregation at Hinckley, and moved his academy to that town, where a new meeting-house was immediately built for him. Next year he fell a victim to smallpox, and died at Hinckley on 8 July 1723.

Pedagogy

The four years' course of study was documented by Doddridge,[2] 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. Alexander Gordon, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, describes John Jennings as more able and original than his brother David.

He published:

  • Miscellanea in usum Juventutis Academicæ,, Northampton, 1721, a handbook to the studies of his academy.
  • Logica in usum, Northampton, 1721, includes a system of phonetic shorthand.
  • A Genealogical Table of the Kings of England.

Posthumous was Two Discourses, 1723, (preface by Isaac Watts); 4th edition, 1754. These were lectures on preaching; they were recommended by two bishops, and were translated into German.

Family

Jennings was twice married, his second wife being Anna Letitia, daughter of Sir Francis Wingate, by Anne, daughter of

Anna Letitia Barbauld
.

Notes

  1. required.)
  2. ^ Correspondence, 1829, ii. 462 sq.

References