Transcript

of

Horace Stone Wilcocks [Obituary]

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol.  47, (1915), pp. 58-59.

by

Maxwell Adams (Ed.)

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1915 Exeter meeting. Rev. Wilcocks was an “Anglo-Catholic”, a “Tractarian” of the Oxford Movement within Anglicanism, who, like thousands of others, later converted to Roman Catholicism.  The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1865, vol. 219, p. 507 contains an entry for the marriage on September 4th at St James’s, Devonport of the Rev. Horace Stone Wilcocks, M.A., second son of Jas, B. Wilcocks esq. of Stoke to Caroline Elizabeth, only daughter of Francis F. Jemmett esq. of Home Park, Stoke Damerel. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Mr. Wilcocks, of Chieveley, Mannamead, who died on 24 October, 1912, was the son of Mr. James Blackmore Wilcocks, J.P., of Plymouth (a founder of the shipping firm now known as Weekes, Phillips and Co.), was born in 1834, and became a life member of the Association in 1890. Mr. Horace Wilcocks was an M.A. of St. John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained in the Church of England, and served successively in the parishes of St. Luke, Heywood, Manchester, St. James, Keyham, and St. Peter, Plymouth. In 1872 he was preferred to the Vicarage of St. James-the-Less, Plymouth, where he remained until 1875. In 1880 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Bishop Vaughan at Plymouth and, till his death, was the leading layman of the congregation of Plymouth Cathedral, and President of the Society of St. Vincent and St. Paul. Mr. Wilcocks represented the Roman Catholics on the old Plymouth School Board, and from 1890 to 1910 was a member of the Plymouth Board of Guardians. He was also honorary secretary of the Plymouth Branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a member of the Committee of the Plymouth Dispensary and of the Public Library in Cornwall Street, and a Director of the Plymouth and Stonehouse Gas Company.