Hickes published three sermons: 1. ‘Glory and Beauty of God's Portion before the House of Commons at the Publique Fast, 26 June 1644.’ 2. ‘The Life and Death of David, preached at the Funeral of William Strode, M.P., in Westminster Abbey, 22 Sept. 1645.’ Dedicated to Sir Edward Barkham and his wife, with whom he ‘found the first safe and quiet harbour after my long wanderings and tossings in the common storme.’ 3. ‘The Advantage of Afflictions; a Sermon before House of Peers 28 Jan. 1645, the day of publike humiliation,’ in Westminster Abbey.
Gaspar Hickes, captain of the Yarmouth man-of-war, who died in 1714, was perhaps a son (Memoirs relating to Lord Torrington, ed. Laughton, Camd. Soc., pp. 141–2, 193).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 1107; Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial, 1802 ed., i. 352–353; Clark's Oxford Reg. (Oxford Hist. Soc.), vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 394, 442; Journ. of House of Commons, ii. 535, iii. 662; True Narrative of Sufferings of Christians called Fanaticks, 1671, and in Somers Tracts, 1812 ed., vii. 609–11; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. i. 237–8; Notes and Gleanings, iii. 158–60, by A. F. Robbins.]
HICKES, GEORGE (1642–1715), nonjuror, titular bishop of Thetford, was the second son of William Hickes of Ness in the parish of Stonegrave, Yorkshire, whose wife was a daughter of George Kay, M.A., rector of Topcliffe. His parents after their marriage settled on a large farm called Moorhouse at Newsham in the parish of Kirby Wiske, near Thirsk, where George was born 20 June 1642. When five years old he was sent to school at Thirsk, and when nearly ten to the grammar school at Northallerton, under Thomas Smelt, who throughout the Commonwealth instilled monarchical principles into his pupils. At the age of sixteen he was sent to his elder brother, John Hickes, B.A. [q. v.], of Trinity College, Dublin (1655), then minister at Saltash in Cornwall, who had offered to bind him apprentice to a merchant at Plymouth. He showed such promise, however, that, by the advice of George Hughes, then minister at Plymouth, he was sent to Oxford, where he was admitted a batler at St. John's College in the middle of April 1659. He was no favourite there with the intruded president, Thankful Owen, because, as we are told, ‘he would not take sermon-notes, nor frequent the meetings of the young scholars for spiritual exercises,’ while the reading of James Howell's ‘Dodona's Grove’ and Bishop Hall's ‘Answer to Smectymnuus’ confirmed him in his aversion to the dominant party. On the Restoration he removed to Magdalen College in the capacity of a servitor to Dr. Henry Yerbury, one of the restored fellows. There he took the degree of B.A. 24 Feb. 1662–3, and then removed to Magdalen Hall, whence he was elected to a Yorkshire fellowship at Lincoln College, 23 May 1664. On 8 Dec. 1665 he took the degree of M.A. He went round, according to custom, bareheaded, with his white lambskin bachelor's hood, to offer himself for examination at every college, and heard a French visitor conjecture that he must be doing penance for some great crime. He was ordained deacon 10 June and priest 23 Dec. 1666 at Oxford, and on 8 July 1668 was admitted M.A. at Cambridge. For seven years he acted as tutor at Lincoln College, and went, in 1673, on a tour in France with a former pupil, Sir George Wheeler (afterwards a prebendary of Durham), visiting also Geneva, and returning to Oxford in 1674 in order to take (as bound by college statutes) the degree of B.D. (14 May 1675). At Paris he became well acquainted with Henri Justel, and at Geneva with Francis Turretin. Justel entrusted to him his father's famous manuscripts of the ‘Codex Canonum Ecclesiæ Universalis’ of the ninth century for presentation to the university of Oxford. These manuscripts are now in the Bodleian Library, numbered e Musæo 100–2. In 1675 he was appointed to the rectory of St. Ebbe at Oxford, but held it probably only for a year; his signature is not found in the parish register.
Shortly afterwards Hickes was invited to become chaplain to the Duke of Lauderdale, but did not accept the office until assured by Bishop Fell that charges of gross immorality against the duke were fictions circulated by political adversaries. He was formally appointed 15 Sept. 1676, and in May of the following year he accompanied the duke when he went as high commissioner to Scotland. The duke being a learned Hebrew scholar, Hickes is reported, on the authority of Dr. Mill, to have studied Hebrew in order that he might be able to discuss rabbinical learning with his patron (Hearne, Collections, 1886, i. 268). In Scotland he did all in his power to introduce the use of the liturgy and to hinder a scheme of toleration urged by one Murray, a presbyterian minister, said to be nearly related to the Duchess of Lauderdale. After the execution of James Mitchel in January 1678, Hickes was employed by the duke to write a narrative of the trial, which was published anonymously in the same year, under the title of ‘Ravillac Redivivus;’ a second and enlarged edition appeared in 1682. In April 1678 he was sent up to
