John Jennings (tutor)

John Jennings (c. 1687 – 1723) was an English Nonconformist minister and tutor of an early 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.

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 Act of Uniformity 1662. The elder John Jennings was afterwards a private chaplain at Langton, near Kibworth, and founder of the independent congregation at Kibworth, where he purchased a small estate. A younger son, David Jennings, became known as tutor of the Coward Trust academy in Wellclose Square.

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. 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.

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