John Kentish (minister)

John Kentish (26 June 1768 – 6 March 1853) was an English Unitarian minister.

Kentish was born at St. Albans, Hertfordshire, on 26 June 1768. His father, at one time a draper, was the youngest son, and ultimately the heir, of Thomas Kentish, who in 1723 was high sheriff of Hertfordshire. His mother was Hannah (d. 1793), daughter and heiress of Keaser Vanderplank.

After passing through the school of John Worsley at Hertford, he was entered in 1784 as a divinity student at Daventry Academy, under Thomas Belsham, William Broadbent, and Eliezer Cogan.

In September 1788 he moved, with two fellow-students, to the New College at Hackney, a dissenting college, as a result of a prohibition by the Daventry trustees of any use of written prayers at the school.

In the autumn of 1790 he left Hackney to become the first minister of a newly formed Unitarian congregation at Plymouth Dock (now Devonport), Devonshire. A chapel was built in George Street (opened 27 April 1791 by Theophilus Lindsey, and a prayer-book drawn up by Kentish and Thomas Porter of Plymouth.

In 1794 he succeeded Porter as minister of the Treville Street congregation, Plymouth, after Porter emigrated to America.

That same year, Kentish wrote a scathing letter in which he decried the refusal of a trustee of George's Meeting house in Exeter to allow the Western Unitarian Society to hold their annual meeting there, allegedly based on religious prejudice.

In 1795, he moved to London to serve as the afternoon preacher at the Gravel Pit, Hackney, adding to this office in 1802 that of morning preacher at St. Thomas's Chapel, Southwark.

On 23 January 1803, he undertook the pastorate of the New Meeting in Birmingham, serving, from 1804-1815, alongside Joshua Toulmin. In 1832, Kentish declined his compensation, but retained the office of pastor, and continued to preach frequently through 1844.

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