Joshua Childrey

Joshua Childrey (1623–1670) was an English churchman and academic, antiquary and astrologer, the archdeacon of Salisbury from 1664. He was a "country virtuoso" (in the sense used at the time, implying intellectual distinction), and an avowed Baconian. He also has been considered a .

He was the son of Robert Childrey of Rochester, where he was born. He was educated at Rochester grammar school, entered Magdalen College, Oxford in the Lent term of 1640, and became one of the clerks. On the outbreak of the First English Civil War he left Oxford and did not return until the city had surrendered to the forces of the parliament. He took his degree of B.A. on 22 July 1646, and is said to have been expelled from his college in 1648 by the Parliamentary visitation of the University of Oxford.

Until the Restoration Childrey kept a school, at Faversham in Kent. In 1660 he was appointed by Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert as one of his chaplains, and obtained preferment. Having been created M.A. on 24 January 166l, he was installed on 23 January 1664 as archdeacon of Salisbury, and the same year became a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral, and was appointed to the rectory of Upwey in Dorset.

Childrey died at Upwey on 20 August 1670, and was buried in the chancel of his parish church.

Childrey adopted firmly the stance proposed by Francis Bacon, that the collection of very full sets of data should precede the formulation of hypotheses. With Edmond Halley, he wrote against the credulous acceptance of travellers' tales. It has been argued, however, that when with Thomas Sprat he advocated more attention to phenomena visible in the skies ("meteors", in the term used at the time), he was crossing a line drawn by Bacon that excluded "prodigious" observations. He has been described as a consistent opponent of the interpretation of "prodigies" in ways relying on divine providence and eschatology.Britannica Baconica mentioned causal explanations of prodigies on its title page, and Childrey took a generally cessationist line.

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