Henry Venn - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

HENRY VENN (1725-1797), English evangelical divine, was born at Barnes, Surrey, and educated at Cambridge. He took orders in 1747, and was elected fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1749. After holding a curacy at Barton, Cambridgeshire, he became curate of St Matthew, Friday Street, London, and of West Horsley, Surrey, in 1750, and then of Clapham in 1754. In the preceding year he was chosen lecturer of St Swithin's, London Stone. He was vicar of Huddersfield from 1759 to 1771, when he exchanged to the living of Yelling,. Huntingdonshire. Besides being a leader of the evangelical revival, he was well known as the author of The Compleat Duty of Man (London, 1763), a work in which he intended to supplement the teaching embodied in the anonymous Whole Duty of Man. His son, John Venn (1759-1813), was one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society, and his grandson, Henry Venn (1796-1873), was honorary secretary of that society from 1841 to 1873.