HICKES, GEORGE (1642-1715), English divine and scholar, was born at Newsham near Thirsk, Yorkshire, on the 20th of June 1642. In 1659 he entered St John’s College, Oxford, whence after the Restoration he removed to Magdalen College and then to Magdalen Hall. In 1664 he was elected fellow of Lincoln College, and in the following year proceeded M.A. In 1673 he graduated in divinity, and in 1675 he was appointed rector of St Ebbe’s, Oxford. In 1676, as private chaplain, he accompanied the duke of Lauderdale, the royal commissioner, to Scotland, and shortly afterwards received the degree of D.D. from St Andrews. In 1680 he became vicar of All Hallows, Barking, London; and after having been made chaplain to the king in 1681, he was in 1683 promoted to the deanery of Worcester. He opposed both James II.’s declaration of indulgence and Monmouth’s rising, and he tried in vain to save from death his nonconformist brother John Hickes (1633-1685), one of the Sedgemoor refugees harboured by Alice Lisle. At the revolution of 1688, having declined to take the oath of allegiance, Hickes was first suspended and afterwards deprived of his deanery. When he heard of the appointment of a successor he affixed to the cathedral doors a “protestation and claim of right.” After remaining some time in concealment in London, he was sent by Sancroft and the other nonjurors to James II. in France on matters connected with the continuance of their episcopal succession; upon his return in 1694 he was himself consecrated suffragan bishop of Thetford. His later years were largely occupied in controversies and in writing, while in 1713 he persuaded two Scottish bishops, James Gadderar and Archibald Campbell, to assist him in consecrating Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes and Nathaniel Spinckes as bishops among the nonjurors. He died on the 15th of December 1715.
The chief writings of Hickes are the Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae et Moeso-Gothicae (1689), and Linguarum veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus (1703-1705), a work of great learning and industry.
Apart from these two works Hickes was a voluminous and laborious author. His earliest writings, which were anonymous, were suggested by contemporary events in Scotland that gave him great satisfaction—the execution of James Mitchell on a charge of having attempted to murder Archbishop Sharp, and that of John Kid and John King, Presbyterian ministers, “for high treason and rebellion” (Ravillac Redivivus, 1678; The Spirit of Popery speaking out of the Mouths of Phanatical Protestants, 1680). In his Jovian (an answer to S. Johnson’s Julian the Apostate, 1683), he endeavoured to show that the Roman empire was not hereditary, and that the Christians under Julian had recognized the duty of passive obedience. His two treatises, one Of the Christian Priesthood and the other Of the Dignity of the Episcopal Order, originally published in 1707, have been more than once reprinted, and form three volumes of the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1847). In 1705 and 1710 were published Collections of Controversial Letters, in 1711 a collection of Sermons, and in 1726 a volume of Posthumous Discourses. Other treatises, such as the Apologetical Vindication of the Church of England, are to be met with in Edmund Gibson’s Preservative against Popery. There is a manuscript in the Bodleian Library which sketches his life to the year 1689, and many of his letters are extant in various collections. A posthumous publication of his The Constitution of the Catholick Church and the Nature and Consequences of Schism (1716) gave rise to the celebrated Bangorian controversy.
See the article by the Rev. W. D. Macray in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxvi. (1891); and J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors (1902).
HICKOK, LAURENS PERSEUS (1798-1888), American philosopher and divine, was born at Bethel, Connecticut, on the 29th of December 1798. He took his degree at Union College in 1820. Until 1836 he was occupied in active pastoral work, and was then appointed professor of theology at the Western Reserve College, Ohio, and later (1844-1852) at the Auburn (N.Y.) Theological Seminary. From this post he was elected vice-president of Union College and professor of mental and moral science. In 1866 he succeeded Dr E. Nott as president, but in July 1868 retired to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he devoted himself to writing and study. A collected edition of his principal works was published at Boston in 1875. He died at Amherst on the 7th of May 1888. He wrote Rational Psychology (1848), System of Moral Science (1853), Empirical Psychology (1854), Rational Cosmology (1858), Creator and Creation, or the Knowledge in the Reason of God and His Work (1872), Humanity Immortal (1872), Logic of Reason (1874).
HICKORY, a shortened form of the American Indian name pohickery. Hickory trees are natives of North America, and belong to the genus Carya. They are closely allied to the walnuts (Juglans), the chief or at least one very obvious difference being that, whilst in Carya the husk which covers the shell of the nut separates into four valves, in Juglans it consists of but one piece, which bursts irregularly. The timber is both strong and heavy, and remarkable for its extreme elasticity, but it decays rapidly when exposed to heat and moisture, and is peculiarly subject to the attacks of worms. It is very extensively employed in manufacturing musket stocks, axle-trees, screws, rake teeth, the bows of yokes, the wooden rings used on the rigging of vessels, chair-backs, axe-handles, whip-handles and other purposes requiring great strength and elasticity. Its principal use in America is for hoop-making; and it is the only American wood found perfectly fit for that purpose.
The wood of the hickory is of great value as fuel, on account of the brilliancy with which it burns and the ardent heat which it gives out, the charcoal being heavy, compact and long-lived. The species which furnish the best wood are Carya alba (shell-bark hickory), C. tomentosa (mockernut), C. olivaeformis (pecan or pacane nut), and C. porcina (pig-nut), that of the last named, on account of its extreme tenacity, being preferred for axle-trees and axle-handles. The wood of C. alba splits very easily and is very elastic, so that it is much used for making whip-handles and baskets. The wood of this species is also used in the neighbourhood of New York and Philadelphia for making the back bows of Windsor chairs. The timber of C. amara and C. aquatica is considered of inferior quality.
| Fig. 1.—Shell-bark Hickory (Carya alba) in flower. |