A FORMER VICAR
The Vicar has recently acquired from a London bookseller a copy of "A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, At St. Mary's, On Sunday, Aug. 2, 1761. By John Rawlins, A.M. of Christ-Church, And Minister of Badsey and Wickhamford in Worcestershire." The sermon, the subject of which is The Scripture Prophecies consider'd and compar'd with the Oracles of the Heathens, shows Mr. Rawlins to have been a man of considerable learning.
A mural tablet in the transept of Badsey Church bears the following inscription:
In Memory of the Revd. John Rawlins, A.M.
one of the Justices of the Peace for this County,
Rector of Haselton in Gloucestershire
Rector of Leigh, near Worcester, and upwards
of 50 years Minister of Badsey and Wickhamford.
Here, like a true and faithful Pastor, he
began his Labours, and here he Ended.
Knowledge and Learning, Religion and
Virtue were the distinguished Ornaments of
his Life, and they happily closed the last
Scene of it with the fairest Pledges
of Honor and Immortality.
He was born October 26th, 1707,
and died November 3rd, 1784.
Mr. Rawlins, who was a native of Oxford, appears to have been a self-made man. A son of his, who graduated from Christ-Church in 1768 and afterwards went to Merton College (probably as Fellow), held the Merton living of Ponteland, in Northumberland, from 1788 until his death in 1811.