Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pattrick, George
PATTRICK or PATRICK, GEORGE (1746–1800), divine, fourth son of Thomas Patrick of Marks Tey in Essex, was born in August 1746. His grandfather and father were farmers at Marks Tey, and had occupied the same land for more than a century. He was admitted to St. Paul's School on 4 Feb. 1756, and about 1762 entered an attorney's office in Colchester. In February 1769, after spending two years in London, he commenced to practise at Dedham in Essex, where a taste for fashionable company and expensive entertainments soon dissipated a moderate fortune. Falling under religious influences, he abandoned the law and was ordained to the curacy of St. Michael, Mile End, Colchester, on 23 Dec. 1770, and was admitted a fellow-commoner of Sidney-Sussex College on 29 Dec. On 22 Sept. 1771 he was ordained priest, and on 21 Aug. 1772 was presented to the living of Aveley in Essex through the interest of Thomas Barrett-Lennard, seventeenth baron Dacre. In March 1773 he took the curacy of Wennington, also in Essex, which he held with his living. In December 1775 he was made chaplain to Lord Dacre, and in 1777 he graduated LL.B. at Cambridge. At Aveley Patrick performed his clerical duties irregularly. He was frequently employed by Lord Dacre, to the neglect of his parochial work, in the examination of old deeds or in the manufacture of genealogy. In the winter of 1782 he sought the spiritual advice of Dr. Richard Conyers, and removed to Deptford, to be near his director. From June 1783 to June 1784 he was travelling in France and Italy for his health. On 10 Oct. 1787 he finally left Aveley, and was chosen chaplain of Morden College, Blackheath, by the influence of Charles Trevor Roper, eighteenth baron Dacre, who had succeeded his uncle in the peerage in 1786, and retained Patrick's services as chaplain. Disputes with the pensioners led to his dismissal on 22 June 1790. On 17 April 1791 he became curate of Carshalton in Surrey. On 12 Jan. 1792 he was elected to the lectureship of Woolwich, but the incumbent refused him the pulpit, and he never preached there. In the summer of 1793 he removed to London. On 19 March 1796 he was elected lecturer of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, but, owing to the objection of the incumbent, only preached for the first time on 4 Dec. 1796; the sermon was published. Towards the close of 1797 he was chosen Sunday-evening lecturer at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. He also had a share in a lectureship at St. Margaret's, Lothbury.
Patrick died at Madeley in Shropshire on 14 Sept. 1800, and was buried there on the 17th (parish register). He married, on 8 Sept. 1789, Mary Ferriday of Madeley (parish register). His son, Charles Thomas Pattrick, born at Blackheath in 1790, graduated B.A. in 1812 and M.A. in 1815 from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.
As a preacher Patrick was popular, and drew large congregations. He had a strong voice and clear enunciation. His ‘Sermons, with a Help to Prayer,’ were published in London in 1801.
[Memoirs of his life prefixed to his sermons (an abridged version was published in a volume of the Religious Tract Society's Christian Biography); Gardiner's Admission Registers of St. Paul's School, p. 107; Graduati Cantabr.; Ellis's Hist. and Antiq. of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, pp. 47–9; Evangelical Magazine, 1802, p. 108; admission registers of Sidney-Sussex College, per the master.]