Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gipps, Thomas
GIPPS, THOMAS (d. 1709), rector of Bury, Lancashire, was educated at St. Paul's School, London, which he left as Campden exhibitioner in 1654. He subsequently went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a fellowship. He proceeded B.A. in 1658 and M.A. in 1662, and became rector of Bury, Lancashire, in 1674, on the presentation of the Earl of Derby, whose chaplain he was. In 1683 he published ‘Three Sermons preached in Lent and Summer Assizes last, at Lancaster, and on one of the Lord's Days in the late Guild of Preston,’ and in 1697 ‘A Sermon against Corrupting the Word of God, preacht at Christ Church in Manchester.’ He charged the presbyterians during the civil wars with altering Acts vi. 3, ‘whom we might appoint’ into ‘whom ye might appoint,’ to favour the notion of the people's right to elect their own ministers. This led to a sharp controversy with James Owen of Oswestry, in which Gipps was shown to be in error. Four or five curious pamphlets were published on each side. Gipps died at Bury 11 March 1709. He gave some books to the library of St. Paul's School in 1673.
[Raines's Vicars of Rochdale (Chetham Soc.), i. 129; Fishwick's Lancashire Library; Baines's Lancashire (Harland), i. 517; Graduati Cantabr. 1823; Oliver Heywood's Diaries (Turner), 1881, ii. 223 (as to his countenancing the persecution of dissenters); Gardiner's Register of St. Paul's School, pp. 46, 408; Account of the Life of James Owen, 1709, p. 106; Knight's Life of Colet, p. 327; information from the late Canon Hornby.]