Samuel Bickley, who assumed the extinct title in 1754
Robert Jewell
rich...@googlemail.com
"Samuel Bickley
Monday July 18, 1763
Samuel Bickley, Bart. also Samuel Bickley Clerk is Convicted of an Assault with an attempt to commit Sodomy on John Austen. Let him remain in Gaol for the space of three Months and during that time Let him be placed twice in and upon the pillory for the space of one hour each time between the hours of twelve and two at Sittingburn in this County and then be Discharged. (The records of the ad hoc summer assizes at Maidstone, ASSI 94/974, which say that Austen was from Murston, a small village in Kent, and that he was a cordwainer, or a shoemaker.)
21–23 July 1763
Amongst the prisoners which were tried at Maidstone assizes, there were two for unnatural crimes; one of whom by this act is a disgrace to a profession from which only good examples might be expected; the other was an old pensioner belonging to Greenwich Hospital: They were both found guilty; the former was sentenced to stand twice on the pillory at Sittingburn, and to suffer three months imprisonment; the latter to stand twice on the pillory at Greenwich, and also to suffer three months imprisonment. (London Chronicle)
30 July 1763
At Maidstone 8 prisoners were capitally convicted, all for the highway; and the Rev. Mr. B——, a baronet, was sentenced to stand twice in and upon the pillory at Sittingbourne for the detestable sin of sodomy. (Gentleman's Magazine, Historical Chronicle for October 1763, p. 409)
Saturday, July 30 to Tuesday, August 2, 1763
A Baronet, convicted of an attempt of a detestable crime, is sentenced to be imprisoned three months in the common gaol for Kent, and to stand twice in and upon the pillory at Sittingbourne. (London Chronicle)
Samuel Bickley died (either by starvation or by suicide) ten years later:
27 August 1773
Deaths – At the King's-head Inn, Enfield, the Rev. Samuel Bickley, who came hither the Saturday before, in great distress. In his pockets were found three manuscript sermons, and a petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated February 18, 1773. The prayer of the petitioner is as follows: – "Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays, that, if an audience from your Grace should be deemed too great a favour, that you will, at the least, grant him some relief, tho' it be only a temporary one, in his deplorable necessity and distress; and let your Grace's charity cover the multitude of his sins there never yet was any one in England doomed to starve; but I am nearly, if not altogether, so; denied the exercise the sacred function wherein I was educated; driven from the doors of the rich laymen to the clergy for relief; by the clergy denied; so that I may justly take up the speech of the Gospel Prodigal, and say, "How many hired servants of my father have bread enough, and to spare, while I perish with hunger." (The Gentleman's Magazine, August 1773)
(According to Cockayne's Complete Baronetage, Vol. 5, p. 230, Bickley was a gradulate of Cambridge, and had assumed the Baronetage in 1754 and was the Vicar of Bapchild, a smalll village in Kent, from 1759 to 1764. "He dishonoured a respectable family by crimes which involved him in distress and infamy and for which he suffered a disgraceful punishment at Lincoln." He was deprived of his title after his conviction and he died childless "in great poverty at the King's Head Inn, Enfield.")"