Mark Hiddesley

Mark Hiddesley or Hildesley (9 December 1698 – 7 December 1772) was an Anglican churchman. He served as vicar of Hitchin in Hertfordshire and later as Bishop of Sodor and Man between 1755 and 1772, where he encouraged Bible translations into Manx and collected from the local oral tradition lays in the Manx language from the Fenian Cycle of Celtic Mythology.

Early life Born at Murston in Kent, on 9 December 1698, he was the eldest surviving son of Mark Hildesley, rector of Murston and also vicar of Sittingbourne from 1705. In 1710 the father became rector of Houghton, which he held with the chapel of Witton or Wyton All Saints, Huntingdonshire. About then Mark Hildesley the son was sent to Charterhouse School, London, where John Jortin was a schoolfellow. At the age of nineteen he was moved to Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1720, and M.A. in 1724. He was elected a Fellow of his college in October 1723, and about the same time was appointed steward.

Parish priest Hildesley had been ordained deacon in 1722, and on 29 March 1723 Lord Cobham appointed him one of his domestic chaplains. In February 1725 he was nominated a preacher at Whitehall by Edmund Gibson, bishop of London. From 1725 till the end of 1729 he was curate of Yelling, Huntingdonshire. In February 1731 he was presented to the college vicarage of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and married in the same year. He improved the vicarage house, and took six pupils as boarders. On 18 January 1734 he was appointed chaplain to Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke; in October 1735 rector of Holwell in Bedfordshire, and on 10 May 1742 chaplain to John St John, 2nd Viscount St John.

With further assistance, about 1766 Hildesley' made arrangements for the translation of the Old Testament, dividing it into 24 parts. The names of the translators are in Weeden Butler's Life of Bishop Hildesley (pp. 252–6). The work was given for final revision to Philip Moore and John Kelly. The first volume of the translation was completed on 2 July 1771; the second volume was ready for the press on 6 April 1772; and all was finished and transcribed in December of the same year, at the time of the bishop's death. The work was printed at Whitehaven under the title of: Yn Vible Cashcrick: ny, yn Chenn Chonaant. Veih ny chied ghlaraghyn, dy kiaralagh chyndaït ayns Gailck; ta shen dy ghra, chengey ny mayrey Ellan Vannin. It was published in 1773. The second edition of the Manx scriptures was published at Whitehaven in 1775, and the last edition at London in 1819. In 1825 George Murray, bishop of Sodor and Man, informed the SPCK that the displacement of Manx by English in the Island removed the necessity of providing further copies of the Manx bible.

Hildesley was also author of an anonymous tract, Plain Instructions for Young Persons in the Principles of the Christian Religion; in six Conferences between a Minister and his Disciple; designed for the use of the Isle and Diocese of Mann. By a resident Clergyman, 2 parts, London, 1762, 1767.