Thomas Toke Lynch

Thomas Toke Lynch (1818–1871) was an English nonconformist minister and hymn-writer.

Life The son of John Burke Lynch, a surgeon, he was born at Great Dunmow, Essex, 5 July 1818. He was educated at a school in Islington, London, where he then became an usher (teaching assistant). In 1841 he became a Sunday school teacher and district visitor, occasionally preaching and giving lectures on sight-singing and temperance.

In 1843 Lynch entered Highbury Independent College, but then shortly withdrew, largely for health reasons. He was pastor of Highgate Independent Church 1847–9, and of a congregation in Mortimer Street, which migrated to Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, 1849–52. In 1852 he delivered a course of lectures on literature at the Royal Institution, Manchester.

He was the author of several prose works, as well as lectures, addresses, sermons, controversial tracts, and magazine articles:

Thoughts on a Day (1844). Memorials of Theophilus Trinal (1850). Essays on some of the Forms of Literature (1863). Sermons to my Curates, edited by the Rev. Samuel Cox (1871). Letters, etc., contributed to "Christian Spectator," 1855-6 (1872).

He was a musician, and composed Tunes to Hymns in the "Rivulet," twenty-five of which, edited by Thomas Pettit, were published after Lynch's death under that title (London, 1872), with a preface signed "Theodore Burkeson" found among Lynch's papers. His portrait appears in his Memoir of Thomas Toke Lynch (1874), editor William White.

Family In September 1849, Lynch married a daughter of the Rev. Edward Porter of Highgate.