HICKES, GEORGE English divine and scholar, was born at Newsham near Thirsk, Yorkshire, on June 20, 1642. In 1659 he entered St. John's college, Oxford, whence after the Restoration he removed to Magdalen college and then to Magdalen hall. In 1664 he was elected fellow of Lincoln col lege, and in 1675 was appointed rector of St. Ebbe's, Oxford. In 1676, as private chaplain, he accompanied the duke of Lauderdale, the royal commissioner, to Scotland. Hickes was vicar of All Hallows, Barking, London (168o), chaplain to the king (1681), and dean of Worcester (1683) . He opposed both James II.'s declaration of indulgence and Monmouth's rising, and he tried in vain to save from death his nonconformist brother John Hickes, one of the Sedgemoor refugees harboured by Alice Lisle. At the revolution Hickes, as a nonjuror, was first suspended and after wards deprived of his deanery. When he heard of the appointment of a successor he affixed to the cathedral doors a "protestation and claim of right." After remaining some time in concealment in London, he was sent by Sancroft and the other nonjurors to James II. in France to discuss episcopal succession; upon his return in 1694 he was consecrated suffragan bishop of Thetford. In 1713 he persuaded two Scottish bishops, James Gadderar and Archibald Campbell, to assist him in consecrating Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes and Nathaniel Spinckes as bishops among the nonjurors. He died on Dec. 13, 1715. A posthumous publication of his The Constitution of the Catholick Church and the Nature and Consequences of Schism (1716) gave rise to the celebrated Bangorian controversy (see HOADLY, BEN JAMIN) .
His chief writings are the Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae et Moeso-Gothicae (1689), and Linguarum veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus (1703-05) , a work of great learning. His two treatises, one Of the Christian Priesthood and the other Of the Dignity of the Episcopal Order (17o7) were reprinted in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1847). There is a ms. in the Bodleian Library which sketches his life to i68g, and many of his letters are extant in various collections.
See also J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors (1902).