The Parish Priests
The list of incumbents stretches back to John the Clerk in 1118 and some of the incumbents are worthy of particular note.
Thomas Johnson was a Reader but it seems likely that as the result of the plague he was appointed "Reader in Charge" in 1571. The plague did not discriminate and many of the clergy died and this is probably why Johnson was promoted to curate in 1597 and then incumbent in 1604. We think he tried to help his parishioners, but without diocesan consent, so he was brought before the Vicar General to answer charges of "Practising medicine without a Bishop's Licence." Later he was again brought before the Vicar General but this time for trying "to divine the sex of unborn babies." We are not sure about the punishments meted out but he seems to have continued as vicar until he in turn succumbed to the plague.
Robert Wright was vicar in the 1650s and during this time the marriage registers most unusually record the marriages of couples from other parishes, Fulbeck, Welbourn, Silk Willoughby, Wellingore and Carlton. We assume that the Reverend Robert Wright was willing to risk the wrath of Parliament to marry according to the Rites of the Church of England when those rites were supposedly suspended...
INCUMBENTS OF CRANWELL | ||
1118 | John the Clerk |   |
1209 | Robert de Gravel |   |
(Records incomplete) | ||
1526 | Peter Giles |   |
1547 | Thomas Yates |   |
1571 | Thomas Johnson - a Reader-in-Charge, Curate 1597, Incumbent 1604, probably died from the plague. | |
  | ||
1607 | Robert Flear |   |
1650 | Robert Wright |   |
1711 | Thomas Spencer | Also Rauceby and Dorrington |
1729 | Abraham Wilcox | Also of Rauceby |
1744 | William Gunnell | Also of Rauceby |
1771 | John Pugh | Also of Rauceby |
1786 | Fristney Gunniss | Also of Leasingham |
1799 | Matthew Barnett |   |
1833 | George John Skells |   |
1834 | Owen Davys - later Archdeacon of Northampton and Peterborough | |
1846 | Robert Allan Scott |   |
1870 | John Thorold |   |
1892 | George Whit White |   |
1897 | Walter Harrington |   |
1934 | Sidney L Clarke - formerly of St Andrew's University, Chaplain to the King and Chaplain-in-Chief, Royal Air Force | |
1939 | Frederick J G H Disbrowe |   |
1942 | Thomas Leonard Ivens |   |
1945 | Charles Ernest Hutchinson |   |
1953 | Clarence David Roberts | Also of Rauceby |
1962 | Henry William Robert Cullen | Also of Rauceby |
1978 | Thomas George Williamson | Also of Leasingham |
1981 | Michael John Feit | Also of Leasingham |
1986 | Frank Rodgers | Also of Leasingham |
1994 | Gerald Smith | Also of Leasingham |
1997 | Charles Thody | Also of Leasingham |
2003 | Alan James Littlewood | Also of Leasingham |
2009 | Sandra Rhys Benham | Also of Quarrington and Silk Willoughby |
2011 | Christine Pennock | Also of Ruskington, Anwick, Evedon and Leasingham. |
2021 | David Alan Jenkins (Preferred name Al) | Also of Ruskington, Anwick, Evedon and Leasingham. |