John Church

John Church, composer, was buried in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey on 10th January 1741. The Precentor called him "very worthy and honest". He was Master of the Choristers at the Abbey from 1704-1740. He has no monument or inscribed gravestone.

Windsor is said to have been his birthplace and he was a chorister at St John's College, Oxford and later a tenor singer at a London theatre and he was a friend of Henry Purcell. In 1697 he was appointed both as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and Lay Vicar of the Abbey. In 1700 at St Paul's cathedral he married Elizabeth Wood, who was buried in the cloister in 1732. Several of their children (Elizabeth, Anne, Mary, Charles and Robert) died young. Son John was a King's Scholar at Westminster School and was educated at Oxford before becoming rector of Boxford in Suffolk. He was known as "Honest John Church" and died on 27th October 1785. Son Ralph followed John at Westminster and Oxford and was vicar of Pyrton in Oxfordshire, dying in April 1787.

Further Reading

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

"The Record of Old Westminsters" edited by Barker and Stenning, 1928