John Bakewell

John Bakewell was born at Brailsford, Derbyshire, in 1721. At the age of eighteen, his spiritual life was deeply transformed through reading Thomas Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State. He began preaching as an ardent evangelist in 1744, the year of the first Methodist Conference. Moving to London shortly thereafter, he became acquainted with John and Charles Wesley, Martin Madan, Augustus M. Toplady, and John Fletcher. For several years he conducted the Greenwich Royal Park Academy before turning over its leadership to his son-in-law, Dr. James Egan, after which he devoted his time to preaching among Wesleyan societies across England. Bakewell died at Lewisham on March 18, 1819, at the age of ninety-eight, and was buried in the Wesleyan burying ground at City Road Chapel, London.

Bakewell's chief contribution to hymnody is his magnificent resurrection and ascension hymn, "Hail, Thou once despised Jesus," first published in 1757. Abridged centos of this hymn beginning "Paschal Lamb, by God appointed" and "Jesus, hail, enthroned in glory" became staple selections across many evangelical denominations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.