John Disney,
M.A(1677 - 1729/30)
Vicar of Croft and Kirkby-on-Bain, Lincolnshire 1719 - 1722
Vicar of St. Mary's Church, Nottingham 1722 - 1729/30
John Disney was born at Lincoln on 26 Dec 1677 and was educated at the grammar school. His parents were dissenters and he moved school to a private college, also in Lincoln. Despite his upbringing he was confirmed in the Church of England, sometime before 1698. In May of that year, he married Mary Woodhouse. He entered the Middle Temple in order to study law, but with no intention of practising at the bar. He gained sufficient knowledge to act as a competent magistrate and more than once was publicly complemented by the judges of the circuit for being efficient and impartial.
As a supporter of the societies for the reform of manners he was working on a publication Corpus Legum de Moribus Reformandis shortly before his death.
Until the age of 42 he worked as a lay churchman and then he entered holy orders, encouraged by the archbishop of Canturbury, William Wake, who had been bishop of Lincoln in Disney's early days. He was ordained priest in Lincoln cathedral in 1719 by the bishop of Lincoln (Edmund Gibson), and immediately took the nearby livings of Croft and Kirkby-on-Bain. In 1722 he resigned these and became vicar of St. Mary's.
The story for which Disney is remembered involves a bishop performing confirmation in St. Mary's. At the end of the proceedings, the bishop sent out his messenger to fetch his pipe, tobacco and some ale. Disney met the messenger returning into the church and dismissed him saying that no bishop would make a tippling house of St. Mary's.
Upon his death on 3 Feb 1729-30, he left behind a widow and eight children, five sons and three daughters.
His writing mostly relating to the societies for the reformation of manners was prolific, but he also found time to research and publish The Geneology of the most Serene and Illustrious House of Brunswick-Lunenburgh, the present Royal Family of Great Britain in 1714
St. Mary's has a copy of one of the books by Disney A View of Ancient Laws against Immorality and Profaneness, Cambridge, 1729. This book has a handwritten inscription on the title page Swinderby Library, which meant nothing until recently. Mr. Disney Keble, parishioner and one time churchwarden at St. John the Baptist in Beeston, is a descendent of the Disney family, and unusually takes their surname as his christian name. His studies into the Disney family have brought out the Swinderby connection. Disney's grandson (1746-1816), also John, was vicar of Swinderby in Lincolnshire from 1769.