John Gambold

John Gambold (1711–1771) was born at Puncheston, Pembrokeshire, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he knew the Wesleys. Ordained in the Church of England, he became vicar of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire; in 1742 he joined the Moravian Church, of which he became a bishop in 1754.

He did not publish his poems himself; several were first printed by the Wesleys in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739). The pieces here are those that Osborn marks as Gambold’s in that volume (G. Osborn (ed.), The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, 13 vols (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868–72), from Internet Archive scans (OCR)), where he cites Gambold’s Works (Bath, 1789).