THOMAS

See also:

• COKE (a northern English word, possibly connected with " colk," core)
• COKE, SIR EDWARD (1552-1634)
• COKE, SIR JOHN (1563-1644)
• THOMAS COKE (1747-1814)

COKE (1747-1814)  , English divine, the first Methodist bishop, was born at Brecon, where his father was a well-to-do apothecary . He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, taking the degree of M.A. in 1770 and that of D.C.L. in 1775 . From 1772 to 1776 he was curate at South Petherton in . Somerset, whence his rector dismissed him for adopting the open-air and cottage services introduced by John Wesley, with whom he had become acquainted . After serving on the London Wesleyan circuit he was in 1782 appointed president of the conference in Ireland, a position which he frequently held, in the intervals of his many voyages to America . He first visited that country in 1784, going to Baltimore as " superintendent " of the Methodist societies in the new world and, in 1787 the American conference changed his title to " bishop," a nomenclature which he tried in vain to introduce into the English conference, of which he was president in 1797 and 18o5 . Failing this, he asked Lord Liverpool to make him a bishop in India, and he was voyaging to Ceylon when he died on the 3rd of May 1814 . Coke had always been a missionary enthusiast, and was the pioneer of such enterprise in his connexion . He was an ardent opponent of slavery, and endeavoured also to heal the breach between the Methodist and Anglican communions . He published a History of the West Indies (3 vols., 18o8-1811), several volumes of sermons, and, with Henry Moore, a Life of Wesley (1792) .