Isaac Gilling

From Silverton he was called to the charge of the presbyterian congregation at Newton Abbot, Devonshire, in succession to William Yeo, an ejected minister who died in 1699.

Gilling, who was a scholarly and genial divine, kept a flourishing boarding-school at Newton Abbot, and got into trouble during the reign of Anne for doing so without the bishop's license.

In ecclesiastical politics he was for a consolidation of the dissenting interest, and was an active member of the Exeter assembly, formed in 1691 as a union of presbyterians and independents on the London model.

Gilling published: A Sermon Preach'd At Lyme Regis in the County of Dorset At A Quarterly Lecture Appointed For The Promoting the Reformation of manners.

While practising at Exeter, Gilling was the intimate friend of antiquary William Musgrave, of that city, to whom he rendered important assistance in the preparation of his great work, the Antiquitates Britanno-Belgicræ.