Early Life
Hawker was born in Exeter in 1753 to John Hawker, a surgeon and Mayor of Exeter. He was an unlikely candidate for the ministry. A fun loving teenager he lacked a serious outlook on life - he once threw a squib into a somewhat staid congregation and ran off hooting merrily. He married aged nineteen to Anna Reins, who was only eighteen herself. They had eight children altogether.
Hawker went in for medicine and studied in Plymouth under Samuel White of Bretonside (a stone's throw from Charles Church). Finding this not his vocation he joined the Marines as assistant surgeon. However the savage discipline and brutalities of war led him out of the service and to fulfil a long time ambition to enter the ministry. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford in 1778.
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