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. He was more than once obliged to abscond to prevent arrest, the last occasion being in 1712, when (in a disguise) he accompanied Fox to London. 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. Of this body he was for many years the scribe; his quarto volume of manuscript minutes (to 1718) is preserved in Dr. Williams's library. In the disputes of 1719 he sided with the minority against subscription, and hence was excluded from the assembly and deserted by more than half his hearers, who formed a new congregation under Samuel Westcot. Other disappointments followed; Gilling lost heart, fell into a lingering sickness, and died on 20 or 21 August 1725. His age is not given, but the date of his ordination shows that he could not have been born later than 1662. He was buried in his meeting-house. He had wished to be interred in the church or churchyard at Newton Abbot, but the parish being a peculiar, the ordinary, Sir William Courtenay, refused to permit the interment, saying ‘they might bury him in one of the marshes.’
