In Coates’ History of Reading, p. 318, there is this extract from the registers of St John’s College, Oxford:
“1688. John Merrick, B.A. 1692, M. A. and Bachelor of Physick in 1696.  He took his doctor’s degree in 1708, and practiced at Reading near forty years, with much reputation, and with the character of an excellent classical scholar; as well as that of an amiable and good man; he was constnat in his daily attendance on the service of the church; and, in his last illness, devout in his preparation for eternity, and earnestly desirous of his dissolution, which took place on April 5, 1757.  He had resigned his gown, when father of the corporation, on Jan 26, 1756.  His ready wit never forsook him; he said so his brother physicians, on their visiting him in his last sickneww,
  “Non habui sebrem, Symmache; nunc habeo”  Martial, Ep. v. ix.”
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His memorial in Caversham church was erected to the design of his son James and reads:
“In Memoriam
Joannis Merrick, M. D.
de Reading;
Cujus eximias ingenii dotes
Multa industria, multaque eruditione excultas,
Commendavit humanitas singularis
Et amabilis quaedam morum simplicitas,
Vita laboriosissima et utilissima,
Pie et placide defunctus est,
Die 5 Aprilis, 1757, Aet 87.”
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