Manx clergyman, Vicar-General and translator associated with the eighteenth-century Manx Bible project.

Wilks served as Rector of Ballaugh and held the offices of Vicar-General and Episcopal Registrar. A later account records his appointment as Vicar-General and Registrar on 16 September 1771.

He took part in the translation and revision of the Scriptures into Manx during Bishop Mark Hildesley’s episcopate. Matthias Curghey revised the Pentateuch with Philip Moore and Wilks, while the Gospels and Acts were worked on in association with Wilks. Contemporary and later church records repeatedly place the three men together in the translation project.

Wilks also participated directly in the political aftermath of Revestment. In April 1766 George Moore and Thomas Moore travelled to London on behalf of the Keys, accompanied by Wilks, who was tasked with documentary research. The surviving account states that he obtained a copy of a charter of James I confirming Manx rights and privileges, described there as having been “until then forgot and unknown”.

He remained active in ecclesiastical government. Records of Bishop Hildesley’s period show Wilks among the Vicars-General subscribing Manx laws up to 1765.

Wilks died in 1777. Feltham’s later tour records his burial on 1 June, aged fifty-eight, in the churchyard of the parish where he had served as rector.