Author: Atkinson, William
Biography:
ATKINSON, William (1758-1846: ODNB)
Born on 14 Apr. 1758 and baptised on 19 May at Thorp Arch, Yorkshire, he was the son of the Rev. Christopher Atkinson and his wife Jane Johnson. He matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge, on 29 Dec. 1775 (BA 1780, fellow 1782, MA 1783). He was ordained priest in 1782 and in 1784 he was appointed to the position of afternoon lecturer at Bradford parish church where John Crosse was the vicar. In accepting the appointment he unwittingly stepped into the middle of a quarrel between Crosse and Edward Baldwyn, master of the Bradford grammar school. Baldwyn had assumed the afternoon lectureship would be his but he and Crosse had theological differences and Atkinson, an outsider, was appointed instead. Baldwyn issued two pamphlets as by “Trim” criticising Atkinson’s poems. A third pamphlet attacked both Atkinson and Crosse as “singular characters of the age.” Atkinson, who kept a printing press in his home, also wrote pamphlets on a variety of topics; he was increasingly opposed to the Dissenters and used his pamphlets to take aim against them. On 12 July 1791 (not 5 July as given in the ODNB) he married Mary Cottam (d 1830) and resigned his fellowship at Jesus College; he and Mary had three daughters and five sons. In 1792 he became rector at Warham All Saints, Norfolk. He died at the home of one of his sons in Boston, Yorkshire, on 30 Sept. 1846 and was buried in the churchyard at Thorp Arch. (ODNB 20 July 2022; ODNB for Edward Baldwyn 20 July 2022; ACAD 20 July 2022; ancestry.co.uk 20 July 2022; Yorkshire Notes and Queries [1907] 367-68) SR