Author: Butler, Weeden
Biography:
BUTLER, Weeden (1772-1831: ODNB)
His parents, the Rev. Weeden Butler (1742-1823) and Ann Giberne (1738-1803) were married in St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, on 16 Dec. 1771. Their eldest child, Weeden, was born on 13 Sept. 1772 in Pimlico. He was educated by his father who was master of Cheyne Walk school in Chelsea, and he entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, on 12 June 1790 (BA 1794, MA 1797). Butler was ordained deacon in 1796 and priest in 1797; he was appointed curate at St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, London, in 1796. On 26 Aug. 1805 in Chislehurst, Kent, he married Annabella Dundas Oswald of Little Ryder Street, St. James’s, London. A son, Weeden Butler, was born in 1806; their other surviving children included another son and three daughters. Butler was appointed evening lecturer at Brompton in 1811; he succeeded his father at the Charlotte Street chapel in Pimlico in 1814, and in 1816 he was made rector at Great Woolstone, Buckinghamshire. He was classical master at the Cheyne Walk school and became master there in 1814. (His younger brother George was master of Harrow school.) It is likely that he, rather than his father, was the Rev. Weeden Butler who in 1818 had an altercation with a post office manager, William Paul Rogers, in Chelsea. The incident was widely reported and, in particular, was taken up by The Examiner. Butler had been incensed by Rogers’s display of petitions for political reform in the window of his shop and, when his actions led to Rogers being removed from his position, the family fell into destitution. Butler’s wife died on 14 Feb. 1822 and was buried in the King’s Road burial ground, Chelsea. He died on 28 June 1831, one year after the death of his son George; his will, proved on 8 July 1831, shared his estate equally among his children. His other publications include sermons and some translations: A Prospect of the Political Relations…Between the French Republic and the Helvetick Body (1794), an English metrical version of T. J. Du Wicquet’s (q.v.) Épitre à Mon Père (1797; 5 pages), Zimad the African (1800), and The Wrongs of Unterwalden (1799). His son Weeden became a clergyman and was vicar at Wickham Market, Suffolk. (ODNB 31 July 2023; ACAD; CCEd 31 July 2023; Sun 19 Mar. 1803; Oracle 28 Aug. 1805; Examiner 15 Mar. 1818; New Times 18 Mar. 1830; PROB 11/1787/186; ancestry.co.uk 31 July 2023) SR