Author: Cockburn, William
Biography:
COCKBURN, William (1773-1858: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 2 June 1773 and baptised on 30 June at St. Anne, Soho, Westminster, the third son of Sir James Cockburn (1729-1804) and his second wife, Augusta Anne Ayscough (1750-1837), who had married in 1769. He was educated at Charterhouse and St. John’s College, Cambridge (Pensioner 1791, Matric. 1794, BA 1795, MA 1798, Fellow 1796-1806, DD 1823). He won the Seatonian prize twice (1802-3) with the works listed here. He was ordained deacon (1800) and priest (1801). He was minister of St. Andrew’s, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London (1808) and perpetual curate at Fazeley, Staffordshire (1812-18). He was also rector of Thelbridge, Devon (1821-9), vicar of Ellerburn, Yorks (1829-30), dean of York (1822-58), rector of Kelston, Somerset (1832-58) and vicar of Thornton, Yorkshire (1831-6). He married Elizabeth Peel, daughter of Sir Robert Peel, MP for Tamworth, on 16 Dec. 1805 at St. Peter’s, Drayton Bassett, Staffordshire. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), later prime minister, was her younger brother. She died in 1828. They had three sons. He then married Margaret Emma Pearse, the daughter of Lt.-Col. Pearse, 14 Sept 1830, at St Mary’s, Bryanston Square, London, with no further issue. He succeeded his brother, Sir George, as 9th Bart. in 1853. He wrote an array of pamphlets. His Dissertation on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire of India (1805) is representative of a strain in evangelical culture that believed the Church of England should play a major role in establishing laws and civic responsibilities in India. He also wrote on English religious education: Strictures on Clerical Education in the University of Cambridge (1809). Later pamphlets criticised Methodists, Catholics, and secular education; his work on geology, largely rendered obsolete by Charles Lyell (1797-1875), includes The Creation of the World (1840), The Bible Defended (1845), and A New System of Geology (1849). He died on 30 Apr. 1858, aged 84, and was buried at St. Nicholas’s, Kelston, Somerset, where there is still a monumental tomb. He left an estate of around £20,000 with his widow, Emma, as executrix. She remarried and died in 1876. He is sometimes confused with Lt.-Col. Sir William Cockburn (1769-1835). (ancestry.co.uk 15 Oct. 2023; OJ 28 Dec. 1805; Stamford Mercury 20 June 1828; York Herald 18 Sept. 1830; Atlas 8 May 1858; ILN 2 Sept. 1876) AA