Author: Collier, William
Biography:
COLLIER, William (1742-1803: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 18 Jan. 1742 and baptised on 22 Jan. at St. Martin Orgar and St. Clement, Eastcheap, the son of Edmund Collier of Charterhouse School, and his wife Mary Spateman, who had married at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1739. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College Cambridge (matric. 1758, Scholar 1759, BA 1762, MA 1765, BD 1789, Fellow 1763). He was Regius Professor of Hebrew (1771-90). He was also admitted to Lincoln’s Inn (1761) but never pursued law. He entered the church and was ordained deacon (1769). He was Vicar of Shudy Camps, Cambs. (1790-2) and Rector of Orwell, Cambs. (1791-1803). He died on 7 Aug. 1803 at Newington, South London. Henry Gunning, a Cambridge ceremonial officer (“Esquire Bedell”), recalled that he “was an admirable classic, and particularly well versed in modern languages (at that time a very rare accomplishment in the University). Collier led a most dissolute life; he was also a notorious gourmand . . . . His appearance was precisely that of a friar (as caricatured on the English stage).” Poems on Various Occasions had more than five hundred subscribers and consisted of his own poems, with more than forty sonnets, various odes, and occasional pieces, together with a reprinting of his short poem Verses Addressed to a Lady on her coming to reside in the University (1781), and his translations from Greek and Latin, together with a varied selection of Italian sonnets and a few translations of Rousseau. (ancestry.co.uk 3 Aug. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 3 Aug. 2022; CCEd 3 Aug. 2022; OJ 13 Aug. 1803; GM Aug. 1803, 794; Henry Gunning, Reminiscences of . . . Cambridge [1854], 2: 112-3) AA
Other Names:
- the Rev. W. Collier