Author: Ettrick, William
Biography:
ETTRICK, William (1757-1847: ancestry.co.uk)
pseudonym Ferdinando Fungus
The surname is sometimes given as Ettricke. The Blunders of Loyalty is attributed to William Ettrick on the basis of a contemporary manuscript note on the title page of the BL copy. Both it and New Facts were published by John Murray; no correspondence with Ettrick has been located in the Murray archives but that does not in itself rule out Ettrick as the author. The books are satires that spuriously claim to be based on ancient poems. New Facts…Or, the Second Part of Gabriel Outcast is a biting response to Robert Burd Gabriel’s Facts Relating to the Rev. Dr. White’s Bampton Lectures (1789). William Ettrick was the eldest son of William Ettrick (1726-1808) and his wife Catherine Wharton (1726-94) who had married in St. Nicholas, Durham, on 27 Jan. 1752. William was baptised in St. Nicholas on 18 May 1757. He matriculated at Lincoln College, Oxford, on 1 July 1778 (BA and MA 1786) and was a fellow of University College—a position he held in 1790 when the books by “Ferdinando Fungus” were issued. He was ordained deacon in 1780 and priest in 1781 when he took up a curacy at Kirkby in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. He became the rector at Turnerspuddle, Dorset, in 1787 and vicar at Affpuddle in 1809. Ettrick married Elizabeth Bishop of Turnerspuddle on 15 Apr. 1800; they had ten children. He is sometimes referred to as being of High Barnes, Bishopwearmouth, Durham, where he had inherited property after the death of his father. His will identifies him as owning another property, South Hill house near Bath. He died at Bishopwearmouth on 18 Jan. 1847, aged ninety, and was buried on 28 Jan. in the cemetery. His other works are mainly religious or philosophical but he also published A Fragment of the History of John Bull (1820). He left a journal from which his account of witchcraft at Turnerspuddle was published by the Dorset Record Society in 1964. (ancestry.co.uk 29 May 2024; CCEd 29 May 2024; Alumni Oxonienses; Brighton Gazette 28 Jan. 1847) SR