Author: LAURENCE, Richard
Biography:
LAURENCE, Richard (1760-1838: ODNB)
Laurence was born in Bath, Somerset, to Richard Laurence, a watchmaker, and his wife Elizabeth French, and was baptised at Bath Abbey on 13 May 1760. French Laurence (q.v.) was his elder brother. He was educated at Bath grammar school and matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 14 July 1778 (exhibitioner 1778, BA 1782, MA 1785). He was ordained a deacon in 1782 and priest in 1784 and began his ecclesiastical career as curate and then as vicar at Coleshill, Berkshire. He married Mary Prince on 30 Aug. 1783 at Coleshill. They had one child, Mary Vaughan Laurence (1784-1866) who in 1818 married the Rev. Henry Cotton, later Archdeacon of Cashel. Laurence served as rector in Wiltshire at Cheverell Magna and at Rollestone before moving to Mersham, Kent. He was rector at Stone, Kent, from 1811 to 1822. A distinguished academic career at Oxford paralleled his church appointments. In 1794 he earned a DCL from University College and was appointed deputy professor of civil law in 1796. He delivered the Bampton lectures in 1804 (first published in 1805 as An Attempt to Illustrate those Articles of the Church of England which the Calvinists improperly consider as Calvinistical). He was regius professor of Hebrew (1814-22) and a canon of Christ Church. In Oct. 1822 Mary died and Laurence reluctantly moved to Ireland to take up the archbishopric of Cashel. He died in Merrion Square, Dublin, on 28 Dec. 1838 and was buried in Christ Church cathedral where there is a tablet to his memory; there is also a memorial in Cashel where he served as the last archbishop before the diocese was incorporated with Dublin. Laurence’s publications include sermons and scholarly works of biblical translation and exegesis. Six of the seven titles listed in this bibliography and published anonymously in the 1790s are listed by Cotton in Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae. These satires, which reveal a witty and playful side to the conservative churchman, are not recorded in the ODNB and are catalogued without an author attribution in libraries. They are also not included in the collection of poetry by Richard and French Laurence that Cotton edited and published in 1872. (ODNB 7 May 2025; ancestry.co.uk 7 May 2025; CCEd 7 May 2025; Alumni Oxonienses, H. Cotton, Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae, 2nd edn [1851]; H. Cotton, Poetical Remains of French Laurence…and Richard Laurence [1872]) SR