Author: Scott, William
Biography:
SCOTT, William (b 1726: ancestry.com)
Although Scott was keen to display his academic and professional credentials, he may have been equally sedulous about concealing what appeared to him as failures. He was indeed as his title-pages declared once a Scholar at Eton (1739) and a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge (matric. 1743, BA 1746/7, MA 1750). He was ordained deacon in Dec. 1747 and priest in Sept. 1750. He was for some years Assistant Morning Preacher and then Morning Preacher at St. Sepulchre’s, Snowhill, London. He is probably the William Scott who married Mary Bird in Suffolk on 11 Oct. 1750, immediately after his ordination. If there were children, they were not baptised at St. Sepulchre’s. From 1765 onwards he brought out a steady succession of literary works, scholarly translations and editions, and (especially) sermons. He must have accepted commissions from the publishers around St. Paul’s. His major work was an illustrated New Testament published in weekly parts in 1775 with his own “corrected” translations from the original Greek text and variorum notes culled from earlier commentators. In the preface he explained that he had begun the project as an undergraduate and continued it for his own satisfaction during many years when “engaged in Country Curacies.” Although his university record indicates a birthdate about 1724, he was the son of John Scott baptised at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, on 18 Sept. 1726, and CCEd gives that birth year. His mother’s name is not known. The last sermon published under his name “at the general request of those who heard it,” was on the subject of bankruptcy, recycled from one on the same subject in 1773; it appeared in 1799 when he was no longer at St. Sepulchre’s but was preaching at two different City churches, St. Michael’s, Wood St., and St. Catherine’s, near the Tower. He would by then have been in his mid-seventies. No certain record of his death has been found, and with such a common name it is possible that the “country curacies” and not the London publishing work hold the clue to his life story. (ancestry.com 4 Oct. 2024; findmypast.com 4 Oct. 2024; ACAD; CCEd 4 Oct. 2024; Allibone 2: 1979; Kentish Gazette 13 Sept. 1775; William Scott, “Preface,” The New Testament Illustrated [1775]) HJ
Other Names:
- the Rev. Mr. Scott