Author: Smyth, William
Biography:
SMYTH, William (1765-1849: ODNB)
His father was Thomas Smyth, an Irish banker who was mayor of Liverpool (1789-90) and a partner in Charles Roe’s copper business in Macclesfield. His mother, Elizabeth Blagge Smyth, inherited Fence House in Macclesfield on the deaths of her parents. William, the eldest son, studied at Eton and with a private tutor before matriculating at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1783; he graduated BA in mathematics as the eighth wrangler in 1787 and MA in 1790. He became a Fellow of Peterhouse in 1788. His father had destined him for a law career but, although Smyth was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1783, he seems not to have been called to the bar. In 1793 (some accounts say 1791) his father’s banking business collapsed, the family lost its wealth, and Smyth took up a position tutoring the son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (q.v.). This proved an unfortunate experience not least because his wages were often in arrears. However, Sheridan’s connections to the influential Holland House Whigs led to Smyth’s 1807 appointment as regius chair of modern history at Cambridge. Although he was caricatured by James Gillray as a “petty-professor,” he was a staunch believer in the social value of studying history and the first English historian to treat seriously the French Revolution—an event which decisively shaped his views on British liberty and the merits of reform over revolution. He resigned his Peterhouse fellowship in 1825 on inheriting the family estate after his father’s 1824 death (fellows were not allowed to own real estate). He eventually retired to Norwich where he died unmarried on 24 June 1849. He was buried in the cathedral. His other publications are works of history, including Lectures on English History (1840). His library was added to the nucleus that eventually became the Seeley Library at Cambridge. (ODNB 19 Nov. 2021; H. Vaughan, “William Smyth: The Sweet Lyrist of Peterhouse,” GM 300 [1906] 56-69; ancestry.co.uk 19 Nov. 2021)