Author: Wooll, John
Biography:
WOOLL, John (1767-1833: ODNB)
He was baptised on 18 May 1767 at St. Thomas’s, Winchester, the eldest child and only son of John Wooll (1737-86) and his wife Elizabeth Hayes (1736-95), who had married at Martyr Worthy, Hampshire, in 1766. He was educated at Winchester College under Joseph Warton (q.v.) and Balliol College, Oxford (matric. 1785) but migrated to New College (Scholar 1786, BA 1790, MA 1794, BD and DD 1807) where he was a Fellow (1788-99). He was ordained deacon (1790) and priest (1791). He married Mary Shorland on 8 Dec. 1798 at Martyr Worthy, Hampshire, and was obliged to relinquish his fellowship. They do not appear to have had any children. He was given the living of Blackford Chapel, near Bath, Somerset, by Lord Stowell in 1796, but was better known as a schoolmaster. He was Master of the Free Grammar School at Midhurst, Sussex (1799-1806), where he introduced the Winchester tuition system. He was then Master at Rugby (1807-28) where his former pupils erected a monument by the sculptor Richard Westmacott to him in the chapel after his death. He retired to Worthing, Sussex, where he died on 23 Nov. 1833. Mary Wooll died in 1865. His poem, listed here, has never attracted much interest, but his Biographical Memoirs of the Late Revd. Joseph Warton (1806), his former schoolmaster, remains an important source on the poet, critic, and scholar. (ODNB 12 Feb. 2023; CCEd 12 Feb. 2023; GM Feb. 1834, 227; OUCH 30 Nov. 1833; Morning Post 21 Apr. 1865) AA