Henry Walter (antiquary)

Henry Walter (1785–1859) was an English cleric and antiquary.

Early life

Born at Louth, Lincolnshire on 28 January 1785, he was the eldest son of James Walter, master of Louth grammar school and later rector of Market Rasen.[1] The Walter family was connected to the Austens: James Walter's father William-Hampson Walter was step-brother to George Austen, father of Jane Austen.[2]

Henry Walter was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge, on 1 March 1802,[3] and graduated B.A. in 1806, classed as second wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos, behind Frederick Pollock.[4] He was also junior Smith's prizeman. He was elected fellow and tutor of his college, retaining his fellowship until his marriage in 1824; commenced M. A. in 1809; and proceeded to the degree of B.D. in 1816.[1]

In 1810 Walter visited Hawkstone Park, and much later (1852) published an account of the celebrated "hermit of Hawkstone". This revealed that a paid poor man, who acted the part, had at some point been replaced by a stuffed dummy.[5]

At the East India College

Walter was appointed professor of natural philosophy at the East India Company College in 1816.[6] He travelled in 1817 with Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland, who had been one of his pupils at Cambridge.[1][7] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 11 November 1819.

On 7 May 1821 Walter was instituted as rector of Hazelbury Bryan in Dorset, on the presentation of the Duke of Northumberland.[1] He held his two positions together until 1830. Michael Pakenham Edgeworth, a pupil at the College right at the end of Walter's time there, reported home in letters that Walter had the nickname "Bobby". He also found him anti-Catholic, as were colleagues including Joseph Batten and Charles Webb Le Bas.[8]

Parish priest

Hazelbury Bryan in the first half of the 19th century still had much in the way of unenclosed common lands. Walter acted to create an ad hoc system of allotments there in the 1820s, renting at £2 per acre some 13 acres of his own land, for which the market rent might be as much as four times more.[9] In 1823 he took legal action to prevent what he saw as abuse of the parochial relief system in his parish; he objected to the system under which the poor rate subsidised labourers who were sent from farmer to farmer (the "roundsmen").[10][11] In his later writing he described the riot that broke out in the Vale of Blackmoor on 26 November 1830.[9]

David Parry Okeden of More Crichel published his Letter to the Members in Parliament for Dorset (1830), advocating poor law reform.[12][13] Okeden, a Radical Whig, chose six places to illustrate his views on the "good" and "bad" management of poor relief. Walter he considered exemplary of "good" management: the involvement of a parish priest concerned directly with the material welfare of the poor. The "bad" management was precisely when magistrates became involved.[14] Walter then contributed further in the discussion of social conditions in Dorset, and the debate on the Speenhamland system, with his Letter to the Rev. H. F. Yeatman (1833), to Harry Farr Yeatman.[12][13] He armed himself with a quantitative analysis of the meaning for labouring families of the 13s. 4d. subsistence sum mentioned in the system, at the same type pointing to the issue of low wages.[15]

At the end of decade Walter was drawn into controversy with George Loveless, who addressed his pamphlet The Church Shown Up: In a Letter (1838) to him.[16]

Walter gave tuition to private pupils, who included John Clavell Mansel-Pleydell.[17] He contributed to the Record, controlled by Alexander Haldane; and wrote in the Christian Guardian to criticise a move in 1850 by Oxford followers of Edward Pusey.[18][19] He died at Hazelbury Bryan on 25 January 1859, and was buried in the churchyard of the parish. In 1824 he had married Emily Anne, daughter of William Baker of Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire.[1][20]

Works

In 1800 Walter was a prizewinner, with Thomas Love Peacock and Leigh Hunt, in an essay competition in the Juvenile Library.[21]

For the Parker Society Walter edited three volumes of William Tyndale's writings:[1]

Walter also brought out an edition of The Primer ... set forth by the order of King Edward VI, London, 1825. His own writings included:[1]

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Walter, Henry". Dictionary of National Biography 59. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. Jane Austen (20 October 2011). Jane Austen's Letters. Oxford University Press. pp. 582–. ISBN 978-0-19-957607-4. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  3. "Walter, Henry (WLTR802H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  4. Polden, Patrick. "Pollock, Frederick". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22479. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. Gordon Campbell (28 March 2013). The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome. Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-19-969699-4. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
  6. William Wilson Hunter (1 December 1996). Life of Brian Houghton Hodgson: British Resident at the Court of Nepal. Asian Educational Services. p. 15. ISBN 978-81-206-0566-4. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  7. A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family: 1700–2000. Cambridge University Press. 23 February 2006. p. 551. ISBN 978-0-521-81064-7. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  8. Patricia James (1979). Population Malthus, his life and times. Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 421–2. ISBN 0 7100 0266 1.
  9. 1 2 Kerr, p. 107
  10. Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter Webb, English Local Government, from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act vol. 7 (1906) p. 194 note 1; archive.org.
  11. Report from His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws. 1834. p. 35. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  12. 1 2 Dorset, 1820–1832.
  13. 1 2 Norman Longmate (29 May 2003). The Workhouse. Random House UK. p. 298. ISBN 978-0-7126-0637-0. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  14. Political Economists and the English Poor Laws: A historical study. Ohio University Press. 1977. p. 226. ISBN 0821402331.
  15. Kerr, pp. 98 note and 99.
  16. Joyce Marlow (1974). The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Panther. p. 222. ISBN 0 586 03832 9.
  17. Hebditch, Kate. "Pleydell, John Clavell Mansel-". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34860. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  18. Peter Toon (1979). Evangelical Theology 1833–1856. Marshall, Morgan & Scott. p. 7 and p. 91. ISBN 0-551-05582-0.; Chapter Three Further Controversies 1845–1856 online.
  19. The Christian guardian (and Church of England magazine). s.n. 1851. pp. 23–7. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  20. The Christian Observer. 1859. p. 209. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  21. Alan Rauch (26 June 2001). Useful Knowledge: The Victorians, Morality, and the March of Intellect. Duke University Press. pp. 54–5. ISBN 978-0-8223-8315-4. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  22. William David James Cargill Thompson (1980). C. W. Dugmore, ed. Studies in the Reformation. Athlone Press. pp. 83, 87, 93. ISBN 048511187X.
  23. Edwin Cone Bissell, The historic origin of the Bible. A handbook of principal facts from the best recent authorities, German and English (1873), p. 348; archive.org.
  24. The Christian remembrancer; or, The Churchman's Biblical, ecclesiastical & literary miscellany. 1845. p. 237. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Walter, Henry". Dictionary of National Biography 59. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

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