William Beveridge (bishop)

William Beveridge
William Beveridge
Born	1637 Barrow
Died	March 5, 1708 London

William Beveridge (1637–1708) was an English Bishop of St Asaph.

Life

Son of the Rev. William Beveridge, B.D., he was born at Barrow, near Leicester, and baptised on February 21, 1637, at Barrow, Leicestershire, of which his grandfather, father, and elder brother John were successively vicars.^[1] He was first taught by his learned father and for two years was sent to the New Free School at Oakham, Rutland, where William Cave was his school fellow.

On May 24, 1653, he was admitted a sizar in St John's College, Cambridge,^[2] with Bullingham as his tutor. Dr. Anthony Tuckney was then head of the college, and took a special interest in young Beveridge. Beveridge specially devoted himself to the learned languages, including the oriental. In his twenty-first year he published a Latin treatise on the Excellency and Use of the Oriental Tongues, especially Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan, together with a Grammar of the Syriac Language, (1658; 2nd ed. 1664). In 1656, he proceeded H.A., and in 1660 M.A. On January 3, 1660-1 he was ordained deacon by Dr. Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln.

He was rector of Ealing, 1661–72, and of St. Peter's, Cornhill, London, 1672–1704, when he became bishop. On December 22, 1674, he was collated to the prebend of Chiswick in St. Paul's, London. In 1679 he proceeded D.D. On November 3, 1681, he was appointed Archdeacon of Colchester.^[3] On November 27, 1681 he preached a sermon on the Excellency and Usefulness of the Common Prayer. It rapidly went through four editions. In 1683 he preached another popular sermon on the anniversary of the Great Fire of London in 1666. On November 5, 1684 he was made prebendary of Canterbury in succession to Peter du Moulin. In 1687-8 he joined with Dr. Horneck and others in forming religious societies for 'reformation of manners.'^[4] In 1689 he became president of Sion College. He was installed bishop of St. Asaph on July 16, 1704.^[5]

He died in apartments in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in London on March 5, 1708.

During his lifetime Beveridge refused to sit for his portrait,^[6] but following his death Benjamin Ferrers, a relative, painted one, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, from his corpse.^[7]

Works

In his day he was styled "the great reviver and restorer of primitive piety" because in his sermons and other writings he dwelt on the Church of the early centuries. His collected works (incomplete) are in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology in 12 volumes (Oxford, 1842–48). They contain six volumes of sermons, and in addition:

• The Doctrine of the Church of England Consonant to Scripture, Reason, and the Fathers: A Complete System of Divinity (2 vols.);
• Codex canonum ecclesiæ primitivæ vindicatus ac illustratus, with the appendices, I. Prolegomena in Συνοδικὸν, sive pandectas canonum; and II. Præfatio ad annotationes in canones apostolicos (2 vols.);
• Private Thoughts on Religion, and Church Catechism Explained.

His Institutionum chronotogicarum libri duo, una cum totidem arithmetices chronologicæ libellis (London, 1669) was once an admired treatise on chronology. In it he also includes a full explanation of the Chinese remainder theorem for the case in which the moduli are relatively prime. This was the first general proof of the ta-yen rule.^[8] It is also said by Francis Fauvel Gouraud that a discussion on Hebrew linguistics inspired Richard Grey (priest) to create his system of mnemotechniques which later evolved in to the Mnemonic major system.^[9]

References

1. Nichols. History of Leicestershire. pp. iii. part i 77–78.
2. "Beveridge, William (BVRG653W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. Kennett, Biog. Coll. liii. 292
4. Woodward, Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies
5. Grosart, Rev. A. B. (1885). Dictionary of National Biography. pp. 447–448.
6. Norris, John. A Catalogue of the Pictures, Models, Busts, &c. in the Bodleian gallery, Oxford. pp. 8–12.
7.  "Ferrers, Benjamin". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
8. Libbrecht, Ulrich. Chinese Mathematics in the Thirteenth Century. pp. 263–265.
9. Fauvel-Gouraud, Francis. Phreno-mnemotechny: Or, The Art of Memory. pp. 61–62.

External links

• Works by William Beveridge at Post-Reformation Digital Library

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. (1914). "^{article name needed}". New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls.