HOPKINS, WILLIAM (1706 - 1786) cleric and author

Born in 1706 at Monmouth. He was educated at Monmouth grammar school and All Souls College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1728. After serving several curacies in Sussex, he was appointed assistant master of Cuckfield grammar school in 1731, vicar of the neighbouring village of Bolney soon afterwards, master of Cuckfield school in 1756, and, in 1766, curate of Slaugham, all in the same county. He published several anonymous works, written in English, in which he attacked the liturgy and propounded Arian arguments. He supported the petition to Parliament against compulsory subscription to the Thirty-nine articles, and in 1772 published anonymously two pamphlets on the subject. Both as vicar of Bolney and curate of Slaugham he made what alterations he pleased in the service, with the connivance of the churchwardens. He died in 1786 at the age of eighty.

Author

• Nansi Ceridwen Jones

Sources

• H. Blackwell, NLW MSS 9260A: A Dictionary of Welsh Biography
• Robert Williams, Enwogion Cymru. A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen (1852)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford
• J. F. Waller, The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography a series of original Memoirs of distinguished Men of all ages and all nations (Edinburgh 1857-63), ii, 939
• Allibone, A critical dictionary of English literature. and British and American authors, living and deceased. from the earliest accounts to the middle of the nineteenth century (Philadelphia 1859-71), i, 886
• E. G. Salisbury, Border Counties' Worthies (1878-80)
• T. R. Roberts, Eminent Welshmen: a short biographical dictionary of Welshmen... from the earliest times to the present (1908)

Additional Links

• VIAF: 75273543
• Wikidata: Q18672832

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/