Henry Walter (1785–1859) was an English cleric and antiquary.
Early life
Born at
Louth, Lincolnshire
Louth () is a market town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.OS Explorer map 283:Louth and Mablethorpe: (1:25 000):
Louth serves as an important town for a large rural area of eastern Lincolnshire. Visitor a ...
on 28 January 1785, he was the eldest son of James Walter, master of
Louth grammar school and later rector of
Market Rasen
Market Rasen ( ) is a town and civil parish within the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The River Rase runs through it east to west, approximately north-east from Lincoln, east from Gainsborough, 14 miles (23 km) west of Lo ...
.
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.
Henry Walter was admitted to
St John's College, Cambridge, on 1 March 1802, and graduated B.A. in 1806, classed as second wrangler in the
Mathematical Tripos
The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University.
Origin
In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was ...
, behind
Frederick Pollock. 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.
In 1810 Walter visited
Hawkstone Park
Hawkstone Park is was a destination on the English Grand Tour and is a historic landscape park with pleasure grounds and gardens historically associated with Soulton Hall and Hawkstone Hall.
It is located north east of the small village o ...
, 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 This revealed that a paid poor man, who acted the part, had at some point been replaced by a stuffed dummy.
At the East India College
Walter was appointed professor of natural philosophy at the
East India Company College
The East India Company College, or East India College, was an educational establishment situated at Hailey, Hertfordshire, nineteen miles north of London, founded in 1806 to train "writers" (administrators) for the Honourable East India Company ( ...
in 1816. He travelled in 1817 with
Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland
Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland (20 April 178511 February 1847), styled Earl Percy until 1817, was a British aristocrat and Tory politician who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland under the Duke of Wellington from 1829 to 1830.
Backgro ...
, who had been one of his pupils at Cambridge.
He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...
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.
He held his two positions together until 1830.
Michael Pakenham Edgeworth
Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (24 May 1812 – 30 July 1881) was an Irish botanist who specialized in seed plants and ferns, and spent most of his life working in India. He was also a pioneer of photography.
Early life and family relations
Edge ...
, 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.
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.
[Kerr, p. 107] 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"). In his later writing he described the riot that broke out in the
Vale of Blackmoor on 26 November 1830.
David Parry Okeden of
More Crichel
Moor Crichel () is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Crichel, in East Dorset, England situated on Cranborne Chase five miles east of Blandford Forum. The civil parish includes the hamlet of Manswood notable for a terrace ...
published his ''Letter to the Members in Parliament for Dorset'' (1830), advocating
poor law reform.
[''Dorset, 1820–1832''.](_blank)
/ref> 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 magistrate
The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judic ...
s became involved. Walter then contributed further in the discussion of social conditions in Dorset, and the debate on the Speenhamland system
The Speenhamland system was a form of outdoor relief intended to mitigate rural poverty in England and Wales at the end of the 18th century and during the early 19th century. The law was an amendment to the Elizabethan Poor Law. It was created as ...
, with his ''Letter to the Rev. H. F. Yeatman'' (1833), to Harry Farr Yeatman. He armed himself with a quantitative analysis of the meaning for labouring families of the 13''s''. 4''d''. subsistence sum mentioned in the system, at the same type pointing to the issue of low wages.
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.
Walter gave tuition to private pupils, who included John Clavell Mansel-Pleydell. 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
Edward Bouverie Pusey (; 22 August 180016 September 1882) was an English Anglican cleric, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement.
Early years
...
. 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
Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, is a large Grade II* listed country house with surrounding parkland, and the location of a University of Hertfordshire campus, housing its biology/geography field station and observatory.
History of Bayfordbury
Bayford ...
, Hertfordshire.
Works
In 1800 Walter was a prizewinner, with Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 – 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, ...
and Leigh Hunt
James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 178428 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet.
Hunt co-founded '' The Examiner'', a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre ...
, in an essay competition in the ''Juvenile Library''.
For the Parker Society The Parker Society was a text publication society set up in 1841 to produce editions of the works of the early Protestant writers of the English Reformation. It was supported by both the High Church and evangelical wings of the Church of England, an ...
Walter edited three volumes of William Tyndale
William Tyndale (; sometimes spelled ''Tynsdale'', ''Tindall'', ''Tindill'', ''Tyndall''; – ) was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execu ...
's writings:
*''Doctrinal Treatises, and Introductions to different portions of the Holy Scriptures'', 1848;
*''Expositions and Notes on sundry portions of the Holy Scriptures'', 1849; and
*''An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue'', 1850. This contained two other works, ''The Supper of the Lord, after the true meaning of John VI. and 1 Cor. XI.'', and ''Wm. Tracy's Testament expounded''. At the time of writing his introduction, Walter assumed the ''Supper of the Lord'' was by Tyndale, even though the evidence was on the face of it equivocal. While the work was in press, he changed his mind, and attributed it in ''Notes and Queries
''Notes and Queries'', also styled ''Notes & Queries'', is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to " English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism".From the inne ...
'' to George Joye
George Joye (also Joy and ) (c. 1495 – 1553) was a 16th-century Bible translator who produced the first printed translation of several books of the Old Testament into English (1530–1534), as well as the first English Primer (1529).
His life
...
, withdrawing from the position that Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
knew that Tyndale was the author. This second attribution is the one that scholars now support.
Walter also brought out an edition of ''The Primer ... set forth by the order of King Edward VI'', London, 1825. His own writings included:
*''Lectures on the Evidences in favour of Christianity and the Doctrines of the Church of England'', London, 1816.
*''A Letter to the Right Rev. Herbert Lord Bishop of Peterborough, on the Independence of the authorised Version of the Bible'', London, 1823–1828. Addressed to Herbert Marsh
Herbert Marsh (10 December 1757 – 1 May 1839) was a bishop in the Church of England.
Life
The son of Richard Marsh (1709–1779), Vicar of Faversham in Kent, Marsh was born there and educated at Faversham Grammar School, the King's School, ...
, and followed by a second ''Letter''. Walter in this ''Letter'' was cited by Edwin Cone Bissell as an authority for the knowledge of Hebrew of the translators of the King James Bible.
* ''The Connexion of Scripture History made plain for the Young by an Abridgment of it'', London, 1840.
* ''A History of England, in which it is intended to consider Man and Events on Christian Principles'', London, 1840, 7 vols.
*''First letter to the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, on that episcopal charge which the letter-writer heard from him with much sorrow in 1842'' (1845). The '' Christian Remembrancer'' was dismissive of this controversial work.
* ''On the Antagonism of various Popish Doctrines and Usages to the Honour of God and to His Holy Word'', London, 1853.
References
*
Notes
;Attribution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walter, Henry
1785 births
1859 deaths
18th-century English people
19th-century English Anglican priests
Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge
English antiquarians
Fellows of the Royal Society