Rev. William Green

1715, 29 Apr	Newark-upon-Trent	baptized
1734, 16 Mar	Clare Hall, Cambridge	admitted as a sizar
1735, 20 Jan		admitted as a scholar
1736		obtained his BA
1738, 24 Sep	Lincoln	ordained as a deacon
1738, 11 Dec	Clare Hall	elected a fellow
1740	Norwich	ordained as a priest
1741	Clare Hall	obtained his MA
1753		published first translation of Hebrew poetry
1759, 7 May	Newark	married Mary Waldegrave of Louth
1759, May	Hardingham, Norfolk	appointed rector
1794, 7 Nov		died, aged 80
1795, 21 Jan		wife Mary died, aged 75

The Life of William Green

His Early Life

William Green was born in Newark-upon-Trent, Nottinghamshire, in 1715 and baptized on 29 April at the parish church of St Mary Magdalene.

His father, also William Green, was a mercer in Newark, who had married his mother, Anne Swift, by license, on 20 Feb 1701 at North Muskham, a parish just across the river Trent from Newark.  Anne was the daughter of John Swift, a tanner of Newark.  The couple had ten children, of which five girls and one boy survived: Elizabeth (1702), Anne (1704), Mary (1705), Sarah (1712), Catherine (1713), and William in 1715.

William Green senior had clearly prospered as a merchant.  Not only was he able to send his son to study at Cambridge University, but he possessed property in Newark and land in Nottinghamshire.  When he died, suddenly and painlessly, in March 1733, his estate included two houses in Newark worth £315, household, shop and warehouse goods worth £325, and a farm at Sutton-in-Granby and land at Car Colston in the Vale of Bevoir. The houses in Newark were located "on the bridge adjacent to the Market Place".  One of them was the Green family home and the other was occupied by a tenant, William Baggaley.  Green had purchased them in 1711 from Elizabeth Warburton, widow and mother of the renowned cleric Dr William Warburton who later advised young William Green on his studies.  Green's Will stipulated that the houses were to be sold to provide legacies for his youngest daughters, Sarah and Catherine, when they reached the age of twenty-seven.  When that time came, in 1740, Green's widow, Anne, sold the houses to Dr Bernard Wilson, the influential and controversial vicar of Newark.
The farm at Sutton, Green left to his widow Anne during her natural life and, after her death, to his son William.  The land-holding at Car Colston, which Green had bought from William Broadhurst of Newark, went to his daughter Mary for the duration of her life, and thereafter to his son William, provided he had taken care of his sister.  Green left all his other possessions to his widow.  They were inventoried as follows:		Purse and Apparall The Shop Goods Warehouse Goods The Best Chamber Goods The Next Chamber Goods House and Kitchen The Collar Uniform and __	£-s-d 50-0-0 162-0-0 84-0-0 10-0-0  9-0-0  6-0-0  1-0-0     3-0-0 325-0-0

The Fellow of Clare Hall

William Green was admitted sizar to Clare Hall in the Cambridge University at the age of 18, on 16 March 1734.  After Peterhouse, Clare is the oldest college in Cambridge, founded in 1326 by Elizabeth de Clare, a grand-daughter of Edward I.  A sizar was a scholarship student of limited means who was exempted from tuition and lodging fees, and received free "sizes" or meals; at one time, it had been the duty of sizars to wait on the Fellows at dinner.  After ten months as a sizar, Green was admitted as a scholar of Mr Wilson's Foundation on 20 January 1735.

Green gained his BA degree in 1736.  He was then admitted as a scholar of Mr Freeman's Foundation on 19 January 1737, and became a fellow of Lord Exeter's Foundation on 11 December 1738.  Green was elected a fellow on Mr Diggon's Foundation on 19 February 1739, and proceeded to his MA degree in 1741.  Finally, on 2 November 1743 he succeeded  to a fellowship of the Old Foundation (college books).

In the manner of academics of the time, he was ordained as a minister in the church; first as a deacon at Lincoln, on 24 September 1738 (Newark is in the diocese of Lincoln), and then as a priest at Norwich in June 1740.

It was in September 1738, just after Green had been ordained a deacon, that he wrote to Dr Warburton, seeking advice on how to pursue his studies and how to approach his first sermon (see Dr Warburton's Reading List).

Among Green's contemporaries at Clare were several men who achieved  some fame.  John Berridge, like Green, was a Fellow at Clare (from 1742-55), before leaving its cloisters to become a celebrated itinerant Non-Conformist preacher, known to John Wesley and others as the "Pedlar of the Gospel".  William Whitehead was also briefly a Fellow at Clare (1742-5), and became one of the less-celebrated Poet-Laureates, from 1757-85.  John Buxton was to be Deputy Lieutenant of Norfolk and to campaign against Sir Armine Wodehouse in the parliamentary
                                                                                                         elections of 1754 and 1768 (see The Election of 1768).

Having become a Fellow of the College, William Green appears to have continued to reside and study there for the next twenty years.  It is not clear when he started to focus his studies on the Hebrew Old Testament, but his earliest surviving correspondence with another Hebrew scholar - Dr Richard Grey - dates from 1748.  His first published translation from Hebrew Bible - the Song of Deborah - was printed at the University in 1753.

Marriage and Family 

Fellows living in Cambridge University were not permitted to marry.  So in May 1759, at the age of 44, Green gave up his Fellowship to marry Mary Waldegrave of Louth, Lincolnshire.  The ceremony took place on 7 May 1759, at the church of St Mary Magdalene in Newark, where he himself had been baptised.

When he died in 1772, Wilson left a £200 legacy to his niece "Mrs Green of Hardingham, wife of Rev. Green" for her own use, exclusive of her husband's control. So right up to his death, Wilson remained mainly concerned with the control of money; the contrast between his use of the priesthood and that of his scholarly and respected nephew, William Green, could not be starker. 

The Rector of Hardingham

In place of his Cambridge Fellowship, William Green accepted the living of Hardingham in Norfolk.  This was in the gift of the master of Clare Hall and provided a desirable income of 400 pounds per year from fifty acres of glebe land.  Hardingham's stately rectory had been vacant since the death of the last rector, Edmund Hopkinson, the previous year.

Hardingham is situated five miles west of the market town of Wymondham and twelve miles west of Norwich.  It is a scattered rural parish of some 2,500 acres of arable farmland, and about 600 people, which includes the hamlets of Flockthorpe and Low Street.  The main crops were wheat, barley, turnips, and hay.   The village's only claim to fame is being the birthplace of Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-79), founder of London's Royal Exchange.  

The parish of Hardingham is part of the Hingham deanery, the Norfolk archdeanery, and the diocese of Norwich.  The church of St George is in a "perfect English rural setting, perched on a knoll in deep rolling countryside, with only a gracious old rectory for company".  The church is in the Early English style and has a fine thirteenth century tower, containing one bell, and an ancient octagonal font.  The current large and imposing rectory was built on the site of its predecessor in 1834.

The parish registers from the period survive, and in 1761 Green records the burial at Hardingham of his own mother-in-law, Mary Waldegrave, "widow from Newark-upon-Trent, Sept 15 1761", before himself signing the register as "William Green, Rector".

Correspondents

Green corresponded with many of the leading churchmen of his day, including:

• Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury (1693-1768)
• Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol (1704-82)

He also corresponded with the country's leading Hebrew scholars, men such as:

• William Newcombe, Bishop of Waterford (1729-1800)
• Dr Richard Grey, rector of Hinton (1694-1771)
• Dr Benjamin Blayney, Canon of Christ Church (1728-1801)
• Alexander Geddes, noted Catholic theologian (1737-1802)
• Rev. William Gilpin, pioneer artist of the picturesque (1724-1804)

Not surprisingly, Green subscribed to many of the religious books published during his lifetime, especially those of other Hebrew scholars, including:

The Election of 1768

Prior to the Reform Act of 1832, democracy in England extended only to men, above the age of 21, who owned land with an annual rental of forty shillings or more.  This criteria encompassed only 5% of the population but did include the Rev. William Green.

Green was already a land-owner through his inheritance from his father - the farm at Sutton-in-Granby and land at Car Colston in Nottinghamshire.  However, in 1764, he received land from Samuel Wilson, a gentleman of Swanton Morley, a manor twelve miles north of Hardingham.  Although Wilson died in December 1764, the gift does not appear in his will and must have been made before his death.  Why Green benefited from this bequest, we don't know.  Wilson gave Green a large house, together with 138 acres of land and a cottage, in the hamlet of Worthing, near Swanton Morley, and the copyhold for 30 acres, spread over several locations around Worthing, together with a cottage.  (Copyhold was an ancient form of land-holding, effectively equivalent to a leasehold that could be sold or inherited.)   

At that time, the county of Norfolk returned two members of Parliament, with the boroughs of Castle Rising, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Norwich, and Thetford each also returning two members.  Based on his residence at Hardingham, Green was a voter in the poll for the two Norfolk seats. 

In 1768, the sitting members were Sir Armine Wodehouse and Thomas De Grey.  Wodehouse, an authoritarian Tory, had held his seat since 1737.  He had been popular and was returned unopposed in the previous election of 1761.  The other member, De Grey, had recently succeeded George Townsend, who had held his seat from 1747-1764.  Townsend had also been immensely popular, partly in consequence of having been General Wolfe's second-in-command at the taking of Quebec from the French in 1759.

Their opponents in the election were Sir Edward Astley and Wenman Coke (father of the agricultural reformer "Coke of Norfolk").  Campaigning on their behalf was John Buxton, Green's student contemporary at Clare, who had stood himself, unsuccessfully, against Wodehouse in the 1754 election.  

The Poll Book records that William Green cast only one of his two votes.  He supported Sir Armine Wodehouse, who lived at Kimberley Hall, near Hardingham, and was the largest landowner in the local area.

However, Wodehouse lost the election to his challenger, Edward Astley, while De Grey defended his seat against his challenger Wenman Coke.  (Armine Wodehouse's son, Sir John Wodehouse, regained the Norfolk   seat for his family at the election of 1784.)

The Living of Barnham Broom 

In 1789, William Green was offered the living of the nearby parish of Barnham Broom by Sir John Wodehouse, which had until then been held by Sir John's brother, the Rev. Philip Wodehouse.  Green's first response was to decline the offer.  He was unwilling to take on the responsibilities of another parish at the age of  75, despite the large additional income it brought with it (£540/annum).  In that November, Lewis Bagot, the Bishop of Norwich, within whose diocese both the parishes of Hardingham and Barnham Broom lay, wrote to Green attempting to persuade him to accept Sir John's offer:

From a conversation with our worthy friend Sir John Wodehouse, I collected that he had offered you the living of Barnham Broom, which Mr Wodehouse is about soon to vacate.  The disinterested principles on which you declined the offer, certainly do you honour; at the same time I cannot help wishing you to re-consider the matter.  To solicit and to accept are two very different things.

The situation of the cure is such that it renders it perfectly compatible with what you hold at present; and tho’ you may reasonably object to undertake the laborious part of the duty in your own person,  yet whoever you should employ as a curate would act immediately under your own eye and direction.  The offer, I am satisfied, was made on the part of Sir John, purely from the esteem and regard he has for you, without the smallest ideas even of an implied condition of any kind.  Your tenure, therefore, would be perfectly free, as it ought to be.  Should you find on the experiment that the possession of the living subjected you to any inconvenience, either in body or mind, you cannot, I trust, have a doubt of my readiness to comply with your wishes in accepting your resignation.

It is equally certain that Sir John would not desire you to hold it under these circumstances.  But, if no such inconvenience should arise, it would be a satisfaction to him to have discharged his trust in the most reputable manner for himself, and expressive of his esteem for you; and you will yourself readily admit that it can be no discredit to any man to be understood to have received a token of Sir John Wodehouse’s friendship.

Having said thus much as the common friend of both of you, I beg to be considered as by no means aiming to control your determination, but only to bring it again under your review; that you may not seem hastily to reject a proposal so kindly and handsomely made.  In such a question I am well aware there may be considerations very proper to fix your resolution, of the full weight of which no man can judge as well as yourself.  

As I took the liberty (on perceiving Sir John’s concern at the idea of your not having accepted the living) to request he would not dispose of it till I had written to you; I should be much obliged to you to let Sir John know as soon as you have completely made up your mind on the subject; which I much wish may be in the manner most satisfactory both to him and yourself.

According to parish records of Barnham Broom, Green appears to have resisted Bagot's entreaty, although some other sources do have him listed as the incumbent of that parish for the years 1790-1794.

Obituaries and Legacies

After a few years of illness, William Green died in November 1794, and was buried on 11 November in Hardingham churchyard.  His tombstone, set against the eastern wall of the nave of St George's, records: 

Green's obituary was published later that year in the Gentleman's Magazine, a publication that he had himself subscribed to during his lifetime:

In his Will, William Green made a number of charitable bequests, including donating his ten shares in the Chesterfield Canal to the Society for the Relief of Clerical Widows in Nottinghamshire.  The Canal, authorized by Act of Parliament, had raised £100,000 in £100 shares from mainly local investors in 1771, and opened in 1777.  It mainly took coal from Chesterfield to the river Trent at Gainsborough and, though the first dividend was not paid until 1789, it was subsequently quite prosperous.  In 1785, Green had also subscribed to the prospectus for a new canal that was proposed to be built from London to Norwich and King's Lynn.     

After her death, Mary Green's effects passed to her widowed sister, Rebecca Cracroft, then living in Cathedral Close, Lincoln.

Dr Warburton's Reading List

Dr Warburton (1698-1779) was, at that time, rector of Brant Broughton, Lincolnshire, and had recently published his major work The Divine Legation of Moses; he would later go on to edit the works of Pope and Shakespeare, engage in celebrated and acrimonious disputes with other writers, and be ordained as Bishop of Gloucester.  

Green could not have sought advice from a more widely-read man.  Warburton, originally trained as an attorney in Newark, was a largely self-taught and voracious scholar.  He sat up most nights reading - classical antiquity, history, theology, philosophy, and literature.  When fatigued by a night of reading Aristotle or St Augustine, he would amuse himself with lighter reading such as Don Quixote in the original.  As a result, Warburton was said to have possessed a general knowledge that few other men have achieved.

Boswell records that George III observed to Dr Johnson that he supposed he must have read a great deal; Johnson answered that he had not been able to read much compared with others: for instance, he had not read much compared with Dr Warburton.  Upon which the King said, that he heard Dr Warburton was a man of such general knowledge, that you could scarce talk with him on any subject on which he was not qualified to speak; and that his learning resembled Garrick's acting in its universality.

Johnson himself described Warburton as a man of "vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his imagination or clouded his perspicacity".

26 September 1738:  Advice on Theological Reading

 I am far from having a worse opinion of you for your modesty and ingenuity in owning those deficiencies that are common to young
 people.  Only some have not the sense to see it, and others are too proud to own it, which makes them blockheads their whole life.

 I am sorry you leave College, because I apprehend that if you could get a Fellowship and a Curacy in the neighborhood, it would be
 advantageous to you on many accounts to reside some years in the University.  But this perhaps you contrive hereafter.  Your
 apprehensions as to your sermons are rightly grounded.  This is the method I would advise you to: take some of the best approved
 writers on particular points of morality and divinity, whether in the form of sermons or no.  If in that form, then abridge them; if not
 in that form, cast them into it.  This is easily done, and very usefully done, for it will enter you into the method of composing.

 At the same time, buy a book of Beveridge’s in 4 vols octavo, which is a synopsis of a great number of sermons, the skeleton of
 sermons, in which only the heads of discourse are methodically given in order to be filled up.  It was published, I think, for the use
 of young clergymen.  This will further instruct you, as you may apprehend, in the methods of composing.

 When you have used these two ways, alternately, as occasion serves, for some time, you will have, of course, acquired some
 notion of composition. Then begin now and then, though but seldom, to make a sermon entirely your own; and to give you a true
 taste of these compositions, you cannot do better than read over often Swift’s Letter to a Young Clergyman lately entered into
 Holy Orders: you will see by this what a good sermon should be. But the difficulty still remains how to make one. It consists of
 three parts, the language, the art or the method of the discourse, and the subject matter. As to the last, it is the product of much
 knowledge and reflection. For the language, the three best writers we have to form a style upon are Addison, Tillotson, and
 Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion. And as to art and method of discourse, I know no book so good as Quintilian, and he who
 would compose masterly, should perpetually read his Institutes.

 Leigh’s Critica Sacra is a small book in quarto, of about 4s price.  It is a kind of Lexicon to the New Testament.  I did not mean
 the Collection of Critics which is not for your use at present.  Only I would have you observe it is in vain to think of making real
 progress in letters without books, and a prudent scholar would always contrive to moderate his expenses of other kinds, in order to
 support this. You would save much in buying your books at the best hand, and I believe you can have them no where so cheap as
 at Mr Gyles, against Gray’s Inn, a great bookseller in Holborn.  If you think fit to employ him, who is my particular friend, the
 mentioning of me as recommending you to him will, I am sure, engage him to treat you in the best manner, and a letter to him,
 when you want any books, will be sufficient.

 I think the study of the New Testament, and of theology, should be carried on together, as I marked out for you.  Classical
 learning is … … Hebrew necessary for understanding the Scriptures; but it is a large extensive study.  You must make yourself
 well acquainted with the best Greek and Latin writers, as Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Lucian,
 Aristophanes, Sophocles, Euripides, Tully, Livy, Tacitus, Quintilian, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, and Pliny.

 These should be studied with the best Lexicons and Dictionaries, as Stephanus’  Greek and Latin Thesaurus, Constantine’s 
  Lexicon, Budaeus’  Commentary on the Greek Tongue, Nizolius, Brisonius' de Verb. Sign, Suidas; and likewise the best
 grammarians, as Caminius’  Hellenisms, Sanctius’  Minerva with Perizonius’  Notes, Scaliger’s  De Causus Linguae Latinae,
 Linacre’s  De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis, and Popma's  De Differentis Verborum.

 Then you may read Le Clerc’s Ars Critica and go to the study of the best critics, such as Jos. Scaliger, I Casaubon, Lipsius, 
 Turnebus, etc; but above all Dr Bentley and Bishop Hare, who are the greatest men, in this way, that ever were.  But more of this
 as you proceed in your studies.

 A commonplace book is useful when one knows what to common-place, but that cannot be till after one has considerably
 improved one’s knowledge, and to write down trite or trifling passages is but loss of time.  You should never let a day pass without
 reading some Latin or Greek, more or less.  No language can be more useful to a scholar, nay, more necessary; the best books
 in all art and science being wrote in that tongue.  You may easily learn it yourself without a master, for you do not want to speak,
 but to understand it.  I am you assured friend,

 W Warburton

Correspondence with Other Churchmen

Rev. William Gilpin

In the last few years of his life, William Green corresponded with some frequency and amicability with the Reverend William Gilpin, then vicar of Boldre, near Lymington, Hampshire.  Gilpin had been, for many years, principal of a renowned school at Cheam, and was author of a number of polpular and educational religious works - his Lectures on the Catechism was repeatedly reprinted.

More famously, Gilpin was a pioneering exponent of the picturesque.  His accounts and sketches of his summer journeys through the Highlands of Scotland, the Lake District, and the River Wye were enormously influential in popularising the appreciation of the natural landscape.  His fellow Cumbrian, William Wordsworth, is thought to have carried a copy of Gilpin's book when he visited the Wye in July 1798 with his sister Dorothy, prior to writing his poem, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.  Although the Romantic movement that Gilpin influenced would be against any improvement of nature, Gilpin himself looked back to the seventeenth century landscape paintings of Claude Lorraine as his model, and did not find that ideal exemplified in nature, even before the grandest aspects of the Wye:

This view, one of the grandest on the river, I should not scruple to call correctly picturesque; which is seldom the character of a purely natural scene.  Nature is always great in design.  She is an admirable colourist also; and harmonizes tints with infinite variety, and beauty.  But she is seldom so correct in composition, as to produce an harmonious whole.  Either the foreground or the background is disproportioned: or some awkward line runs across the piece, or a tree is ill-placed, or a bank is formal, or something or other is not exactly what it should be.  

Gilpin even ventured to suggest that the prospect of Tintern Abbey from a distance could be improved by a "mallet judiciously used".  So popular did Gilpin's guidebooks and the Cult of the Picturesque become, and so well-known was his exageratedly poetic though honest style, that he was later satirized by the writer William Combe and artist Thomas Rowlandson is their own very sucessful series of books on the Tours of Dr Syntax.

In this first letter, William Green has praised Gilpin for his 1790 publication Exposition of the New Testament, an educational religious work that was to become as popular as Gilpin's Lectures.  Green has made some suggestions on scriptual interpretation, which Gilpin is happy to accept:

 20 September 1792, Vicar's-hill, near Lymington

 I received your obliging and valuable letter (though not quite as soon as I ought, which is my apology for not answering it sooner),
 and return you many and very sincere thanks for it.  It is many years since I began the work, of which you are pleased to speak so
 favourably, and having spent much time upon it, it is a great pleasure to me to find my labours approved by those whom I conceive
 to be judges of such works, and feel themselves interested in them.

 I had already sent to the press a new edition in 8vo, to be printed with references to the chapters, just as you had recommended.
 But if St Matthew was already printed, I could not introduce a note on vi.13 but I will add it at the end.  The antithesis had escaped
 me, which I think gives τφ ώσЎήρφ singular propriety.  Your two remarks on Luke ii.49, and John viii.7, were both new to me; and
 as I had those gospels still in my hands, I have availed myself of them; as I entirely approve them both.  And now, sir, having
 thanked you for what is past, I can only solicit your future goodness.  I shall have the Acts and Epistles four or five weeks, or
 perhaps more, yet in my hands; and if any thing strike you, I think I dare venture to say, that whatever remarks you make, they will
 be highly approved by me.

 I am, Sir, your most obedient and obliged humble servant,  Will. Gilpin

 27 November 1792,  Vicar's Hill, near Lymington

 I am truly glad your indisposition is removed.  At our time of life we must expect preparatory messengers.  We have only to pray for
 an easy dismission, if it be God's will.  An acquaintance of mine used to say, he did not fear death, but the apparatus of it. It
 pleased God to grant him such a death, as your father had.  He died instantaneously in his reading-desk.  At least, he was but just
 taken out of the church.

 I entirely approve of what you say of my curtailing 1 Tim. iii 16. I have altered it thus:- 'The redemption of man is a scheme full of
 greatness and wonder. God was manifest in the flesh - adored by angels in Heaven - proved on earth by prophecies and miracles -
 received into glory - and shall hereafter be preached, and believed on throughout the world.

 I join with you, dear Sir, in all your kind ideas of congeniality; as Mrs. Gilpin does with Mrs. Green, to whom she desires her best
 compliments; and should have been exceedingly sorry if, for the sake of ceremony, she had done any thing to incommode her
 eyes.

 That coevals like us should have congenial ideas, is not wonderful; but I have been surprised at an intimacy I made, a few months
 ago, with a young gentleman, not half my age.  He is a very extraordinary man.  His name is Gisborn.  He inherited a large estate
 (not less, I believe more, than three thousand a year) in Derbyshire.  But not liking country-connexions, he left a large house near  
 Derby, which cost his father 10,000l. - took orders, just for
 a pretense to be serious - and retired to a seat he has in
 Needwood forest, where he is highly respected by all his
 neighbours; and, unbeneficed, does the duty of a
 clergyman.  He came with his family to Lymington for
 sea-bathing. I never visit; but he called upon me; and we
 formed an intimacy, which I daresay will last with our lives.
 In all our sentiments, and modes of living (excepting the
 difference of fortune), we are congenial.  He is a pleasant
 man, and a scholar.

 I am one of those odd people, who like my own company
 better than the generality of company I meet with; but he
 never came amiss.  He is the gentleman who answered
 some of the offensive parts of Mr. Paley's book; and wrote
 a very spirited tract against the Slave-trade.

 Believe me dear Sir, your very sincere, &c.  Will. Gilpin

Thomas Gisborne (1758-1846) was curate of Barton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire, who, like Gilpin, lived amongst the picturesque forest scenery he much admired.  Gisborne wrote The Principles of Moral Philosophy (1789) to counter the moral "expediency" he saw in the philosophical works of William Paley.  He was a college friend of William Wilberforce and wrote Remarks Respecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1792.

Some months later, when Gilpin again replies to William Green, there is no discussion of Scripture; instead he reflects on the death of his cousin:

The French Revolution fermented great unrest in England.  Taxes needed to pay for war against revolutionary France fell mainly on the working classes, as predicted by radicals like Tom Paine.  And due to several bad harvests, the price of bread had risen steeply.  In 1791, on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a pro-King mob ended a three-day riot by burning the house of chemist and radical, Joseph Priestley.  In the autumn of 1792, there were street demonstrations in Sheffield to celebrate a French military victory, and ten thousand people signed a reform petition that was rejected by Parliament as "insolent".  In May 1794, the leaders of the London Corresponding Society were arrested and habeas corpus was suspended to allow the government to hold them without trial throughout the summer.  Close to William Green's home, a Revolution Society had been formed in Norwich, where the war was seen as detrimental to the city's trade; violent rioting followed in early 1796. 

Translations of the Hebrew Bible

The Song of Deborah

William Green's first published work, in 1753, was a translation of The Song of Deborah (from Judges 5), together with a new translation of David's Lament for Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel, 1:19-27).  The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker, owned a copy of this work, which is now in Lambeth Palace Library.  In the preface, Green sets out his intention of making the Scriptures more accessible by improving on the Masoretical Text - the traditional Hebrew translation embodied in the King James Version or the "English Bible" as Green calls it:

It is a universal complaint that the scriptures of the Old Testament are but little read.  To whatever this neglect is owing, it certainly is not owing to the Scriptures themselves.  For they have stood the test of ages, and have always been esteemed by the wise and worthy.  They are the Oracles of God of Truth, and repositories of every thing that is valuable to us, and the standard of fine writing on every subject they treat.  For they are of such vast importance and universal concern, that if they were more generally understood, they must be more generally read.  And therefore the way to remove the complaint is to render them more intelligible.

Great light has been thrown upon several parts of the Old Testament by the labours of the learned.  A most important discovery has been made of the Hebrew metre by the sagacious Bishop Hare - a discovery, which under the direction of sober criticism, will clear up more difficulties in the poetical parts of Scripture than all other helps put together.  The learned Dr Grey has lately given us a specimen of this in The Last Words of David, and the masterly manner in which that judicious critic has restored and explained them, by help of the metre, will do him lasting honour.

The Song of Deborah affords us another instance of the importance of the Bishop's discovery.  Some passages in this song have long been obscured by the masoretical pointing and division of the period, which could never have been cleared without the help
of the metre.  I don't mean to say that the Bishop's discovery will clear up every difficulty
in the poetical Scriptures.  This is more than ought to be expected from it, but a great 
many it certainly does, which is argument sufficient to convince us that it is the true metre. 

The Scriptures are never read with more pleasure, nor appear with more lustre, than when
they speak as they were wrote, with perspicuity and propriety.  And the first step towards retrieving their credit and procuring them the veneration they claim, is to make them speak so.  They were designed for every order of men, for the unlearned as well as the learned, and therefore the grammatical sense of them cannot be that which is perplexed and intricate, but which is plain and natural, easy and obvious.  And if learned men would lay aside prejudice and employ their pains in clearing this, the Scriptures would be freed from much perplexity and darkness.

For it is now no longer to be denied that the Old Testament has not been transmitted to us in that purity and integrity which might have been wished.  And though the blemishes of it be so small as neither to affect the Authority of Scripture, yet as they fully and tarnish it's native beauty, it is high time that they were wiped off.

The extent to which Hebrew poetry had rhythm - or meter, to use the eighteenth century term - had been a matter of debate.  Green cites two authorities: Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester (1671-1740), who stipulated in his Psalmorum Liber in Versiculos Metrice Divisus in 1736 that the number of syllables was the standard of the metre; and Dr Richard Grey (1694-1771), who published his The Last Words of David, Divided According to the Metre in 1749.  

Green was clearly an adherent of the metrical approach.  He acknowledges the influence of Hare and Grey in his preface, and he adopts a similar title: The Song of Deborah, Reduced to Metre.  In a postscript, Green joins the debate with the chief opponent of the metrical view, Robert Lowth (1710-87), Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and later Bishop of London:

Just as I was sending the last sheet to the press, Mr Lowth's Lectures on the Hebrew Poetry were brought me.  Upon receiving them, I immediately turned to what he calls 
his Confutation of Bishop Hare's Metre, when to my great surprise I found the Bishop
ridiculed rather than confuted.  I then turned to his Reflections on the Song of Deborah,
where page 274, I met with this remark:

          Media odae ut verum fateamur obsederunt haud exiguae obscuritates multum officientes
          Carminis pulchritudini nec facile dissipandae nisi uberior historiae lux acederet.

[In the middle of the poem, it must be confessed, some obscurities occur, and 
those not of a trivial nature, which impair the beauty of the composition; and worse,
I fear they will scarely admit of elucidation unless we were possessed of some further historical lights.]

Now if the Bishop's metre had cleared the middle of Deborah's Song (which this gentleman owns to be covered with darkness almost impenetrable), he may possibly have a better opinion of it for the future, at least, not wantonly reject it, without further substituting something better in its room.

Lowth's Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews was published in 1753 - clearly just before Green sent his Song of Deborah to the printer.  The confutation that surprised Green was an appendix included by Lowth, which took issue with Bishop Hare's system of Hebrew meter.  

Lowth, writing in latin, contended that Hebrew verses had not been written with any attention to the matching or stressing of syllables to any metrical standard.  He describes the Song of Deborah as a "perfectly sublime ode", and reflects in detail on the first part of the poem.  His remarks on the middle section are limited to those that Green quotes.

Taken with his rejection of Hare's system of meter, Lowth's view of the Song of Deborah is clearly directly at odds with the elucidation that Green believes he has just found in applying Bishop Hare's rules of meter to his new translation of the same poem.  In the spirit of the eighteenth century enlightenment, Lowth was noted as a proponent of taking an aesthetic view, 
of what had been traditionally viewed as the given word of God.  He defined standards for the 
parallelism - repetition of thoughts - found in Hebrew couplets as being either synonymous, 
antonymous, or synthetic.  

Green's Translation of The Song of Deborah

The Song of Deborah may be the oldest part of the Bible and is one of the earliest examples of Hebrew poetry, written about 1200 BC.  In the poem, Deborah, the only female prophet, rejoices in the victory of the Israelites led by Barak over a Canaanite army that had oppressed them.

Green's Translation of David's Lament for Saul and Jonathan

In a battle with the Philistines, Jonathan is killed and his father, King Saul, is surrounded and falls on his sword.  David, now King, laments on the death of his friend Jonathan and even of King Saul, who had repeatedly tried to kill him; bemoaning the famous cry of "how are the mighty fallen". 

The Prayer of Habakkuk

Green's next translation, published in 1755, was from Habakkuk, one of the twelve prophetic books of the Old Testament.  The first two chapters are a dialogue between God and the prophet Habakkuk (written by him around  600BC).  Chapter 3 - the Prayer of Habakkuk - is by a later author.  Green provides a commentary noting variances between his translation and the King James Bible, and introduces his work with this preface on his method:

I have long been of the opinion that most of the obscure passages of the poetical scriptures may be cleared from that darkness and perplexity in which they now lie involved.  Under this persuasion, I have myself to a particular examination of the Song of Deborah, which was not long since offered to the public.  The Prayer of Habakkuk now follows; a part of scripture, acknowledged on all hands to be obscure in almost every period of it.

In drawing up these pieces, the Masoretical Text has been critically examined, and the Hebrew meter strictly attended to, which was the method followed in the Song of Deborah.  And if the reader shall judge that I have succeeded in these, he will, I hope, be convinced as well as myself, that it is the right Method, and that it is not possible to clear the Scriptures from obscurity if we adhere too servilely to the Masoretical Text.

If then we would have the scripture received for what they really are inspired writings, we must depart from this text where it is faulty; and no longer translate for genuine readings, the palpable blunders of transcribers.  From what has been done by those who are blindly attached to the text, it plainly appears that a good translation is not to be expected from them.

It is high time therefore to turn our eyes upon those who, after they have used every help to make the Old Testament intelligible, are not afraid , when all others fail, to examine and correct the text.  This is a liberty which our own translators have sometimes taken, and would have taken more frequently if they had lived in these days.  A liberty which is used with judgment and discretion can be attended with no bad consequences, but may be attended with the happiest and best.

Green's Translation of The Prayer of Habukkuk

The Prayer of Habakkuk is a magnificent lyric, filled with reminiscences of Israel's past and rich in references to the poetry of Caanan.  God appears in majestic splendor and executes vengeance on the enemies of Judah.  The prayer ends with a joyous profession of confidence in God.

William Green's Publications

Primary Sources:

• The Song of Deborah;  a New Translation and Commentary, William Green, Cambridge, 1753  [Lambeth Palace Library, London]
• Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Robert Lowth, Oxford, 1753, trans. George Gregory 1787  [reprint: Elibron Classics, 2001]
• A New Translation of the Prayer of Habakkuk, William Green, Cambridge, 1755  [British Library, London] 
  
• Letters from William Warburton, later Bishop of Gloucester: 26 Sep, 6 Oct 1738  
• Letters from Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol: 9 Mar, 20 Apr, 29 May 1756
• Letters from Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury: 23 Aug, 28 Sep 1761; 3 Jan 1763 
• Letters from Dr Richard Grey: 10 Jan 1748; 3 Aug 1756; 1 Jan 1757; 9 Apr 1765
• Letters from Rev. George Sheldon: 29 Feb 1776
• Letters from William Newcome, Bishop of Waterford: 4 Sep, 8 Oct, 31 Oct 1786, 25 Jan 1788
• Letters from Dr Alexander Geddes: 6 Jul, 26 Jul 1787
• Letters from Benjamin Blayney, Canon of Christ Church: 13 Feb 1786, 5 Feb 1788
• Letters from Lewis Bagot, Bishop of Norwich: 1 Nov 1789
• Letters from Rev. William Gilpin: 20 Sep, 16 Nov, 27 Nov 1792; 9 Mar, 31 Aug 1793; 7 Jun 1794
  
• Will of William Green of Newark, 12 Mar 1733  [Nottingham Record Office]
• Inventory of the Goods of William Green of Newark, 30 Oct 1735  [Nottingham Record Office]
• Deeds Relating to Two Messuages in Newark, 1711-1740  [Ne D 2981-2987, Clumber Collection, University of Nottingham]
• Will of Samuel Wilson, Dec 1764  [Norfolk Record Office] 
• Title Deeds for manor of Swanton Morley with Worthing  [Evans-Lombe Collection, Norfolk Record Office]
• Will of Dr Bernard Wilson, 27 June 1767  
• Will of William Green of Hardingham, 22 Nov 1794  [National Archives, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills: prob11/1251]
• Letter of Administration for the estate of Mary Green, 7 March 1795   [Norfolk Record Office]

Secondary Sources:

• The Gentleman's Magazine, London, 1794: Vol. LXIV, Pt II: Obiturary of Remarkable Persons  [British Library, London]
• The Gentleman's Magazine, London, 1819: Vol. LXXXIX, Pt II: Original Letters to the Rev. William Green  [personal copy]
• The Gentleman's Magazine, London, 1822: Vol. XCII, Pt I: Original Letters to the Rev. William Green  [British Library, London]
• Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, John Nichols, London, 1812-15, Vol. VIII & Vol. IX  [British Library, London]
• Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, John Nichols, London, 1817-58, Vol. IV  [British Library, London]
  
  
• Life of Johnson, James Boswell, London, 1791 
• The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, MD,  W C Lukis, The Surtees Society, vol. 73 (1880)
• Warburton and the Warburtonians,  A W Evans, Oxford, 1932
• Robert Lowth,  Brian Hepworth, Boston, 1978
  
  
• A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain,  Daniel Defoe, London, 1726
• History and Antiquities of the town of Newark in the County of Nottingham,  William Dickinson, Newark, 1816
• The Annals of Newark,  Cornelius Brown, Newark, 1879
• An Eighteenth Century Portrait: the story of the Rev. Bernard Wilson, DD,  A C Wood, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, vol. 52 (1948)
• Newark Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene,  Brenda M Pask, Newark, 2000
  
  
• Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales...relative chiefly to picturesque beauty,  William Gilpin, London, 1782
• Man and the Natural World: changing attitudes in England 1500-1800,  Keith Thomas, London, 1983
• William Wordsworth and the age of English Romanticism,  Jonathan Wordsworth, Michael Jaye & Robert Woof, New Brunswick, 1987
  

• Poll Book for the County of Norfolk, 1768  [Norfolk Record Office]
• A General History of the County of Norfolk,  John Stacy, London, 1829
• The Popular Guide to Norfolk Churches,  D P Mortlock & C V Roberts, London, 1985
• Virtual Norfolk  (virtualnorfolk.uea.ac.uk)
  
  
• The Bible,  King James Version, 1611
• The Universal British Directory: 1791  [ArchiveCD Books, Cinderford]
• Chalmer's General Biographical Dictionary,  London, 1817  [ancestry.com]
• Alumni Cantabrigieness,  J A Venn, 1921  [ancestry.com]
• The Dictionary of National Biography,  Oxford, 1963
• Biography Database 1680-1830,  Newcastle, 1998  [Avero Publications]
• Dictionary of British Portraiture,  ed. Richard Ormond & Malcolm Rogers, Oxford, 1979
• Oxford English Dictionary,  Oxford, 1989

Acknowledgements:

• Archivist, Clare College, Cambridge (2000)
• Christina Mackwell, Lambeth Palace Library (Feb 2003)
• Derrick Clavey, Barnham Broom Parochial Church Council (Mar 2003)
• Gill Shapland, Cambridge Records Office (Jul 2003)
• Staff of Norfolk Records Office (Aug 2003)
• Mark Dorrington, Nottinghamshire Archives (Dec 2003)
• Jacky Clark for sharing her research on the Waldegrave family

Illustrations:

• The Vicar of Wakefield  (by William Powell Frith; from The Old-Time Parson, P H Ditchfield, London, 1908)
• St Mary Magdalene, Newark  (engraving by J W Lowry, after painting by T Allum, 1837)
• Clare College, Cambridge  (engraving by J LeKeux, after painting by F Mackenzie, 1842)
• The Rectory at Hardingham  (own photo)
• Hardingham Parish Register for 1761  (from the microfilm copy at Family History Library, Salt Lake City, UT)
• St George's Church, Hardingham  (own photo)
• The Election: Polling Day  (William Hogarth, 1754; Sir John Soane's Museum, London)
• Sir John Wodehouse  (engraving by Harriet Gunn, after painting by W Hornsby, 1824; National Portrait Gallery, London)
• William Green's Gravestone  (own photo)
• William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester  (engraving by Anker Smith, after painting by William Hoare in Gloucester Palace)
• Rev. William Gilpin (1724-1804)  (engraving by George Clint, after painting by Henry Walton, 1781; National Portrait Gallery, London)
• The Form of Loch Tay  (William Gilpin, 1776; from Observations on Several Parts of Great Britain particularly the Highlands of Scotland)
• Dr Syntax Sketching a Lake  (Thomas Rowlandson, 1809; from The Tour of Dr Syntax in search of the Picturesque by William Combe)
• The Zenith of French Glory  (or the Pinnacle of Liberty, James Gillray, 1793; The British Museum, London)
• Rioters Burning Dr Priestley's House at Birmingham  (Johan Eckstein, 1791; Susan Lowndes Marques Collection, Portugal)
• Archbishop Secker's bookplate  (from his copy of Green's The Song of Deborah, now in Lambeth Palace Library)
• The Song of Deborah: Jeal reveals Sisera's body  (engraving by G Hoet, c1728)
• David's Lament for Saul: the death of Saul  (chromolithograph by J M Kronheim & Co of London)
• Title Page from A New Translation of the Prayer of Habbukuk by William Green

Copyright © 2002-6  Roger Williams. All Rights Reserved.