1. William Warburton was an English writer, literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759 until his death.
14 Facts About William Warburton
1. 2.
William Warburton edited editions of the works of his friend Alexander Pope, and of William Shakespeare.
3.
William Warburton was ordained as a priest in 1726, and in the same year began to associate with literary circles in London.
4.
William Warburton was, in addition, rector of Firsby from 1730 until 1756, although he never lived in the village.
5.
William Warburton became prebendary of Gloucester in 1753, chaplain to the king in 1754, prebendary of Durham in 1755, Dean of Bristol in 1757, and Bishop of Gloucester in 1759.
6.
William Warburton boldly admitted the fact and turned it against the adversary by maintaining that no merely human legislator would have omitted such a sanction of morality.
7.
William Warburton had previously entrusted notes and emendations on Shakespeare to Sir Thomas Hanmer, whose unauthorised use of them led to a heated controversy.
8.
William Warburton accused Lewis Theobald, with whom he had corresponded on Shakespearean subjects as early as 1727, of stealing his ideas, and denied his critical ability.
9.
William Warburton was further kept busy by replying to the attacks on his Divine Legation from all quarters, by a dispute with Bolingbroke respecting Pope's behaviour in the affair of Bolingbroke's Patriot King, and by a vindication in 1750 of the alleged miraculous interruption of the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem undertaken by Julian, in answer to Conyers Middleton.
10.
William Warburton continued to write for as long as the infirmities of age allowed, collecting and publishing his sermons, and attempting to complete the Divine Legation, further fragments of which were published with his posthumous Works.
11.
William Warburton wrote a defence of revealed religion in his View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy, and Hume's Natural History of Religion called forth some Remarks.
12.
William Warburton engaged in a keen controversy with Robert Lowth, later bishop of London, on the book of Job, in which Lowth brought home charges of lack of scholarship and of insolence that admitted of no denial.
13.
William Warburton left no children, his only son having predeceased him.
14.
William Warburton's life was written by John Selby Watson in 1863, and Mark Pattison made him the subject of an essay in 1889.