William Wyatt (scholar)

Wyatt, son of William Wyat or Wyatt of ‘plebeian’ origin, was born at Todenham, near Moreton-in-the-Marsh, Gloucestershire, in 1616. He died in Nuneaton in the house of Sir Richard Newdigate on 9 Sept. 1685

Wyatt matriculated from St John's College, Oxford, on 16 March 1637–8, but was prevented by the outbreak of the civil war from taking his degree in arts. His diligence as a scholar appears to have been noted by Jeremy Taylor while at Oxford in 1642, and at the close of 1644 he joined Taylor in Wales as an assistant teacher at his school, called Newton Hall (Collegium Newtoniense), in the parish of Llanfihangel-Aberbythych, Carmarthenshire. He seems to have spent a portion of his time with Taylor's family at Golden Grove.

Subsequently Wyatt, who was much sought after as a teacher, was tutor in a school at Evesham, and then assisted Dr. William Fuller (1608–1675) in a private school at Twickenham, Middlesex. By recommendation of the chancellor he was created B.D. at Oxford on 12 September 1661, and when Fuller became bishop of Lincoln he made Wyatt his chaplain. He obtained a prebend in Lincoln Cathedral by Fuller's favour (installed on 13 May 1668, "vice William Gery, deceased"), and on 16 October 1669 was admitted precentor of Lincoln. In 1681 he exchanged this preferment with John Inett for the living of Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where he died.

Wyatt published A New and Easie Institution of Grammar. In which the labour of many yeares usually spent in learning the Latine tongue is shortned and made easie. In usum Juventutis Cambro-Britannicæ. London, printed by J. Young for R. Royston … Ivie Lane, 1647. Wyatt's epistle of dedication in Latin was dated from Golden Grove, and was addressed to Sir Christopher Hatton; it was followed by one by Taylor in English, addressed to Christopher Hatton, esquire, assumed to be one of the pupils. This short work was published in Taylor's name, but was mainly the work of Wyatt, with some help from William Nicholson and Francis Gregory. A copy of Wyatt's grammar in Caius College, Cambridge, is described in detail in Bonney's Life of Jeremy Taylor (pp. 45 sq.).

• Thomas Seccombe (1900). "Wyatt, William" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 63. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 254
• Joseph Foster (editor), 'Woodall-Wyvill', Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (1891), pp. 1674-1697 (see Wyat, William, s. William, of Toddenham)
• 'Prebendaries: Liddington', Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541-1857: volume 9: Lincoln diocese (1999), pp. 87-88
• John Chambers, Biographical illustrations of Worcestershire, Printed for W. Walcott, 1820, page 228
• Willmott, Robert Aris, 1809-1863, Bishop Jeremy Taylor; his predecessors, contemporaries and successors. A biography, 1848, publisher: London J.W. Parker, page 121
• Bonney, Henry Kaye, 1780-1862, The life of the Right Reverend Father in God, Jeremy Taylor, 1815, printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, page 43

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Wyatt, William". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.