Online Encyclopedia
Make a correction
Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.
Back to article:
RICHARD RAWLINSON (169o-1755)
Your email:
Article name:
Article content:
RAWLINSON, RICHARD (169o-1755), English antiquary and divine, was a younger son of Sir Thomas Rawlinson (1647-1708), lord mayor of London in 1705-6, and a brother of Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), the bibliophile. Born on the 3rd of January 169o, he was educated at St Paul's school, at Eton, and at St John's College, Oxford. In 1716 he was ordained, but as he was a nonjuror ands Jacobite the ceremony was per-formed by a nonjuring bishop, Jeremy Collier. Rawlinson then xxu. 3otravelled in England and on the continent of Europe, where he passed several years, making collections of manuscripts, coins and curiosities. In 1728 he became a bishop among the non-jurors, but he hardly ever appears to have discharged episcopal functions, preferring to pass his time in collecting books and manuscripts, pictures and curiosities. He died at Islington on the 6th of April 1755. Rawlinson left his manuscripts, his curiosities, and some other property to the Bodleian Library; he endowed a professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and was a benefactor to St John's College.