William Conybeare (author)

William John Conybeare (1 August 1815 – 23 July 1857) was an English vicar, essayist and novelist^[1] who was the first Principal of Liverpool College.

Biography

William John Conybeare was the son of Dean William Daniel Conybeare.^[1] He attended Westminster School, where he formed a life-long friendship with George Cotton, later Bishop of Calcutta.^[2] He matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1833, where he was elected fellow in 1837.^[2][3]

From 1842 to 1848 Conybeare was principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution (later Liverpool College).^[1] There, he worked with John Saul Howson, with whom he would later publish Perversion: or, the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity. Whilst in Liverpool, he campaigned for the improvement of middle-class education in the city.^[2]

With his health deteriorating, Conybeare resigned his position at Liverpool in 1848 and moved to Axminster, Devon, to become vicar.^[1][2] He served there until 1854, when he moved to Weybridge, Surrey, where his brother-in-law, Edward Rose, was the parish priest. He died of tuberculosis in Weybridge in 1857, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.^[2][4] He was survived by his wife, Eliza Rose (1820-1903), and his son, John William Edward Conybeare.^[2]

Publications

Conybeare published Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social (1855), and a novel, Perversion: or, the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity (1856), but is best known as the joint author (along with John Saul Howson) of The Life and Epistles of St Paul^[1] (1852, 2nd ed. 1856).^[5]

He published Church Parties, a 30,000 word essay on the different styles of churchmanship found within the Anglican Church, in 1855.^[2][6]