Thomas Falconer (scholar)

For other people named Thomas Falconer, see Thomas Falconer (disambiguation).

Thomas Falconer (1772–1839) was an English clergyman and classical scholar.

Life

The son of William Falconer, M.D., F.R.S., of Bath, Somerset by Henrietta, daughter of Thomas Edmunds of Worsborough Hall, Yorkshire, he was born on 24 December 1772, and educated at the cathedral school, Chester, the grammar school in Bath, the high school, Manchester, The King's School, Chester, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a precocious boy, and some of his verses were published in ‘Prolusiones Poeticæ,’ Chester, 1788. The same year he was elected to a scholarship at Corpus Christi, where he graduated B.A. in 1791, and took the M.A. degree and a fellowship in 1795.

After taking holy orders he spent some years at Edinburgh studying medicine. He took his M.B. and M.D. degrees at Oxford in 1822. He never practised medicine, nor, except for a short time as locum tenens, did he do any ordinary clerical duty. He was, however, select preacher before the university of Oxford on several occasions, and he was Bampton lecturer in 1810.

He died at Bath on 19 February 1839. Falconer married Frances, daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Robert Raitt, by whom he had issue, besides one son and three daughters who died in his lifetime, four sons who survived him, viz. Thomas Falconer, William Falconer, Alexander Pytts Falconer, and Randle Wilbraham Falconer.

Works

Falconer published:

Falconer also contributed notes on the Psalms to Warner's edition of the Book of Common Prayer. He left in manuscript a translation of Strabo (see William Falconer).

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Falconer, Thomas (1772-1839)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

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