Richard Rawlinson - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

RICHARD RAWLINSON (16 9 o - 1 755), English antiquary and divine, was a younger son of Sir Thomas Rawlinson (1647-1708), lord mayor of London in 5705-6, and a brother of Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), the bibliophile. Born on the 3rd of January 5690, 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 and a Jacobite the ceremony was performed by a nonjuring bishop, Jeremy Collier. Rawlinson then travelled 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 nonjurors, 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.