PROBERT, WILLIAM (1790 - 1870), Unitarian minister and author

Born at Painscastle, Radnorshire, 11 August 1790. His parents farmed a small freehold. In early life he became a Wesleyan Methodist and was appointed local preacher, ministering successively in Bolton, Leeds, Liverpool, and in Staffordshire. He adopted Unitarian views in 1815 and was appointed in 1821 to the Unitarian chapel at Walmsley near Bolton, where he spent the next forty-eight years of his life. He was an antiquary, an Oriental scholar, and an authority on Welsh laws and customs. He was a master of the Welsh language, receiving several medals from learned societies for accounts of Welsh castles and for translations from Welsh into English. He was the author of many works, all showing his wide and varied knowledge, e.g. Calvinism and Arminianism, 1815; The Gododin being translations from the Welsh, 1820; Ancient Laws of Cambria, 1823; Elements of Chaldee and Hebrew Grammar, 1832; Hebrew and English Concordance, 1838; Hebrew and English Lexicon Grammar, 1850; Laws of Hebrew Poetry, 1860; he also wrote a ' History of Walmsley Chapel ' which appeared in the Christian Reformer, 1834.

In 1814 he married Margaret Carr of Broxton, Cheshire, by whom he had six children. He died at Dimple, Turton, 1 April 1870.

Author

• Thomas Isfryn Jones

Sources

• The Unitarian Herald, 1870
• James C. Scholes, Bolton Bibliography, and jottings of book-lore; with notes on local authors and printers (Bolton 1886)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Additional Links

• VIAF: 12648730
• Wikidata: Q18762132

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-RUU/1.0/