Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/315

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Huntington
309
Huntington

thy person.' Through the recommendation of Fell to Marsh he was offered the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin (1683), and reluctantly accepted it. An Irish translation of the New Testament had already been printed, but the two friends, Marsh and Huntington, superintended a translation into the same language of the canonical books of the Old Testament, which was printed at the expense of Robert Boyle. In 1688 he fled from Ireland, but returned for a short time after the battle of the Boyne. The bishopric of Kilmore, which was vacant through the refusal of Dr. William Sheridan to take the oaths of allegiance to the new ministry, was offered to him early in 1692, but declined, and as he preferred to live in England, he resigned his provostship (September 1692), leaving the college a silver salver, still preserved, on which his arms are engraved. In the same autumn (19 Aug. 1692) Huntington was instituted, on the presentation of Sir Edward Turner, to the rectory of Great Hallingbury in Essex. In his letters to his friends he often lamented his banishment to this solitude, with its consequent loss of books and society. He failed in October 1693 to obtain the wardenship of Merton College, and about the end of 1692 he married a daughter of John Powell, and a sister of Sir John Powell, judge of the king's bench. He was consecrated at Dublin, bishop of Raphoe on 20 July 1701 (Cotton, Fasti Eccl. Hibernicæ, iii. 353). Almost immediately afterwards he was attacked by illness, and he died at Dublin on 2 Sept. 1701, when he was buried near the door of Trinity College Chapel, and a marble monument was erected by the widow to his memory.

Huntington's sole contribution to literature was a short paper in 'Philosophical Transactions' No. 161 (20 July 1684), pp. 623-9, entitled A Letter from Dublin concerning the Porphyry Pillars in Egypt,' which was reproduced in John Ray's 'Collection of Curious Travels and Voyages' (1693), ii. 149-55. Edward Bernard [q. v.] inscribed to him his paper on the chief fixed stars (see Phil. Trans, xiv. 567 et seq.) Huntington gave to Merton College fourteen oriental manuscripts, and to the Bodleian Library thirty-five more. A much larger number, 646 in all, was purchased from him in 1693 for the latter collection at a cost of 700l. Thomas Marshall, rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and dean of Gloucester, gave to the Bodleian in 1685 many valuable manuscripts, including some Coptic copies of the gospels procured for him by Huntington, and Archbishop Marsh on his death in 1713 left to the same library many oriental manuscripts which he had acquired from Huntington. These manuscripts are described in Bernard's 'Catalogue' (1697), and in the official catalogues of the Bodleian (1788-1835 and 1848-90). Huntington was a liberal contributor of manuscripts to Trinity College, Dublin, and a collection of his letters, dated between 1684 and 1688, relating to that institution were on sale by Osborne the bookseller about 1755.

[The chief materials for Huntington's biography are found in the work of his friend, D. Roberti Huntingtoni Epistolæ, praemittuntur D. Huntingtoni et D. Bernardi vitæ. Scriptore Thoma Smitho, 1704. A contemporaneous translation into English was inserted by Shirley Woolmer of Exeter in Gent. Mag. 1825, pt. i. pp. 11-15, 115-19, 218-21, and reproduced in the Tewkesbury Keg. and Mag. ii. 222-40. See also Pearson's Levant Chaplains, pp.18-23, 57; Bernard's Cat. Librorum Manuscriptorum (1697), pp.177-8, 279-85; Coxe's Cat. MSS. in Collegiis Oxon.i. (Merton Coll.) 130-2; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. p.588; Biog. Brit. 1757 ed. iv. 2710-12; English Cyclop.; Luttrell's Hist. Relation, ii. 405, iii. 203; Brodrick's Merton Coll. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), p. 293; Prideaux's Letters (Camd. Soc.), pp.39, 132-5; J. W. Stubbs's Dublin Univ. pp.117-36; Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, i. 3, ii. 24-5, 110; Macray's Annals of Bodl. Lib. 1890 ed. pp.154, 161-3, 185.]

W. P. C.


HUNTINGTON, WILLIAM, S.S. (1745–1813), eccentric preacher, natural son of Barnabas Russel, farmer, was born in a cottage at the Four Wents, on the road between Goudhurst and Cranbrook, Kent, on 2 Feb. 1744-5, and was baptised at Cranbrook Church in the name of his putative father, William Hunt, a labourer, on 14 Nov. 1750. After acquiring the barest rudiments of knowledge at the Cranbrook grammar school, he went into service as an errand-boy, and was afterwards successively gentleman's servant, gunmaker's apprentice, sawyer's pitman, coachman, hearse-driver, tramp, gardener, coalheaver, and popular preacher. Having seduced a young woman, the daughter of a tailor at Frittenden, Kent, he decamped on the birth of a child, and changed his name to Huntington to avoid identification (1769). He then formed a connection with a servant-girl named Mary Short, with whom he settled at Mortlake, working as a gardener. Here he suffered much from poverty, and still more from conviction of sin. After removing to Sunbury he went through the experience known as conversion, which was precipitated by a casual conversation with a strict Calvinist. Huntington, after failing to obtain satisfaction from the