Chronicle,’ the ‘Jewish Repository,’ the ‘Yorkshireman,’ and ‘Sermons for Sundays and Festivals.’ He died at Molesworth rectory on 30 Jan. 1854, leaving two children by his wife, a daughter of John R. A. Worsop of Howden Hall, Yorkshire: John Oxlee, vicar of Over Silton 1848, rector of Cowesby 1863 (both in Yorkshire), who died in 1892; and an unmarried daughter, Mary Anna Oxlee.
In a minute study which Oxlee made of the Hebrew writings he was led to differ on many important points both from the Jewish and Christian interpreters. His most important work is ‘The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement considered and maintained on the Principles of Judaism,’ 3 vols. 1815–50. During the thirty-four years which elapsed between the publication of the first and third volumes he was busy collecting materials. The work contains a mass of abstruse learning. He held that the Jewish rabbis were well aware of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that in the Talmuds the three persons of the Godhead are clearly mentioned and often referred to. In his ‘Six Letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ 1842–5, he stated his reasons for declining to take any part in the society for the conversion of the Jews, and his grounds for not believing in the personality of the devil. During ten years he corresponded with an Israelite respecting the differences between Judaism and Christianity. Seven letters, addressed to J. M., a Jew, are printed in the ‘Jewish Repository,’ 1815–16.
His works included, with many controversial pamphlets and some sermons: 1. ‘Three Letters to the Archbishop Lawrence of Cashel on the Apocryphal Publications of his Grace (Enoch, Ezra, and Isaiah) on the Age of the Sepher Zoar and on the Two Genealogies of Christ as given in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke,’ 1854. Dr. Nicholls, regius professor of divinity at Oxford, expressed his wonder how the immense number of correct extracts from early and late Jewish writers contained in this volume could possibly have been obtained by a scholar working alone. 2. ‘Three Letters to Mr. C. Wellbeloved, Tutor of the Unitarian College, York, on the Folly of separating from the Mother Church.’
He also left many unpublished works, including an Armenian and an Arabic lexicon.
[Horne's Manual of Biblical Bibliography, 1839, pp. 183, 184; Gent. Mag. 1854 pt. i. p. 437, 1855 pt. i. pp. 203–4; Whitby Gazette, 19 Dec. 1857; Church Review, 22 March 1862 pp. 175–6, 10 May p. 294; Smith's Old Yorkshire, 1882, pp. 55–6 (with portrait); Bartle's Synopsis of English History, 2nd ed. 1886, p. 296; information from the Rev. J. A. O. Oxlee, the Vicarage, Skipton Bridge, Thirsk; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 203.]
OXLEY, JOHN (1781–1828), Australian explorer, born in England in 1781, entered the royal navy, in which he saw active service in various parts of the world, and obtained a lieutenant's commission on 25 Nov. 1807. He went out to Australia, and was appointed surveyor-general of New South Wales on 1 Jan. 1812. On 6 April 1817, in company with Cunningham, king's botanist [see Cunningham, Allan, 1791-1839], Charles Frazer, colonial botanist, William Parr, mineralogist, and eight others, he started on an exploring expedition in the interior of Australia. They returned on 29 Aug. to Bathurst, having during their nineteen weeks' travel traced the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers, named the Bell and Elizabeth rivers, Molle's rivulet, and Mounts Amyott, Melville, Cunningham, Stuart, Byng, Granard, and Bauer. On 20 May 1818 Oxley started, with some companions, on a second expedition. In this remarkable journey the party traversed the whole of the country between Mount Harris and Port Macquarie, carrying a stranded boat on their shoulders ninety miles of the way, discovering and naming the Peel and Hastings rivers and Port Macquarie. The results showed the need of finding a track to the Liverpool Plains, and to the problem of many mysteriously flowing rivers added the rumour of a great inland sea. On 23 Oct. 1823 Oxley started in the Mermaid, with Lieutenant Stirling and Mr. John Uniacke, to find a site for a penal settlement north of Sydney. They examined Port Curtis on 6 Nov. and Boyne river on 11 Nov., reaching Moreton Bay on 29 Nov.; there they found a white man named Pamphlet, who gave them information which led to the discovery of the Brisbane river, on which the capital of Queensland now stands. A settlement was formed there in August 1824. On 11 Aug. 1824 Oxley was made a member of the legislative council of New South Wales. He married the daughter of James Morton of New South Wales, by whom he had a family. He died on 25 May 1828.
Oxley was author of 'Narrative of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, under the orders of the British Government, in 1817-18' (London, 1820), and of a 'Chart of Part of the Interior of New South Wales' (1822). His name has been adopted as the name of several places in New South Wales and Victoria.
[Heaton's Handbook of Australian Biogr. under 'Oxley' and 'Australian Land Explorers;' Oxley's Narrative.]
