WHATELY, RICHARD (1787–1863), archbishop of Dublin, fourth son of Joseph Whately of Nonsuch Park, Surrey, by Jane, daughter of William Plumer of Gilston Park and Blakesware Park, Hertfordshire (cf. Lamb, Last Essays of Elia), was born in the house of his maternal uncle, William Plumer, in Cavendish Square, London, on 1 Feb. 1787. The father, Joseph Whately (d. 1797), was youngest brother of the horticulturist and politician Thomas Whately (d. 1772) [q. v.] He was vicar of Widford, Hertfordshire, 1768–90, and prebendary of Bristol 1793–7. He was also lecturer at Gresham College. He received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford University on 9 July 1793, and died on 13 March 1797, having had issue, besides his sons, five daughters, of whom the youngest died on 17 Aug. 1866, widow of Sir David Barry [q. v.] [see further, as to the Whately family, under Whately, Thomas; and Whately, William].
Richard was born so delicate that he was not expected to live, and it was only very gradually that he gathered strength. Thrown in consequence upon his own resources, he pored eagerly over his books, scrutinised with intense curiosity the animal life in his father's garden, performed veritable feats of mental arithmetic, and essayed theoretic flights in ethics and politics. His extraordinary powers of calculation he lost before he was in his teens, and, though he always retained the faculty of close observation, its exercise gradually ceased to afford him exceptional delight. Only in the sphere of ratiocination was the promise of his boyhood fulfilled. Shortly before his father's death he was placed at a private school, which had a large West Indian connection, near Bristol [cf. Hinds, Samuel]. The stories of West Indian life which he there heard enlarged his horizon and helped to draw him out of himself. The regular routine of work and play subdued his excessive precocity and braced his health, so that he grew up tall, strong, and well-proportioned, though fonder of fishing or a solitary ramble than of ordinary diversions. From school he went to Oxford, where he matriculated, from Oriel College, on 6 April 1805, graduated B.A. (double second class) in 1808, and proceeded M.A. in 1812. In the meantime (1810) he had taken the English essay prize (subject, ‘The Arts in the cultivation of which the Ancients were less successful than the Moderns’) and been elected fellow of his college (1811). In due course he took holy orders, and in 1825 the degrees of B.D. and D.D.
With Edward Copleston [q. v.], to whom he owed much, and Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) [q. v.] and Nassau William Senior [q. v.], who owed much to him, Whately formed lifelong friendships. College life was eminently congenial to him. Communicative by nature, he found teaching a delight, and by no means confined himself within the limits of the ordinary curriculum. A pupil to him was an ‘anvil’ on which to beat out his ideas, and he had the tact to avoid dogmatism and, more Socratico, by stimulus and suggestion to elicit the learner's latent powers. This method he commonly practised during his early morning walks, in which he preferred byways to highways, and would sometimes make straight across country, scorning all impediments. No don was ever less donnish. He revelled in setting conventions at nought; and in the summer evenings would frequently be seen by the riverside exhibiting to a crowd of interested bystanders the cleverness of his favourite spaniel Sailor, whom he had trained to climb a tree and thence drop into the water. In the common-room his great argumentative powers found abundant play in the society of Copleston, Edward Hawkins (1789–1882) [q. v.], John Davison [q. v.], John Keble [q. v.], and Thomas Arnold. He lacked, however, the subtle sympathy and intuitive discernment necessary for wide and deep personal influence; and as a thinker was rather acute, active, and versatile than profound. Though kind at heart he was rough in exterior, and made only a few intimate friends, whose admiration he returned to excess. His limitations were as conspicuous as his powers. A few favourite authors, Aristotle, Thucydides, Bacon, Shakespeare, Bishop Butler, Warburton, Adam Smith, Crabbe, and Sir Walter Scott,
