Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackall, Samuel
BLACKALL, SAMUEL (d. 1792), divine, was the son of the of the Rev. Theophilus Blackall, chancellor of the diocese of Exeter, and a grandson of Dr. Oflspring Blackall, bishop of Exeter. He received his education at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow and mathematical tutor (B.A. 1760, M.A. 1763, B.D. 1770). Cole, in his manuscript 'Athenæ Cantabrigienses,' says: 'This gent. in 1771, on Mr. Hubbard, a fellow of his college, and one to whom he had great obligations, preparing a Grace, or voting for it, contrary to the inclination and disposition of this person, publicly hissed him in the Senate House, which was a method so unusual and thought so indecent, that even he himself was, or pretended to be, ashamed of it, and made excuses about it. On the petitioners against the Liturgy and Thirty-nine Articles applying to parliament for relief, he was a busy and active petitioner and . . . wrote a spirited pamphlet against Dr. Hallifax's three sermons. He is a little black man, of no humane aspect, and carries his malignancy in his forehead; he is lame of one leg by some accident, and a great rower on the water; a lively and ingenious man, plays well on the harpsichord, sings well, and draws and etches not amiss. He is son to a dignitary of Exeter, and probably a degenerate grandson to a quondam bishop of that see. I think the Grace Mr. Hubbard opposed was that brought in by Mr. Jebb to abolish subscription in the university.' Blackall is mentioned in a silly poem called 'Pot Fair' (1780). On 12 July 1786 he was admitted to the valuable rectory of Loughborough in Leicestershire on the presentation of his college. He died there on 8 May 1792, and a monument to his memory was placed in the parish church of Sidmouth, Devonshire. Besides publishing some detached sermons he took part in the 'confessional controversy' by addressing 'A Letter to Dr. Hallifax upon the subject of his three discourses preached before the University of Cambridge, occasioned by an attempt to abolish subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles,' 1772.
[Addit. MS. 5864, f. 65; Cantabrigienses Graduati (1787). 40; Gent. Mag. xxvii. 531; xlii. 265, 446, 516, 572, xliii. 69. 1. 225, lxii. (i.) 483; Dyer's Hist. of the Univ. of Cambridge, ii. 390; Lond. Mag. 1757, p. 563; Lysons's Devonshire, 447; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. pt. ii. 900.]