Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bayley, Cornelius
BAYLEY, CORNELIUS (1751–1812), divine, was born in 1751 at Ashe, near Whitchurch, Shropshire. His father seems to have migrated to Manchester while Cornelius was young, and to have been a leather-breeches-maker there. Bayley was educated at the Whitchurch Grammar School, of which for a short time he acted as master. He became a methodist preacher, but afterwards took holy orders, and was the first incumbent of St. James's Church, Manchester, a ‘proprietary church,’ which he built in 1787. The degree of B.D. was conferred on him at Cambridge in 1792, and that of D.D. in 1800. In 1782 he published his Hebrew grammar, entitled ‘An Entrance into the Sacred Tongue.’ A second edition was issued after his death. He wrote notes and a preface to an edition of the ‘Homilies’ of the church, published at Manchester in 1811. His other published writings were sermons and pamphlets, one being on the ‘Swedenborgian Doctrine of the Trinity’ (1785). He died on 2 April 1812 at Manchester.
[C. Hulbert's Memoirs, 1852, p. 150; Hulbert's Shropshire Biog.; J. Harland's Manch. Collectanea, ii. 195–6; Graduati Cantab. 1856; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Primitive Gospel Ministry, by a Layman (in answer to C. B.), 1795.]