As late as 1712 the house at Littlebury and the ‘Water Theatre’ were maintained as shows by Winstanley's widow, and exhibited at a charge of twelvepence a head (Notes and Queries, 8th ser. ii. 466–7; Essex Review, 1893, ii. 63).
[Arch. Publ. Society's Dictionary; Smeaton's Edystone Lighthouse; Worth's History of Plymouth, 1890, pp. 146–7.]
WINSTANLEY, JOHN (1678?–1750), verse-writer, seems to have been an Irishman, and was born about 1678 (he himself states that he was sixty-seven years of age in 1745; Poems, 1751). Nothing is known of his career beyond the fact that he died in 1750, as stated in the preface to the second series of his poems, published under the editorship of his son in Dublin in 1751. He is described on the title-pages of his volumes as a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, but he is not mentioned in Todd's ‘List of Graduates.’ His verse, which is often amusing and clever, seems to have escaped the attention of writers upon the eighteenth-century Irish writers. There is a fine engraved portrait of Winstanley prefixed to his ‘Poems written occasionally,’ Dublin, 1742, 8vo; among the subscribers were Swift, the Earl of Roscommon, Pope, and Colley Cibber.
[O'Donoghue's Poets of Ireland, pp. 262–3; O'Donoghue's Humour of Ireland.]
WINSTANLEY, THOMAS (1749–1823), scholar, born in 1749 at Winstanley in the parish of Wigan, Lancashire, was the son of John Winstanley of Winstanley. He entered Manchester grammar school on 25 June 1765, and matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 24 March 1768, graduating B.A. on 10 Oct. 1771, M.A. on 17 June 1774, B.D. on 6 Dec. 1798, and D.D. on 11 Dec. of the same year. He was elected a fellow of Hertford College, and on the death of Thomas Warton (1728–1790) [q. v.] he was elected Camden professor of history in 1790. In the same year he was presented by Sir John Honeywood to the living of Steyning in Sussex, which he resigned in 1792. On 17 May 1794 he was collated to the prebendal stall of Caddington Major in St. Paul's Cathedral, which he resigned in 1810, and in 1797 he was elected principal of St. Alban Hall, Oxford, on the death of Francis Randolph. On 3 April 1812 he was instituted vicar of the united parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Clement's, Rochester, and in 1814 he was chosen Laudian professor of Arabic. Winstanley was a distinguished scholar and well versed in modern languages. In 1780 he published at the Clarendon Press ‘Ἀριστοτέλους περἰ Ποιητικῆς: Aristotelis de Poetica Liber’ (Oxford, 8vo), with a Latin version, various readings, an index, and notes. This edition, which was based on the version published in 1623 by Theodore Goulston [q. v.], long remained a text-book in the university. Winstanley also edited the works of Daniel Webb [q. v.], under the title of ‘Miscellanies’ (London, 1802, 4to). Nearly the whole edition was destroyed by fire on 8 Feb. 1808. Winstanley died on 2 Sept. 1823. He had four sons: Thomas, Henry, Frederick, and William. His portrait in oils is in possession of his descendants.
[Gent. Mag. 1823, ii. 643; Setton's Lancashire Authors, 1876; Le Neve's Fasti Eccles. Angl., ed. Hardy; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Admission Reg. of Manchester School (Chetham Soc.), i. 134–5, ii. 277; Hennessy's Novum Repert. Eccles. Londin.; Foster's Index Eccles.]
'WINSTANLEY', WILLIAM (1628?–1698), compiler, born about 1628, was second son of William Winstanley of Quendon, Essex (d. 1687), by his wife Elizabeth. Henry Winstanley [q. v.] was his nephew. William was sworn in as a freeman of Saffron Walden on 21 April 1649. He was for a time a barber in London (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 763), but he soon relinquished the razor for the pen. 'The scissors, however, he retained, for he borrowed without stint, and without acknowledgment also, from his predecessors,' Much of his literary work commemorates his connection with Essex. He published under his own name a poem called 'Walden Bacchanals,' and he wrote an elegy on Anne, wife of Samuel Gibs of Newman Hall, Essex (Muses' Cabinet). There is little doubt that most of the almanacs and chapbooks issued from 1662 onwards under the pseudonym of 'Poor Robin' came from his pen. He was a staunch royalist after the Restoration, although in 1659 he wrote a fairly impartial notice of Oliver Cromwell (cf. England's Worthies). 'He is a fantastical writer, and of the lower class of our biographers; but we are obliged to him for many notices of persons and things which are recorded only in his works' (Granger, Biog. Hist. of Engl. 5th ed. v. 271), His verse is usually boisterous doggerel in the manner of John Taylor (1580–1653) [q. v.] the water-poet. Winstanley was buried at Quendon on 22 Dec. 1698. He was twice married; he published an elegy on his first wife Martha, who died in January 1652-3 (Muses' Cabinet, p. 35). His second wife, Anne, was buried at Quendon on 29 Sept.
His compilations, some of which are now rare books, were:
- 'The Muses Cabinet, stored with Variety of Poems,' London, 1655, 12mo, dedicated to William Holgate;
