Thompson, William

(?1712-1766)

   Born in Westmoreland, the son of Francis Thompson, vicar of Brough, he graduated M.A. from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1738-39 and was elected a fellow of Queen's, and became rector of Hampton Poyle with South Weston in Oxfordshire. In 1745 he published "Sickness, a Poem" a tribute to the memory of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, both recently dead (see entries). The subject of his verse tragedy Gondibert and Bertha (1751) was taken from Sir William D'Avenant's (see entry) poem "Gondibert." In 1756, on the presentation to Oxford University of the Pomfret statues (which had been part of the Arundelian collection of marbles), he wrote Gratitude, a poem in honor of the donor, Henrietta Louisa Fermor, countess dowager of Pomfret. Some of his other poems: "An Hymn to May," "Beauty and Musick," "Cupid Mistaken," "The Bee," "The Bower," "The Magi," "The Nativity," "Written in the Holy Bible."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. EighteenthCentury English Verse. Dennis Davison, ed. Penguin Books, 1988. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Poems on Several Occasions by William Thompson. Oxford, 1757. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org).