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 with a second class in 1808, and became an M.A. in 1816. From 1812 to 1816 he held the Rawlinsonian professorship of Anglo-Saxon at the university. Ordained deacon in 1816, Dyson became successively the incumbent of Nunburnholme in Yorkshire, Nasing in Essex, and finally of Dogmersfield, near Winchfield, Hampshire, to which living he was presented in 1836. There he built a rectory and a new church of great beauty. He was an admirable parish priest, and a man of deep learning, though he shrank from authorship. He contributed four poems, under the signature of ‘D.,’ to a volume entitled ‘Days and Seasons, or Church Poems for the Year,’ Derby, 1845. He died at his rectory, 24 April 1860.

[Guardian, 2 May 1860; Honours Register of the University of Oxford; Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1858.]  DYSON, JEREMIAH (1722–1776), civil servant and politician, has been tersely described as ‘by birth a tailor, by education a dissenter, and from interest or vanity in his earlier years a republican.’ His father, whether a tailor or not, left considerable means to his son, who, it is established by many witnesses, professed in early life the extremest principles of whiggism. For two years he studied at the university of Edinburgh, and ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle bears testimony to his ‘perfect idea of the constitution of the church of Scotland, and the nature and state of the livings of the clergy.’ On 4 Oct. 1742 he matriculated at Leyden (, Index of English Students at Leyden, p. 28, sub ‘Dijson’), with the object of prosecuting the study of civil law, and eighteen months later Mark Akenside [q. v.], still engaged in learning medicine, joined him there, thus renewing an acquaintance which had been originally established at Edinburgh. They lived together while in Holland, and returned together to London, when Dyson was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and obtained a position as ‘subaltern clerk’ in the House of Commons. After a brief residence at Northampton, Akenside settled at Hampstead, whereupon Dyson bought a house at the Golder's Hill extremity of that suburb, in order that the physician might become acquainted with the better class of its residents. The two friends were dissimilar in manners and style; their only taste in common at this time was their advanced liberalism. In spite of differences of character their affections were so profound that Dyson, ‘with an ardour of friendship that has not many examples,’ says Dr. Johnson, secured, on the failure of Akenside's practice at Hampstead, for the man he loved a small house in Bloomsbury Square, and allowed him 300l. a year until he could live by his practice. Although Dyson was endowed with a competency, he did not live an idle life, and on 10 Feb. 1748 the speaker announced to the members of the House of Commons the resignation by Nicholas Hardinge of his place as their clerk; five days later Dyson, who had purchased the succession for 6,000l., was called in and took his seat in that office. The consideration money was large, and as the clerk possessed the right of appointing a deputy to officiate in his stead, and of nominating the clerk assistant and all the outdoor clerks, it had been the practice for the holder of the higher office to recoup himself some parts of his expenditure by the sale of these subordinate positions. This practice was condemned by Dyson, who appointed all his subordinates on their merits, and without any pecuniary consideration. The post of clerk assistant would have realised 3,000l., but it was gratuitously conferred on Hatsell, who in gratitude dedicated to Dyson in 1776 his collection of ‘Cases of Privilege of Parliament’ (now quoted as the first volume of the well-known ‘Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons’), and recorded in the preface his patron's ‘universal knowledge upon all subjects which relate to the history of parliament.’ With the accession of George III, both Dyson and Akenside changed sides in politics, and showed the proverbial zeal of neo-converts on behalf of their new creed. Dyson resigned the clerkship of the House of Commons in August 1762 to enter upon political life, and in December of that year was returned to parliament by the borough of Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. This constituency he represented until the dissolution in 1768, when he was elected by the twin borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, for which he sat until the close of that parliament in 1774, and was then chosen by the voters of Horsham as their representative. He was at first considered the devoted supporter of George Grenville, but his position was in reality among the members known as ‘the king's friends.’ Office after office was conferred upon him, and as he brought to his side a profound knowledge of parliamentary forms and precedents (for he was jocularly said to know the journals of the commons by heart), and was endowed with a subtleness of apprehension which gained him the title of ‘the jesuit of the house,’ his promotion was fully justified by his merits. For a short period (13 Oct. to 25 Nov. 1761) Dyson was a commissioner to execute the office of keeper of the privy seal; from 29 May 1762 to 5 April 1764 he acted as joint secretary to the treasury and secretary to the first lord; from