Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/371

 assist him in the duties of the port as captain of the Trident. With Ball and his successors, he remained in the Trident till December 1815, when he was appointed to the Aquilon, in which he returned to England in April 1816. He was nominated a C.B. in June 1815. He had no further service and died on 18 Aug. 1831.



VINCENT, THOMAS (1634–1678), nonconformist divine, second son of John Vincent and elder brother of Nathaniel Vincent [q. v.], was born at Hertford in May 1634. After passing through Westminster school, and the grammar school at Felsted, Essex, he entered as a student at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1648, matriculated 27 Feb. 1650–1, and graduated B.A. 16 March 1651–2, M.A. 1 June 1654, when he was chosen catechist. Leaving the university, he became chaplain to Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester [q. v.] In 1656 he was incorporated at Cambridge. He was soon put into the sequestered rectory of St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street, London (he was probably ordained by the sixth London classis), and held it till the uniformity act (1662) ejected him. He retired to Hoxton, where he preached privately, and at the same time assisted [q. v.] in his school at Bunhill Fields. During the plague year (1665) he preached constantly in parish churches. His account of the plague in ‘God's Terrible Voice in the City by Plague and Fire,’ 1667, 8vo, is very graphic. Subsequently he gathered a large congregation at Hoxton, apparently in a wooden meeting-house, of which for a time he was dispossessed. He did not escape imprisonment for his nonconformity. He died in his prime on 15 Oct. 1678, and was buried (27 Oct.) in Cripplegate churchyard. His funeral sermon was preached by Samuel Slater [q. v.]

Among his publications were, besides many sermons: Posthumous was
 * 1) ‘A Spiritual Antidote for a Dying Soul,’ 1665, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘The Foundation of God standeth Sure,’ 1668, 8vo; against  [q. v.], the quaker.
 * 3) ‘Wells of Salvation Opened,’ 1669, 8vo.
 * 4) ‘Fire and Brimstone,’ 1670, 8vo.
 * 1) . ‘Holy and Profitable Sayings,’ 1680, broadsheet.



VINCENT, WILLIAM (1739–1815), dean of Westminster, born on 2 Nov. 1739 in Limehouse Street Ward, London, was the fifth surviving son of Giles Vincent, packer and Portugal merchant, by Sarah (Holloway).

William was admitted at Westminster school as a ‘town boy’ in 1747; he became a king's scholar in 1753, and in 1757 was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating as B.A. in 1761, he returned to Westminster as usher. He became second master in June 1771, and in the same year was made chaplain in ordinary to the king. He graduated M.A. in 1764 and D.D. in 1776, and two years later received the vicarage of Longdon, Wiltshire, which, however, he exchanged within six months for the rectory of All Hallows, Thames Street. In 1784 he became sub-almoner to the king. He shared the tory views of his family, and in 1780 published anonymously a ‘Letter’ in reply to a sermon preached at Cambridge by (1737–1816) [q. v.] A sermon preached by him in 1792 at St. Margaret's, Westminster, for the benefit of the greycoat charity, attracted attention, and when reprinted in the following year by the Patriotic Association against republicans and levellers, twenty thousand copies were sold.

Meanwhile, in 1788, Vincent had been appointed headmaster of Westminster. He held the position with credit for fourteen years, respected alike for both scholarship and character. His swinging pace, sonorous quotations, and especially his loud call of ‘Eloquere, puer, eloquere’ (‘Speak out, boy!’) dwelt long in the memory of his scholars; and his name is perpetuated by that part of Tothill Fields which his influence preserved for his old school as a playground, being called after him Vincent Square. In his love for the rod he resembled Busby, and he expelled Robert Southey [q. v.] in 1792 for his authorship of the ‘Flagellant.’ The particular attention which he devoted to the religious education of his pupils rendered him well qualified to answer the attacks of [q. v.], master of the Temple, and [q. v.], bishop of Meath, who had charged headmasters with neglecting this branch of their duties. Vincent's ‘Defence of Public Education,’ issued as a reply to the latter in