Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/64

 Royal Family under Walker's command were valued at about 400,000l.

After the peace Walker commanded a ship in the North Sea trade, but either lost or squandered the money he had made in the Royal Family. He got involved, too, in some dispute with the owners about the accounts, and was by them imprisoned for debt shortly after the outbreak of the seven years' war. How long he was kept a prisoner does not appear, but he had no active employment during the war. He died on 20 Sept. 1777.

[Voyages and Cruises of Commodore Walker during the late Spanish and French Wars (Dublin, 1762); Laughton's Studies in Naval History, p. 225.]

 WALKER, GEORGE (1734?–1807), dissenting divine and mathematician, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne about 1734. At ten years of age he was placed in the care of an uncle at Durham, Thomas Walker (d. 10 Nov. 1763), successively minister at Cockermouth, 1732, Durham, 1736, and Leeds, 1748, where Priestley describes him as one of ‘the most heretical ministers in the neighbourhood’ (, Priestley, 1831, i. 11). He attended the Durham grammar school under Richard Dongworth. In the autumn of 1749, being then ‘near fifteen,’ he was admitted to the dissenting academy at Kendal under Caleb Rotherham [q. v.]; here, among the lay students, he met with his lifelong friend, John Manning (1730–1806). On Rotherham's retirement (1751) he was for a short time under Hugh Moises [q. v.] at Newcastle-on-Tyne. In November 1751 he entered at Edinburgh University with Manning, where he studied mathematics under Matthew Stewart [q. v.], who gave him his taste for that science. He removed to Glasgow in 1752 for the sake of the divinity lectures of William Leechman [q. v.], continued his mathematical studies under Robert Simson [q. v.], and heard the lectures of Adam Smith [q. v.], but learned more from all three in their private conversation than their public prelections. Among his classmates were Newcome Cappe [q. v.], Nicholas Clayton [q. v.], and John Millar (1735–1801) [q. v.], members with him of a college debating society. Leaving Glasgow in 1754 without graduating, he did occasional preaching at Newcastle and Leeds, and injured his health by study. At Glasgow he had allowed himself only three hours' sleep. He was recovered by a course of sea bathing. In 1766 he declined an invitation to succeed Robert Andrews [q. v.] as minister of Platt Chapel, Manchester, but later in the year accepted a call (in succession to Joseph Wilkinson) from his uncle's former flock at Durham, and was ordained there in 1757 as ‘spiritual consul’ to a ‘presbyterian tribe.’

At Durham he finished, but did not yet publish, his ‘Doctrine of the Sphere,’ begun in Edinburgh. With the signature P.M.D. (presbyterian minister, Durham) he contributed to the ‘Ladies' Diary’ [see ], then edited by Thomas Simpson (1710–1761) [q. v.] He left Durham at the beginning of 1762 to become minister at Filby, Norfolk, and assistant to John Whiteside (d. 1784) at Great Yarmouth. Here he resumed his intimacy with Manning, now practising as a physician at Norwich. He began his treatise on conic sections, suggested to him by Sir Isaac Newton's ‘Arithmetica Universalis,’ 1707. He took pupils in mathematics and navigation. Through Richard Price (1723–1791) [q. v.] he was elected fellow of the Royal Society, and recommended to William Petty, second earl of Shelburne (afterwards first Marquis of Lansdowne) [q. v.], for the post of his librarian, afterwards filled by Joseph Priestley [q. v.], but declined it (1772) owing to his approaching marriage. He accepted in the same year the office of mathematical tutor at Warrington Academy, in succession to John Holt (d. 1772; see under ). Here he prepared for the press his treatise on the sphere, himself cutting out all the illustrative figures (twenty thousand, for an edition of five hundred copies). It appeared in quarto in 1775, and was reissued in 1777. Joseph Johnson [q. v.] gave him for the copyright 40l., remitted by Walker on finding the publisher had lost money. The emoluments at Warrington did not answer his expectation. He resigned in two years, and in the autumn of 1774 became colleague to John Simpson (1746–1812) at High Pavement chapel, Nottingham.

Here he remained for twenty-four years, developing unsuspected powers of public work. He made his mark as a pulpit orator, reconciled a division in his congregation, founded a charity school (1788), and published a hymn-book. His colleagues after Simpson's retirement were (1778) Nathaniel Philipps (d. 20 Oct. 1842), the last dissenting minister who preached in a clerical wig (1785), Nicholas Clayton (1794), William Walters (d. 11 April 1806). In conjunction with Gilbert Wakefield [q. v.], who was in Nottingham 1784–90, he formed a literary club, meeting weekly at the members' houses. Wakefield considered him as possessing ‘the greatest variety of knowledge, with the most masculine understanding’ of any man he ever