Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/151

  of ‘The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark: including the Lives of their Ministers,’ 1808, 2 vols. 8vo. He was then living at Camden Town, from which he removed to Dorset, and again to Burnet, near Bath, where he did some farming. Here he had a congenial neighbour in [q. v.]; they exchanged copies of collections relative to dissenting antiquities. A third volume of his ‘Dissenting Churches’ appeared in 1810; a fourth in 1814, with a preface (1 May 1814) showing his personal interest in the older types of nonconformity. The later volumes of his work exhibit a more softened attitude towards the free-thinkers of dissent than is apparent in the earlier ones; his facts are always given with scrupulous fairness. By 1818 he was ready to publish a fifth and completing volume if five hundred subscribers could have been obtained; but it never appeared.

In 1822 he announced a life of [q. v.], of whose publications he had made a much larger collection than had previously been brought together. His ‘Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe,’ 1830, 3 vols. 8vo, is heavy, but allowed by Macaulay to be ‘excellent’ (Edinb. Rev. October 1845). He had projected a supplementary work dealing with Defoe's literary antagonists. About 1834 he moved from Burnet to Pulteney Street, Bath. During the progress of the Hewley suit [see ], Wilson's judgment went entirely with the defendants, and his religious views, probably under Hunter's influence, underwent a considerable change in the unitarian direction.

Wilson died on 21 Feb. 1847. At the time of his death he was one of the eight registered proprietors of the ‘Times.’ He was twice married, and left a son, Henry Walter Wilson of the Inner Temple, and a daughter, married to Norman Garstin, colonial chaplain at Ceylon. His library was sold (5–17 July) by Leigh, Sotheby, & Wilkinson; the 3,438 lots realising 1,993l. 3s. 6d., the Defoe collection going to America for 50l. His coins and prints (sold 26 July) produced 270l. 15s. and 19l. 14s. 6d. respectively. He bequeathed his manuscript collections for the history of dissent to Dr. Williams's Library (now in Gordon Square, London). A complete list of these, by the then librarian, Richard Cogan, is printed in the ‘Christian Reformer’ (1847, p. 758). The most important articles are the notes in an interleaved copy of his ‘Dissenting Churches,’ and (separately) a complete topographical index to the same; five folios relating to dissenting churches; a folio of dissenting records; two folios and six quartos of biographical collections. Several of his manuscripts are transcripts from originals also preserved in Dr. Williams's Library.



WILSON, WILLIAM (1690–1741), Scots divine, born at Glasgow on 19 Nov. 1690, was the son of Gilbert Wilson (d. 1 June 1711), proprietor of a small estate near East Kilbride, who underwent religious persecution and the loss of his lands during the reign of Charles II. His mother, Isabella (d. 1705), daughter of Ramsay of Shielhill in Forfarshire, was disowned by her father for becoming a presbyterian. William, who was named after William III, was educated at Glasgow University. He was laureated on 27 June 1707, and was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Dunfermline on 23 Sept. 1713. On 21 Aug. 1716 he was unanimously called to the new or west church at Perth, and on 1 Nov. he was ordained. He soon obtained great influence in the town by the disinterestedness of his conduct, refusing to contest at law his claim to his grandfather's estate, and declining to receive his stipend because the town council desired to pay it out of money placed in their hands for charitable purposes. On the commencement of the ‘marrow controversy’ [see, 1677–1732] in 1717 he sympathised with the ultra-Calvinistic views of Boston and [q. v.], concurring with these ministers on 11 May 1721 in the ‘representation’ against the condemnation of ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinitie’ by the general assembly. In 1732 a further cause of difference arose. The general assembly passed an act ordaining that when the right of presentation was not exercised by the patron, the ministers should be elected by the heritors and elders, and not by the congregation. This displeased Erskine, Wilson, and others, who regarded the congregational right as sacred, and Erskine preached a vehement sermon on the subject, for which he was censured by the synod of Perth and Stirling. The censure was confirmed by the general assembly, and on 14 May 1733 Wilson joined with and  [q. v.] in a protest. The assembly, indignant at the terms of the protest, required a retractation, and failing to obtain it, the standing commission suspended Wilson and his three associates on 9 Aug. 1733, refused to hear a representation offered by Wilson and Mon-