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| "Samuel Squire," artist unknown |
Samuel Squire was born and baptized at Warminster, Wiltshire
in 1714. He was the son of the town druggist or apothecary, Thomas, and his
wife, Susan. On 23 June 1730, he was admitted to St. John’s College, a
constituent college of the University of Cambridge, and became a Somerset
scholar. Since Squire was admitted pensioner, which meant he was paying his own
tuition and fees, he started tutoring his fellow students as a way to help
alleviate the cost and kept extensive account books to track his spending and
income. During his school years, Squire studied an eclectic array of languages,
including Greek, Latin, Old English, Hebrew, Icelandic, and Gothic. He quickly
graduated BA in 1734 and then MA in 1737. He was also a recipient of the Craven
Scholarship and was elected a fellow at St. John’s in 1735. He finally received
his Doctor of Divinity in 1749.
Although
Squire was set up for a successful career at the church, he first chose to go
on a year-long tour before shouldering his ecclesiastical responsibilities.
Although most young men at the time embarked on a continental tour, Squire
chose to remain in Great Britain. It appears during this exploration he
acquired a personal prejudice toward things Scottish, which can be seen in his
later writings. In 1747, he refers to Scotland as “’the land of mountains,
bareness and rebellion’” (Browning).
After
gallivanting around Europe for a year, Squire was ordained Deacon in London on
17 June 1739 and so began his clerical career. Squire became an ordained priest
in Norwich on 31 May 1741 and became vicar of Minting in Lincolnshire. For a
period he served as the domestic chaplain for Dr. John Wynne in 1742. From 1743
to 1761 he served as the archdeacon of Bath and prebendary of Wells Cathedral
in Wells. The duke of Newcastle appointed Squire his chaplain in 1743. He was
rector of Toppesfield, Essex in 1749 but left in 1750 to be rector of St.
Anne’s in Soho, London from 1750 to 1766. Not long after this appointment,
Squire became vicar of Greenwich in London in 1751, which he held until his
death in 1766. Once he had secured this living in Greenwich, he married a woman
named Charlotte, who was the daughter of Thomas Ardesoif. The couple would have
four children, the youngest of which, Samuel, published a biography of his
father in 1817. In 1757, he became part of the royal court when he was
appointed clerk of the closet to George, prince of Wales. In 1760, he was
appointed Dean of Bristol and reached the height of his clerical career on 24
May 1761 when he was appointed bishop of St. David’s in Pembrokeshire (this promotion
was likely due to the influence of James Stuart, earl of Bute and advisor to
the prince of Wales).
Squire’s
career is an example of the Whig system of patronage for they were infamous for
their use of patronage to further their political interest and intelligence.
Reed Browning states, “The political realities of the Hanoverian age specified
that a cleric ambitious for a successful ecclesiastical career should provide useful
support to the Whig cause.” By attaching himself early on to prominent Whigs,
such as the Duke of Newcastle, Squire put himself on a path toward clerical
prominence. His position as a fellow at Cambridge allowed him to provide the
duke of Newcastle intel on the political conspiracies plotted at the university
throughout the 1740s. Yet, Squire’s position also required him to make public
Whig statements, which he accomplished in several essays published periodically
(also during the 1740s).
The first essay, Letter to a Young Gentleman of Distinction (1740),
he advocated for a standing army, as opposed to a militia, as the best form of
protection against Spain and France. The
Important Questions Discussed (1746) he wrote in defense of the placement
of Britain’s troops on the continent. In a show of support for the Pelham
ministry and its Whig principles, he wrote A
Letter to a Tory Friend (1746). In 1748,
he also published two essays in response to Jacobite historian, Thomas Carte. Carte’s
published works were in support of the Stuart house and Squire attempted use
natural law theory in his essay, Remarks
upon Mr. Carte’s Specimen, to tear down the Jacobite’s argument. A Letter to John-Trot Plaid was a
satirical piece that mocked Carte’s tendency to describe the past in terms of
the present.
Due to his expansive language
studies while at St. John’s, when not publishing political pieces Squire wrote
essays on language and history. His study of Greek led him to write Inquiry into the Origin of the Greek Language
(1741), in which he presented Greek as a descendant of Hebrew. He also
wrote an unpublished work on the Saxon language. Squire held an enthusiasm for
ancient civilizations and wrote Ancient
History of the Hebrews Vindicated in 1741 commending Pentateuch’s works and
published A new edition of Plutarch’s
Discourse on Iris and Osiris with his own commentary.
Some of his greatest works were
essays he wrote on the English constitution, An Enquiry into the Foundation of the English Constitution (1745)
and its sequel Historical Essay on the
Balance of Civil Power in England (1748). An Enquiry examined the Anglo- Saxon constitution and concluded
that it possessed many similarities to the current English constitution, both
of which “existed to defend liberty, property, and justice” (Browning). According
to Reed Browning, “An Enquiry had a
political message: since the Court Whigs had the truest understanding of the
constitution, they deserved the kingdom’s trust as guardians of English
liberties” (Browning, 14). The Historical
Essay was published to further this point, however, by the 1750s Squire had
begun to revert from these earlier views. As research on Medieval England expanded
and accumulated, Squire began to see inconsistencies with his earlier arguments
and ceased to publish historical writings after 1748.
While clerk of the closet for the
Prince of Wales, he wrote two Christian apologetics: Indifference of Religion Inexcusable (1758) and The Principles of Religion Made Easy to
Young Persons (1763). He had written a memoir of Thomas Herring, archbishop
of Canterbury, which was published as an appendix in a book of Herring’s
sermons. The Royal Society recognized his work with language and history and inducted
Squire as a fellow in May 1746, stating he was “A Gentleman well known to the
Learned World by Several valuable Treatises.” He was also elected a fellow on
the Society of Antiquaries in 1748.
The fact that a clergyman spent
part of his career as a pamphleteer on behalf of the Whigs was not unusual. The
pamphleteering culture in the mid-eighteenth century could be brutal on both
sides and the Court Whigs relied on the talents of the educated churchmen who
understood how to organize textual and historical evidence. In exchange for
their service, the clergymen were usually rewarded with positions that advanced
them on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In light of this, Squire could easily be
seen as an unrelenting “climber” but perhaps his actions were in accordance
with the time. The mid-eighteenth century was an “era of patronage,” where men
who advanced positions usually did so through the favor of an influential individual.
Although his cotemporaries had harsh words for his pathway of advancement,
Squire was still considered a generous man who acted in a way a clergyman was
expected.
Sources:
“Squire, Samuel.” A Cambridge Alumni Database. Accessed July 13, 2015. http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search.pl?sur=&suro=c&fir=&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&tex=%22SKR730S%22&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50.
“The Library Archives and Catalogue.” Royal Society. Accessed July 13, 2015. https://collections.royalsociety.org/DServe.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=4&dsqSearch=%28%28text%29%3D%27Squire%27%29/
Browning, Reed. “Samuel Squire: Pamphleteering Churchman.” Eighteenth Century Life, vol. 5 no. 1,
1978. https://illiad.luc.edu/illiad/IAL/illiad.dll?Action=10&Form=75&Value=403999.
Browning, Reed. “Squire,
Samuel (bap. 1714, d.
1766).” Reed Browning In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26192 (accessed July 14, 2015).
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