William Crowe (poet) - Life

Life

William Crowe was born at Midgham, Berkshire, and baptised 13 October 1745. His father, a carpenter by trade, lived during Crowe's childhood at Winchester, where the boy occasionally sang as a chorister in Winchester College chapel. At the election in 1758, he was placed on the roll for admission as a scholar at the college, and was duly elected a "poor scholar". He was fifth on the roll for New College, Oxford at the election in 1764, and succeeded to a vacancy on 11 August 1765. After two years of probation he was admitted as Fellow in 1767, and became a tutor of his college. On 10 October 1773, he took the degree of B.C.L.

Crowe continued to hold his fellowship until November 1783, although, according to Tom Moore, he had several years previously married "a fruitwoman's daughter at Oxford" and had become the father of several children. In 1782, on the presentation of his college, he was admitted to the rectory of Stoke Abbas in Dorset, which he exchanged for Alton Barnes in Wiltshire in 1787, and on 2 April 1784 he was elected the public orator of Oxford University. This position and the rectory of Alton Barnes Crowe retained until his death in 1829, and the duties of oratorship he discharged until he was advanced in years.

According to the Clerical Guide Crowe was also rector until his death at Llanymynech in Denbighshire, from 1805, and incumbent of Saxton in Yorkshire, valued at about £80 a year, from the same date. A portrait of Crowe is preserved in New College library. A grace for the degree of D.C.L. was passed by his college on 30 March 1780, but he does not seem to have proceeded to take it.

Crowe and Samuel Rogers were close friends. After a short illness, he died at Queen Square, Bath, Somerset on 9 February 1829, aged 83.