William Conybeare (author)
William John Conybeare (1 August 1815 – 23 July 1857) was an English vicar, essayist and novelist, and the first Principal of Liverpool College. He was the son of Dean William Daniel Conybeare. He attended Westminster School, where he befriended George Cotton, who would become Bishop of Calcutta. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1833 and became a fellow in 1837.
From 1842 to 1848 he led the Liverpool Collegiate Institution (later Liverpool College). There he worked with John Saul Howson, and together they wrote Perversion: or, the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity. In Liverpool, Conybeare campaigned for better education for the middle class.
Because his health was deteriorating, he left Liverpool in 1848 and became vicar at Axminster, Devon, a post he held until 1854. He then moved to Weybridge, Surrey, where his brother-in-law Edward Rose was the parish priest. He died of tuberculosis in Weybridge in 1857 and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.
He was survived by his wife, Eliza Rose (1820–1903), and their son John William Edward Conybeare. Eliza was the granddaughter of Thomas Babington. His daughter Grace Mary Conybeare married George Campbell Macaulay, and his son John married Frances Anne Cropper, daughter of James Cropper.
Conybeare published Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social (1855) and a novel, Perversion (1856). He is best known as the co-author (with John Saul Howson) of The Life and Epistles of St Paul (1852; 2nd ed. 1856). He also wrote Church Parties, a 30,000-word essay on the different styles of Anglican churchmanship, in 1855.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:42 (CET).