Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Budworth, William
BUDWORTH, WILLIAM (d. 1745), schoolmaster, was the son of the Rev. Luke Budworth, vicar of Longford, Derbyshire, and afterwards rector of the parishes of Tillesham and Wellingham in Norfolk. He was educated in the free grammar school at Market Bosworth under the famous Anthony Blackwall [q. v.], and thence proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge (B.A. 1720, M.A. 1726). Soon after graduating he was appointed master of Rugeley school in Staffordshire, and on the death of Dr. Hillman he became head-master of the free grammar school at Brewood. He obtained the vicarage of Brewood on the presentation of the dean of Lichfield, and he was presented to the donative chapel of Shareshill, near Brewood, by Sir Edward Littleton, bart., who entrusted to him the education of his nephew and presumptive heir. In 1736 he would have engaged the celebrated Samuel Johnson as an assistant in this school had he not been apprehensive that the paralytic affection under which the great philologist laboured through life might have made him the object of ridicule among the scholars. One of Budworth's pupils was Richard Hurd, afterwards bishop of Worcester, who says he ‘possessed every talent of a perfect institutor of youth in a degree which I believe has been rarely found in any of that profession since the days of Quinctilian.’ He died in 1745.
[Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iii. 332–55, 759, vi. 469, 470; Carlisle's Grammar Schools, ii. 476; Kilvert's Life of Bishop Hurd; Boswell's Life of Johnson.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.41
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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| 226 | ii | 13 | Budworth, William: for Shareshull read Shareshill |