Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Collyer, William Bengo
COLLYER, WILLIAM BENGO (1782–1854), minister of the congregational church and religious writer, was the only surviving child of Thomas Collyer, a builder of Deptford, where he was born on 14 April 1782. After a good education at the public school belonging to the Leathersellers' Company at Lewisham, he entered the old college of Homerton as a scholar in 1798. In 1800 he began his ministry to a small congregation at Peckham, over which he was ordained in December of the following year. Under his ministry the congregation speedily increased, and after the chapel had been several times enlarged, it was in 1816 rebuilt and reopened under the name of Hanover Chapel. Previous to this, he had in 1813 received an invitation to succeed to the pulpit at Salters' Hall Chapel, which, with the consent of the congregation at Peckham, he accepted, an arrangement being made that he should occupy both pulpits. In 1808 he received the degree of D.D. from the university of Edinburgh. He died in his seventy-second year in 1854. By his wife Mary, daughter and coheiress of Thomas Hawkes of Lutterworth, he left one daughter. Besides several sermons published at different periods throughout his life, Collyer was the author of 'Fugitive Pieces for the use of Schools,' 1803; 'Hymns designed as a Supplement to Dr. Watts,' 1812; 'Services suited to the Solemnisation of Matrimony, administration of Baptism, &c., with Original Hymns,' 1837; and several series of popular lectures on scriptural subjects, including 'Lectures on Scripture Facts,' 1807, 'Scripture Prophecy,' 1809, 'Scripture Miracles,' 1812, 'Scripture Parables,' 1815, 'Scripture Doctrines,' 1818, 'Scripture Duties,' 1819, and 'Scripture Comparison,' 1823.
[Notice, with portrait, in European Mag. vol. lxxii. (1817), pp. 407–10; Gent. Mag. June 1854, vol. xli. new ser. pt. i. 655–6.]