- 1736, 8vo.
- ‘Four Discourses upon … the Lord's Supper,’ &c., 1737, 8vo. Besides other writings, Wilson gives a list of thirty-eight single sermons, the earliest in 1702, including eleven funeral and three ordination sermons.
[Funeral sermons by Grosvenor, 1740, and Lardner, 1740; Protestant Dissenters' Magazine, 1799, p. 467; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808 i. 66 sq., 1814 iv. 195; Calamy's Own Life, 1830, ii. 466; Cat. of Edinburgh Graduates, 1858, p. 239; Jeremy's Presbyterian Fund, 1885, pp. 113 sq.]
HARRIS, WILLIAM (1720–1770), biographer, born at Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 1720, was the son of a nonconformist tradesman of that city. He was educated for the ministry at Grove and Amory's academy at Taunton, Somerset. He first officiated to a congregation at Looe in Cornwall, and was afterwards invited to another at Wells, Somersetshire, where he was ordained on 15 April 1741. He now married Miss Elizabeth Bovet of Honiton, Devonshire, and removed to that town. His ministerial labours for the rest of his life were confined to a very small congregation at Luppitt in the neighbourhood. Being desirous of commemorating the struggles of the nonconformists in the cause of religious and civil liberty, he wrote biographies of the Stuart family and of Cromwell. His preliminary attempt, a ‘Life of Hugh Peters,’ was published without his name in 1751. In this and his subsequent biographies he professed to follow ‘the manner of Mr. Bayle,’ illustrating the text with copious notes. In 1753 appeared his ‘Life of James I,’ 2nd edit. 1772; in 1758 that of Charles I, 2nd edit. 1772; in 1762 that of Cromwell, 2nd edit. 1772; and in 1766 that of Charles II, in two 8vo volumes. It was his design to have completed the series with a life of James II, but he was interrupted by an illness which ended fatally on 4 Feb. 1770 (Gent. Mag. xl. 95). His works were collected in five vols. 8vo, 1814, to which his life is prefixed. He wrote in an unattractive style, and is not impartial; but his notes are full of information from sources not easily accessible. The degree of D.D. was conferred on him by the university of Glasgow in 1765, at the instance of Thomas Hollis, who, along with Thomas Birch, assisted him in his histories. By will he gave his collection of historical documents to Dr. William's Library, then in Redcross Street. He left no children; his wife survived him.
[Life referred to; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iii. 9; T. Amory's Nature of Sound Doctrine (Ordination Charge), 1741; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xvii. 182–184; will in P. C. C. 104, Jenner.]
HARRIS, WILLIAM (1776?–1830), independent minister, born about 1776, was pastor of the meeting-house in Downing Street, Cambridge, from about 1805, until he was appointed divinity tutor at the Hoxton academy in 1818. He became minister of the meeting-house in Church Street, Stoke Newington, at Michaelmas 1820, and subsequently theological tutor of Highbury College. He died on 3 Jan. 1830, aged 53, and was buried in Bunhill Fields (J. A. Jones, Bunhill Memorials, p. 78). He was LL.D. He published ‘Grounds of Hope for the Salvation of all dying in infancy: an essay,’ 1821, and many other tracts and sermons. He is to be distinguished from William Harris (fl. 1840), minister of the congregational church at Wallingford in Berkshire, author of numerous pamphlets and discourses.
[Gent. Mag. vol. c. pt. i. p. 280; William Robinson's Stoke Newington, p. 218.]
HARRIS, Sir WILLIAM CORNWALLIS (1807–1848), major H.E.I.C. Bombay engineers, and African traveller, son of James Harris of Wittersham, Kent, was baptised on 2 April 1807. Robert Harris (1809–1865) [q. v.] was a younger brother. After preparation at a military college Harris was appointed to the Bombay establishment (engineers) in 1823. His commissions were dated, second lieutenant 18 Dec. 1823, lieutenant 1 May 1824, captain 8 Aug. 1834, and major 16 Aug. 1843. He was appointed assistant-superintending engineer at Bombay 9 Sept. 1825, executive engineer at Candeish in November 1825, and at Deesa in October 1830. In 1836 Harris was invalided to the Cape for two years by a medical board. South Africa at that time was attracting some notice, owing to the recent exodus of the Dutch colonists, and their early conflicts with the Zulu hordes of Dingaan. On the voyage to the Cape, Harris, who from a very early age had, his friends said, ‘been afflicted with shooting-madness,’ made the acquaintance of Richard Williamson, of the Bombay civil establishment, a noted shikary, and the two arranged an expedition into the interior in quest of big game. After conferring with Dr. Andrew Smith, the African naturalist, then just returned from up-country, Harris and his friend started by ox-wagon from Algoa Bay, by way of Somerset and the Orange River, meeting with large game in districts long since cleared, and travelled in a north-easterly direction until they reached the kraals of the famous Matabele chief Moselikatze. That potentate proved friendly, and permitted the travellers to return to the colony by a new and previously closed route. Their absence from India ex-
