Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Salter, Samuel
SALTER, SAMUEL (d. 1778), master of the Charterhouse, was the son of Archdeacon Samuel Salter (d. 1756?) by Anne Penelope, daughter of John Jeffery, archdeacon of Norwich.
The father was admitted to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1697 (B.A. in 1700, M.A. in 1704, and D.D. in 1728), was vicar of Thurgarton, Norfolk, from 1705 to 1709, rector of Erlham from 1712 to 1714, vicar of St. Stephen's, Norwich, from 1708, prebendary of Norwich from 13 March 1728, and archdeacon of Norfolk from 22 Nov. 1734. He also held the benefice of Bramerton, Norfolk. According to Sir John Hawkins (Life of Johnson, 2nd edit. p. 220), he left Norwich at the age of seventy, owing to some domestic disagreements, and, settling in London, became a member of the Rambler Club, meeting weekly at the King's Head in Ivy Lane. Dr. Johnson, Hawkins, and Hawkesworth were among the nine members. The club lasted from 1749 till 1756 (cf. Boswell, ed. Hill, i. 190 n.) He finally retired to a boarding-house in Bromley kept by Dr. Hawkesworth's wife. He is stated to have died in 1756. Hawkins says he was a man of general reading and a good conversationalist. Noble mentions an etching after a portrait by Vivares. Cole says he was one of the tallest men he had seen.
The son, Samuel, was educated at the free school, Norwich, and at the Charterhouse. He was admitted at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, on 30 June 1730, and graduated B.A. in 1733 and M.A. in 1737. From 1735 to 1738 he was a fellow of the college. He boasted in later life of his intimacy with Bentley during this period. Afterwards he became domestic chaplain to the first Lord Hardwicke and tutor to his son. He contributed while at Cambridge to the ‘Athenian Letters,’ which are mainly the work of the latter [Yorke, Philip, second Earl of Hardwicke], and were first published in 1741. Through the influence of his patron, Salter was named prebendary of Gloucester on 21 Jan. 1738, rector of Burton Coggles, Lincolnshire, in 1740, and prebendary of Norwich, where he was installed by his father on 9 March 1744. In 1750 he also became minister of Great Yarmouth, and in the following July received the Lambeth degree of D.D. from Archbishop Herring. In 1756 Salter was further presented to the rectory of St. Bartholomew's, near the Royal Exchange, by Lord Hardwicke, then lord chancellor. He had been preacher at the Charterhouse since January 1754, and became master in November 1761. He died in London on 2 May 1778, and was buried, by his own wish, in the common burial-ground at the Charterhouse. He married, on 2 Nov. 1744, Elizabeth Secker, a relative of the archbishop, and left, with two daughters, a son Philip, who was vicar of Shenfield, Essex.
Salter was a classical scholar, and versed in modern literature. He preached extempore, and two of his sermons were printed. He also published: 1. ‘A Complete Collection of the Sermons and Tracts of Dr. Jeffery, with Life,’ 1751, 2 vols. 8vo. 2. ‘Some Queries relating to the Jews, occasioned by a late Sermon,’ 1751. 3. ‘The Moral and Religious Aphorisms on B. Whichcote;’ a new edit. 1753, 8vo. 4. ‘Extracts from the Statutes of the House and Orders of the Governors respecting the Pensions of Poor Brethren’ (Charterhouse), a large folio sheet, 1776. He revised some of the Rev. H. Tayler's ‘Letters of Ben Mordecai’ in 1773–4, and in 1777 corrected for Nichols the proof-sheets of Bentley's ‘Dissertation on Phalaris,’ in which the peculiarities of spelling and punctuation provoked criticism (Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 25). In Dawes's ‘Miscellanea Critica’ (1781, pp. 434–9) are reprinted some philological and Homeric exercises by Salter which he privately printed in 1776. Some of Salter's anecdotes concerning Bentley were printed in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1779, p. 547, cf. ib. p. 640; Swift, Works, ed. Scott, i. 98–100; Gent. Mag. 1790, i. 157, 352; Tatler (annotated), 1786, v. 145).
[For the elder Salter, see Noble's Continuation of Granger's Biogr. Hist. iii. 105; Masters's Hist. of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, ed. Lamb, p. 486; Luard's Grad. Cant.; Blomefield's Norfolk, iii. 646, 671, iv. 150, 514, viii. 175; Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 221 n., ix. 779, 787. For the Master of the Charterhouse, see Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 221–5, and Illustrations, i. 142, 150, 154, iii. 44, viii. 79, 84, 160; Add. MS. 5880, f. 91 (Cole); Charterhouse Registers (Harl. Soc.); Harris's Life of Hardwicke, i. 290; Blomefield's Norfolk, iii. 663; Le Neve's Fasti Angl. Eccles. i. 450; Masters's Hist. of Corpus Christi, ed. Lamb, p. 393; Watt's Bibl. Brit. i. 829; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.]