William Borlase (2 February 1696 – 31 August 1772), was a Cornish antiquary, geologist and naturalist. From 1722, he was Rector of Ludgvan, Cornwall, where he died. He is remembered for his works The Antiquities of Cornwall (1754; 2nd ed., 1769) and The Natural History of Cornwall (1758), although his plans for a parish-by-parish county history were abandoned. He was a member of the prominent Borlase family.
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Life and works
Borlase was born on 2 February 1695/6 at Pendeen, of an ancient family originating at St Wenn. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, from 1713, and in 1719 he was ordained. In 1722 he was presented to the rectory of Ludgvan, and in 1732 he obtained in addition the vicarage of St Just, his native parish. The garden of the Rectory (now known as Hogus House) was established by Borlase; during the reign of Queen Victoria the garden was further developed by a successor, Arthur Boscawen, and was known for its fine collection of trees and shrubs.
From the 1740s Methodism became influential in west Cornwall, including in Borlase's parish of St Just, and he opposed the movement in his capacity as a parish clergyman. He sought to ensure that his curates were not sympathetic to Methodism; in 1766 he wrote that he would take no curate who had "leaned to or encouraged the Methodists or their teachers".
Borlase was not, however, the magistrate "Dr Borlase" described in John Wesley's journal as acting against Methodist preachers. Pool identified that man as William's elder brother, Walter Borlase, who was both a magistrate and an LL.D. at the time; William was never a magistrate and did not receive his doctorate until more than twenty years later. The Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland likewise identifies Walter Borlase as the local magistrate who issued warrants under the vagrancy laws for the arrest of Wesley and other Methodist preachers suspected of being Jacobites. Wesley later expressed admiration for William Borlase's scholarship after reading his Antiquities of Cornwall in 1757.
In the parish of Ludgvan were rich copper works, abounding with mineral and metallic fossils, of which he made a collection, and thus was led to study somewhat minutely the natural history of Cornwall. In 1750, he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society; and in 1754 he published, at Oxford, his Antiquities of Cornwall (2nd ed., London, 1769). His next publication was Observations on the Ancient and Present State of the Islands of Scilly, and their Importance to the Trade of Great Britain (Oxford, 1756). In 1758 there appeared his Natural History of Cornwall which includes a chapter on the inhabitants and their native language (about one ninth of the whole).
He presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a variety of fossils and antiquities, which he had described in his works, and received the thanks of the university and the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Borlase was well acquainted with most of the leading literary men of the time, particularly with Alexander Pope, with whom he kept up a long correspondence, and for whose grotto at Twickenham he furnished the greater part of the fossils and minerals. He also sent collections of mineral and fossil specimens to Dr William Oliver and to a number of natural historians in Europe. Borlase also published the first scientific study of the 1761 Lisbon earthquake by recording its effects and tsunami.
Family and character
In 1724, William Borlase married Anne Smith. The couple had six sons, of whom two died in infancy. Of the remaining four, three became churchmen. Anne Borlase died in 1769. Borlase's elder brother was Walter Borlase, who served as vicar of Madron, and also as mayor of Penzance. His great-great-grandson was William Copeland Borlase (1848–1899), an antiquarian who was influenced by his ancestor's archaeological work.
Borlase was a conscientious minister to his parishioners, politically conservative, and an amateur painter. Some of his papers are preserved in Penzance at the Morrab Library.
Publications
Borlase, William (1754) Observations on the Antiquities of Cornwall. Oxford: Printed by W. Jackson. [click on Télécharger 24.pdf to download]. 2nd edition (1769): Antiquities, Historical and Monumental of the County of Cornwall. Printed by W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, for S. Baker & G. Leigh, T. Payne, B. White, London. Reprinted in 1973; London: E & W Books, ISBN 0-85409-852-6
Borlase, William (1756) Observations on the Ancient and Present State of the Islands of Scilly, and their Importance to the Trade of Great Britain. Oxford: W. Jackson
Borlase, William (1758) Natural History of Cornwall ... Oxford: printed for the author; by W. Jackson: sold by W. Sandby, at the Ship in Fleet-Street London; and the booksellers of Oxford