William Vincent

William Vincent (2 November 1739 – 21 December 1815) was Dean of Westminster from 1802 to 1815. Biography Vincent born on 2 November 1739 in Limehouse Street Ward, London, was the fifth surviving son of Giles Vincent, packer and Portugal merchant, by Sarah (Holloway). Theological career William was admitted at Westminster School as a 'town boy' in 1747; he became a king's scholar in 1753, and in 1757 was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating as BA in 1761, he returned to Westminster as usher. He became second master in June 1771, and in the same year was made chaplain in ordinary to the king. He graduated MA in 1764 and DD in 1776, and two years later received the vicarage of Longdon, Wiltshire, which, however, he exchanged within six months for the rectory of All Hallows, Thames Street. In 1784 he became sub-almoner to the king. He shared the tory views of his family, and in 1780 published anonymously a Letter in reply to a sermon preached at Cambridge by Richard Watson. A sermon preached by him in 1792 at St. Margaret's, Westminster, for the benefit of the greycoat charity, attracted attention, and when reprinted in the following year by the Patriotic Association against republicans and levellers, twenty thousand copies were sold. Headmaster of Westminster School Meanwhile, in 1788, Vincent had been appointed headmaster of Westminster. He held the position for fourteen years, respected alike for both scholarship and character. His swinging pace, sonorous quotations, and especially his loud call of "Eloquere, puer, eloquere" ("Speak out, boy!") dwelt long in the memory of his scholars. His name is perpetuated by his enclosure of part of the nearby Tothill Fields for his old school as a playground, called Vincent Square after him. As the waste marshlands of the Tuttle or Tothill Fields were beginning to be built over, Vincent simply employed a man with a horse to plough a ditch around an area of some eleven acres; his receipt for the fee is in the Abbey archives.