Nathaniel Forster (scholar)

Nathaniel Forster D.D. (1718–1757) was an English cleric, and a classical and biblical scholar.

Forster was born on 3 February 1718 at Stadscombe, in the parish of , Devon, of which his father, Robert Forster, was then minister. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. John Tindal, vicar of Cornwood in the same county. She was sister of the Rev. Nicholas Tindal, translator of Rapin's History of England, and niece of Dr. Matthew Tindal, author of Christianity as Old as the Creation. He received a basic education at Plymouth, where his father had moved on being appointed lecturer of St. Andrew's Church. After time at the grammar school of that town under the Rev. John Bedford, he was sent in 1732 to Eton, and at the same time entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, in order to entitle him to the benefit of an exhibition of £40 a year. He spent about sixteen months at Eton, and then went to his college at Oxford, where he became a pupil of Dr. Radcliff. On 13 June 1733 he was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He proceeded B.A. in 1735, and M.A. 10 February 1738–9, was elected a fellow of Corpus in 1739, and graduated B.D. in 1746 and D.D. in 1750.

In 1749 Forster was presented by Lord-chancellor Hardwicke, on the recommendation of Thomas Secker, to the small rectory of Hethe, Oxfordshire. In 1750 he became domestic chaplain to Joseph Butler; bishop Butler died in his arms at Bath, Somerset. Forster returned to his college for a short time, and in July 1752 was appointed one of the chaplains to Thomas Herring, archbishop of Canterbury. In the autumn of 1754 the archbishop gave him the valuable vicarage of Rochdale, Lancashire. Not popular at Rochdale, Forster did not stay long. The lord chancellor promoted him on 1 February 1754–5 to a prebendal stall in Bristol Cathedral.

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