William Crowe (poet)

William Crowe
William Crowe, 1808 caricature by Robert Dighton
Born	1745 Midgham, Berkshire
Died	February 9, 1829(1829-02-09) Queen Square (Bath)
Alma mater	New College, Oxford
Genre	Poetry

William Crowe (1745–1829) was an English poet, the son of a carpenter and educated as a foundationer at Winchester College. He went to Oxford, where he became Public Orator.

Crowe was a clergyman and Rector of Alton Barnes in Wiltshire. He wrote a smooth, but somewhat conventional poem, Lewesdon Hill in 1789, edited William Collins's Poems in 1828, and lectured on poetry at the Royal Institution. His poems were collected in 1804 and 1827.

William Crowe was born at Midgham, Berkshire, and baptised 13 October 1745. His father, a carpenter by trade, lived during Crowe's childhood at Winchester, where the boy occasionally sang as a chorister in Winchester College chapel. At the election in 1758, he was placed on the roll for admission as a scholar at the college, and was duly elected a "poor scholar". He was fifth on the roll for New College, Oxford at the election in 1764, and succeeded to a vacancy on 11 August 1765. After two years of probation he was admitted as Fellow in 1767, and became a tutor of his college. On 10 October 1773, he took the degree of B.C.L.

Crowe continued to hold his fellowship until November 1783, although, according to Thomas Moore, he had several years previously married "a fruitwoman's daughter at Oxford" and had become the father of several children. In 1782, on the presentation of his college, he was admitted to the rectory of Stoke Abbott in Dorset, which he exchanged for Alton Barnes in Wiltshire in 1787, and on 2 April 1784 he was elected the public orator of Oxford University. This position and the rectory of Alton Barnes, Crowe retained until his death in 1829, and the duties of oratorship he discharged until he was advanced in years.