William Harris (historian)

William Harris, D.D. (1720 – February 1770) was an English dissenting minister and historian who wrote a series of historically significant biographies of the House of Stuart kings of 17th-century Britain.

Harris was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and was educated at a dissenting academy in Taunton, Somerset, under Thomas Amory and Henry Grove. He became a lay-preacher at age 18, and was ordained in 1741. He married Elizabeth Bovet of Honiton in Devon and became preacher at a Presbyterian chapel in the nearby village of Luppitt, where he was to remain for the rest of his life.

In 1765, Harris's friend and patron the wealthy philanthropist and fellow-libertarian Thomas Hollis helped secure for him the degree of Doctor in Divinity from the University of Glasgow and wrote of him: “All his works have been well received, and those who differ from him in principle still value him in point of industry and faithfulness.” London bookseller Andrew Millar may have been asked by Hollis to recommend Harris to the post. Millar’s business and family connections linked Hollis, Harris, and Principal William Leechman (whose sermons were sold by Millar), while another of Millar’s associates recalled that Hollis’s recommendation to Leechman had been made “by the means of a friend”.

Harris became ill and died, aged 49, before he was able to write a biography of the last of the Stuart kings, James II of England. He is buried in St Michael’s Churchyard at Honiton and his will is preserved in The National Archives in London.

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