William Samuel Powell, D.D. (1717–1775) was an eighteenth century academic and priest, most notably Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1765 until 1766; and Archdeacon of Colchester from 1766 until his death. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1764.
Life
He was born on 27 September 1717 in Colchester, the elder son of the Rev. Francis Powell and his wife Susan Reynolds, daughter of Samuel Reynolds (died 1694), Member of Parliament for . He was educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School, under Palmer Smythies. He was admitted in 1734, and matriculated 1738, at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1739, M.A. in 1742, B.D. in 1749, and D.D in 1749.
Academic career
Powell was successively Fellow, tutor, taxor and Master of St John's.
In 1741 Powell became private tutor to Charles Townshend, second son of Charles Townshend, 3rd Viscount Townshend. At the end of that year he was ordained deacon and priest, and was presented on 13 January 1742 by Lord Townshend to the rectory of Colkirk in Norfolk, with Stibbard. In 1742 he returned to college life, and, after reading lectures for two years as assistant tutor, was promoted in 1744 to be principal tutor, and acted in 1745 as senior taxor of the university. In Cambridge his main friends were Thomas Balguy and Richard Hurd. William Mason, who was then an undergraduate at St John's tutored by Powell, referred in a contemporary poem to "gentle Powell's placid mien."
On 3 November 1760 Powell became a senior Fellow of his college, and in 1761, when he had inherited the property of his cousin, he left Cambridge and took a house in London. He resigned his fellowship in 1763.
On 25 January 1765 Powell was unanimously elected Master of St John's College, Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his life; there were numerous competitors for the post, but he was backed by the influence of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle. The following November, he succeeded to the vice-chancellorship of the university, and in December 1766 he was appointed by the crown to the archdeaconry of Colchester.
In 1768 Powell claimed the college rectory of Freshwater, Isle of Wight, worth £500 per annum, which was in the option of the master, and resigned the benefices of Colkirk and Stibbard; the Fellows disliked this act. He gave money to the college when it was intended to rebuild the first court and to lay out the gardens under the care of Capability Brown. He guarded the college revenues. In his first year he established college examinations, drawing up the papers himself, and attending the examinations; but he opposed John Jebb's proposal for annual examinations of the whole university. He helped several undergraduates financially and gave prizes at his own expense; he did not allow any student to pass without examination in one of the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles. He himself attended chapel without a break through the whole year, at six o'clock in the morning. His manners, however, were "rigid and unbending."
About 1770 Powell suffered a stroke of apoplexy, and he died in his chair, from a fit of the palsy, on 19 January 1775. He was buried in the college chapel on 25 January. Over his vault was placed a flat blue stone, with an epitaph by Balguy. He was unmarried.
Works
While at Cambridge, Powell twice provoked serious controversy.
There was printed in 1757, and reprinted in 1758, 1759, and 1772, a sermon, entitled A Defence of the Subscriptions required in the Church of England, which he had preached before the university on Commencement Sunday. He contended that the 39 Articles were general and indeterminate, and "left room for improvements in theology". These views were widely criticised, with Powell's major public opponent being Francis Blackburne, who published his severe Remarks on the sermon in 1758. The Lucasian professorship was vacant in 1760, and among the candidates were Edward Waring of Magdalene College and William Ludlam of St John's College. Waring distributed a portion of his Miscellanea Analytica, and to support Ludlam of his own college, Powell attacked it anonymously in Observations on the First Chapter of a Book called "Miscellanea Analytica", 1760. To a reply by Waring, Powell retorted in an anonymous Defence of the Observations, which Waring answered in a Letter.
Powell also wrote: