Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkshaw, Benjamin
HAWKSHAW, BENJAMIN (d. 1738), divine, was born in Dublin, and entered Trinity College in 1687. He left Ireland upon the revolution, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge; graduated B.A. there in 1691, and subsequently returned to Dublin, where he proceeded B.A. in 1693 and M.A. two years afterwards. He took orders, and was appointed to the parish of St. Nicholas-within-the-Walls at Dublin. He died in 1738. He was author of an octavo volume entitled ‘Poems upon Several Occasions,’ which was ‘printed by J. Heptinstall for Henry Dickinson, Bookseller in Cambridge,’ in 1693. In the dedicatory letter to ‘the Learned and Ingineous Dr. Willoughby,’ prefixed to the volume, the poet describes his effusions as ‘the essays but of a very young pen, a few by-thoughts in my vacancies from Irish studies.’ He also published in 1709 ‘The Reasonableness of constant Communion with the Church of England represented to the Dissenters.’
[Ware's Writers of Ireland, p. 291; Cat. Huth Libr.; Cat. of Grad. Univ. Dubl.; Grad. Cantabr.]