Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Robinson, Thomas (1749-1813)
ROBINSON, THOMAS (1749–1813), divine, was born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, on 10 Sept. 1749, in the house adjoining that in which Archbishop Potter was born. His father, James Robinson, was a hosier there. He was sent at an early age to the grammar school of his native town, whence he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1768. In April 1771 he was elected a scholar of his college, in 1772 he graduated as seventh wrangler (M.A. 1775), in October of the same year he was made a fellow of his college, and in 1773 he gained one of the members' prizes for a Latin essay. In or about 1772 he was ordained to the joint curacies of Witcham and Wichford in the Isle of Ely, but from 1773 to 1778 he was afternoon lecturer at All Saints', Leicester, and chaplain to the infirmary. In 1778 he was appointed to a lectureship newly founded in St. Mary's Church, Leicester. Later on in the same year he was made vicar of St. Mary's. The state of Leicester at the time, and the improvement wrought in it by Robinson, are forcibly described by Robert Hall in a eulogium delivered before the Auxiliary Bible Society at Leicester, shortly after Robinson's death, and subsequently printed. At St. Mary's in 1784 Robinson commenced the series of discourses on sacred biography by which he is best known. The earliest appeared in the ‘Theological Miscellany’ of 1784, and the whole series was eventually printed under the title of ‘Scripture Characters’ (1793, 4 vols. 12mo; 10th edit. 1815; abridgment, 1816). He wrote also ‘The Christian System Unfolded, or Essays on the Doctrines and Duties of Christianity’ (1805, 3 vols. 8vo), and some shorter pieces. A collective edition of his ‘Works’ was published in 8 vols. London, 1814. Robinson died at Leicester on 24 March 1813, and was buried on the 29th in the chancel of St. Mary's, his funeral sermon being preached by Edward Thomas Vaughan [q. v.], who published a memoir of Robinson, with a selection of his letters, in 1815. He was twice married. By his first wife, who died in 1791, he had a son Thomas (1790–1873) [q. v.], master of the Temple. His second wife, whom he married in 1797, was the widow of Dr. Gerard, formerly warden of Wadham College, Oxford.
[Vaughan's Account; Memoir prefixed to the first volume of Scripture Characters, 1815; Peacock's Wakefield Grammar School, 1892, p. 190; Lupton's Wakefield Worthies, 1864, pp. 197–206.]