An unpublished allegorical play by Birkhead, 'The Female Rebellion,' is preserved among the Tanner MSS. (466); it has little merit. In 1643 there was published at Oxford a collection of 'Verses on the death of the right valiant Sir Bevill Grenvill, knight. Who was slaine by the rebells, on Lansdowne-hill neare Bath, July 5, 1643,' 4to. Birkhead was one of the contributors to this collection, which included elegies by Jasper Mayne, William Cartwright, Dudley Digges, and others. Forty-one years afterwards, in 1684, the collection was reprinted, and Henry Birkhead, the only survivor with one exception of the thirteen contributors, addressed a long 'Epistle Dedicatory' to the Earl of Bath, son of Sir Bevill Grenvill. Wood vaguely says that after the Restoration he 'lived ... in a retired and scholastical condition,' adding that he 'was always accounted an excellent Latin poet, a good Grecian, and well vers'd in all human learning.' He died on Michaelmas Eve, 1696, and was buried at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. The professorship of poetry at Oxford was founded in 1708 from funds bequeathed by Birkhead.
[Tanner MS. 24, f. 159; Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, iv. 573-4; Wood's Hist. and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. Gutch, ii. 434; Martin's Archives of All Souls, 381; Burrows's Register of the Visitors of the University of Oxford, 1647-58 (Camden Society), pp. 43, 117; Hazlitt's Handbook; Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, ii. 285-8.]
BIRKS, THOMAS RAWSON (1810–1883), theologian and controversialist, was born on 28 Sept. 1810 at Staveley in Derbyshire. His father was a tenant farmer under the Duke of Devonshire. The family being nonconformists, young Birks was educated first at Chesterfield and then at the Dissenting College at Mill Hill. Funds were provided to send him to Cambridge. He won a sizarship and a scholarship at Trinity, and in his third year gained the chief English declamation prize. As the holder of this prize he delivered the customary oration in the college hall. The subject chosen was 'Mathematical and Moral Certainty,' and, in a letter to Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Whewell spoke very highly of this oration. In January 1834 Birks came out as second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman.
Having joined the church of England on leaving the university, Birks settled at Watton as tutor and then curate to the Rev. Edward Bickersteth [q. v.] During his stay there he devoted much time to the study of the prophetic scriptures, and took the affirmative side in the warm controversy which arose on the subject of the premillennial theory of the Lord's return. In 1843-4 Birks won the Seatonian prize for the best English poem at Trinity. Some years before he had been elected a fellow of his college. He ardently engaged in many religious controversies, and one of these, on the future of the lost, led to the severance of private friendships and religious connections. In his views on this subject he was equally opposed to the universalists and the annihilationists. In the year 1844 Birks married Miss Bickersteth, the daughter of his friend, and accepted the living of Kelshall in Hertfordshire.
In 1850 Birks published his edition of Paley's 'Horse Paulinae,' with notes and a supplementary treatise entitled ' Horæ Apostolicæ.' Two years later the work was followed by 'Horæ Evangelicæ,' and in 1853 appeared his 'Modern Rationalism' and 'The Inspiration of the Scriptures.' In 1856 Birks lost his wife, and the severity of the affliction caused the suspension of his literary labours for several years.
The year 1861, however, witnessed the publication of another of his more important works, 'The Bible and Modern Thought,' at the request of the committee of the Religious Tract Society. The author subsequently enlarged his work by a series of notes on the evidential school of theology, the limits of religious thought, the Bible and ancient Egypt, the human element in Scripture, and Genesis and geology.
Birks left Kelshall in 1864, and in 1866 accepted the important charge of Trinity Church, Cambridge. In the latter year he married a second time. By his first marriage he had eight children, one of whom, his eldest son, also attained distinction, succeeding him as a fellow of Trinity. At the time of the disestablishment of the Irish church Birks came forward with a lengthy treatise on 'Church and State,' which was an elaboration of a treatise written thirty years before, and now republished as bearing upon the ecclesiastical change proposed by Mr. Gladstone and carried into effect by parliament. Birks was installed honorary canon of Ely Cathedral in 1871, and in 1872, on the death of the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, he was elected professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge. This appointment led to a stormy controversy. It was regarded as a retrograde step by the large body of liberal thinkers who sympathised with the views of Mr. Maurice. While pastor at Cambridge, Birks laboured assiduously in giving religious instruction to the undergraduates, to older members of the university, and also to the residents in the town. In the year of
