two in the navy [see Collier, Sir Francis Augustus] and two in the army. During his stay on shore previous to the American war he adapted for the stage a version of 'Beauty and the Beast,' which, under the name of 'Selima and Azor,' was favourably received at Drury Lane in 1776. He wrote Also a very full journal of a visit to Paris and Brussels in the summer of 1773, published by his granddaughter, Mrs. Charles Tennant, in 1865, under the title of 'France on the Eve of the Great Revolution.'
[Naval Chronicle (with what seems a good portrait), vol. xxxii.; Ralfe's Naval Biog. i. 357; Charnock's Biog. Nav. vi. 490.]
COLLIER, GILES (1622–1678), divine, was the son of Giles Collier of Pershore, Worcestershire, in which county he was born in 1622. In Lent term 1637 he became either a battler or a servitor at New Inn Hall, Oxford, taking the degrees of B.A. and M.A. in 1641 and 1648 respectively. When he left the university he became a presbyterian, subscribing in 1648 to the covenant, and was afterwards presented to the livings of Blockley and Evesham in Warwickshire. In 1654 he was made assistant to the commissioners acting within that county for the ejection of 'scandalous, ignorant, and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters,' but on the Restoration he retained his livings by complying with the Act of Uniformity, to the disappointment of the neighbouring loyalists, who disliked his meddlesome and somewhat vindictive nature. He died at Blockley in July 1678, and was buried there. His works are:
- 'Vindiciæ Thesium de Sabato, or a Vindication of certain passages in a sermon on the Morality of the Sabbath, from the exceptions to which they were subjected by Edw. Fisher, esq., in his book called "A Christian Caveat,'" &c.
- 'Appendix wherein is briefly examined the bold assertion of Edw. Fisher, esq., viz. there is an equal antiquity for the observance of the 25 Dec. as for the Lord's Day,' 1653.
- 'Answer to Fifteen Questions lately published by Edward Fisher, esq., and the suggestions therein delivered against suspended ignorant and scandalous persons from the Lord's Supper,' &c.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 1171; Chambers's Worcestershire Biography.]
COLLIER, JEREMY (1650–1726), nonjuror, son of Jeremy Collier, was born at Stow Qui, or Quire, in Cambridgeshire, on 23 Sept. 1650. His father was a divine and considerable linguist, and some time master of the free school at Ipswich in the county of Suffolk. … His mother was Elizabeth Smith of Qui in Cambridgeshire, where her family were possessed of a considerable interest. … He was educated under his father at Ipswich, from whence he was sent to Cambridge, and admitted a poor scholar of Caius College, under the tuition of Mr. John Ellys. His admission bears date 10 April 1669, in the eighteenth year of his age. He took the degree of B.A. in 1672-3, and that of M.A. in 1676, being ordained deacon on 24 Sept. of the same year by Dr. Peter Gunning, bishop of Ely, and priest on 24 Feb. 1677 by Dr. Henry Compton, bishop of London. Having entered into priest's orders he officiated for some time at the Countess Dowager of Dorset's, at Knowle in Kent, from whence he removed to a small rectory at Ampton, near St. Edmund's Bury in Suffolk, to which he was presented by James Calthorpe, esq., and instituted … 25 Sept. 1679. After he had held this benefice six years, he resigned it, and came to reside in London, in 1685, and was some little time after made lecturer at Gray's Inn. But the Revolution coming on the public exercise of his function became impracticable' (thus far, from the Biographia Britannica, was, except some dates, drawn up by Collier himself). Collier took an active part in the discussion that arose on the question of the vacancy of the throne, and Dr. Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury [q. v.], having published his 'Enquiry into the State of Affairs' (1688), he answered it by a short pamphlet entitled 'The Desertion discuss'd in a Letter to a Country Gentleman' in which he argues that the king had sufficient grounds for apprehension, and therefore his withdrawal was not an abdication; that it was impossible for him to leave any representatives behind him; and that it was not consonant either with law or nature to pronounce the throne void under such circumstances. This pamphlet was answered by Edmund Bohun [q. v.] It gave such offence to the government that Collier was imprisoned in Newgate for some months, but was at last released without being brought to trial. In the course of the next three years he wrote several more political pamphlets on questions concerning submission to the supreme power, the character of a king de facto, the duty of churchmen with regard to those bishops who occupied the sees of nonjurors, and the like. His pamphlets are clear, brilliant, and incisive, the work of 'a great master of sarcasm, a great master of rhetoric' (Macaulay). In the autumn of 1692 information was laid before the Earl of Nottingham, then secretary of state, that Collier and another nonjuring clergyman named Newton were gone to Romney Marsh, and as this was
