HURD, Richard (1720-1808), bishop of Winchester, was born at Congreve, in the parish of Penkridge, Staffordshire, where his father was a farmer, on January 13, 1720. He received his early education at the grammar school of Brewood, in his native county, and made such progress in his studies that in October 1733 he was admitted a sizar of Emmanuel College, Oxford; he did not begin residence, however, till a year or two afterwards. In 1739 he took the degree of B.A., and in 1742 he was ordained deacon, and for a short time had charge of the parish of Reymerston, between Thetford and Norwich; but, having in the same year proceeded M.A. and been elected fellow of his college, he returned to Cambridge early in 1743. While residing there he was ordained priest in 1744, and in 1748 he published his Remarks on a late Book, entitled an Enquiry into the Rejection of the Christian Miracles by the Heathen, by William Weston, B.D., 1746. This controversial treatise, which was characterized by considerable learning and ingenuity, was followed in 1749 by an edition of the Ars Poetica of Horace (<?, Horatii Flacci Epistola ad Pisones, with an English Commentary and Notes), which, as Gibbon has remarked, fully proved the title of its author to “the great but prostituted name of critic,” and may still be read with interest, less, however, as an exposition of the original than as containing “a more valuable and better digested collection of criticisms than Horace ever wrote or intended to write.” In 1750 Hurd was, through the recommendation of his friend Warburton, appointed one of the preachers at Whitehall; and in 1751 he published Q. Horatii Flacci Epist. ad Augustum, with an English Commentary and Notes, justly held by Gibbon to be superior in merit to the edition of the Ars ...Poetica.
In 1756 he accepted the college living of Thurcaston, Leicestershire, in the studious retirement of which he wrote and published a volume of Dissertations (“ On the Province of the Drama,” “On Poetical Imitation,” and “On the Marks of Imitation,” 1757), and another entitled Moral and Political Dialogues (“On Sincerity in the Commerce of the World,” “On Retirement,” “On the Age of Queen Elizabeth,” and “On the Constitution of the English Government,” 1759). The latter has proved the most popular of his writings, and was chiefly instrumental in procuring for him at a later period of his life the royal favour. In 1766 he was appointed preacher of Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1767 he became archdeacon of Gloucester; his elevation to the see of Lichfield and Coventry followed in 1774, and in 1776 he was selected to be preceptor of the prince of Wales and the duke of York. In 1781 he was translated to Worcester, and in 1783, on the death of Dr Cornwallis, he was pressed to accept the primacy, but declined it as “a charge not suited to his temper and talents, and much too heavy for him to sustain, especially in these times.” He died May 28, 1808.
Besides various sermons, charges, and other compositions of a more or less occasional character, Hurd published, in addition to the works already mentioned, a Dissertation on the Delicacy of Friendship (1755), a severe attack on Jortin, by whom Warburton had been assailed; Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762); Dissertation on the Idea of Universal Poetry (1762); Dialogues on Foreign Travel (1764); and Discourse by way of Preface to the Quarto edition of Bishop Warburton's Works, containing some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of the Author (1794). Remarks on Hume's Natural History of Religion (1757), a controversial tract which caused considerable irritation to that philosopher, was the joint production of Hurd and Warburton. The collected works of Hurd appeared in an edition of 8 vols. 8vo, in 1811; his Memoirs by Kilvert, were published in 1860.
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