William Whitehead

WHITEHEAD, WILLIAM (1715-1785), English poet-laureate, son of a baker, was born at Cambridge, and baptized on the 12th of February 1715. His father had extravagant tastes, and spent large sums in ornamenting a piece of land near Grant-chester, afterwards known as " Whitehead's Folly." William was his second son, and through the patronage of Henry Bromley, afterwards Lord Montfort, was admitted to Winchester College. In 1735 he entered Clare Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, and became a fellow in 1742. At Cambridge Whitehead published an epistle "On the Danger of writing Verse"1 and some other poems, notably an heroic epistle, Ann Boleyn to Henry the Eighth (1743), and a didactic Essay an Ridicule (1743). In 1745 he became tutor to Viscount Villiers, son of the earl of Jersey, and took up his residence in London. He produced two tragedies: The Roman Father (Drury Lane, 24th of February 1750), and Creusa, Queen of Athens (Drury Lane, aoth of April 1754). The plots are based respectively on the Horace of Corneille, and the Ion of Euripides. In June 1754 he went abroad with Lord Villiers,