He attended Christ Church, Oxford, receiving degrees in 1779 and in 1782, and succeeded his father as rector of St Mary's, Hanwell in 1785, having "distinguished himself very early in life by his uncommon proficiency in Hebrew literature.
In a different vein he published a novel entitled The Affecting History of Louisa: The Wandering Maniac, or, Lady of the Hay-Stack; so called, from having taken up her residence under that shelter, in the village of Bourton, near Bristol, in a state of melancholy derangement; and supposed to be a natural daughter of Francis I, emperor of Germany, a real tale of woe.
Partly translated from an anonymous French work, L'inconnue, histoire véritable it was an attempt to prove that a mysterious refugee at Bristol was identical with Félix-Julienne de Schonau, otherwise Freulen, who claimed to be the natural daughter of the emperor Francis I.
[2] He also frequently contributed to The Gentleman's Magazine, which in 1805 published an amusing Latin translation by him of a popular comic song, Unfortunate Miss Bailey, composed to be sung by Thomas Moore at a fashionable masquerade.
It is described by Nikolaus Pevsner's Buildings of England as "a peach of an early C19th Gothic thatched cottage with two pointed windows, a quatrefoil, and an ogee arched door, all on a minute scale.