John Whalley (theologian)

John Whalley (1699 – 12 December 1748) was an English academic at the University of Cambridge, clergyman, and poet.

[1] He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1715, graduating B.A.

He was appointed a Fellow of Pembroke College in 1721, Taxor in 1730, and served as Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge 1733–48, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge 1738–39, and Regius Professor of Divinity 1742–48.

[2] Ordained deacon in 1724 and priest in 1725, he held the following livings in the church:[2] Whalley was also a poet, who composed Cuddy, why sitten wee thus mute, ne cast (1738), a rustic elegy for Queen Caroline imitating the style of Edmund Spenser.

[3] Whalley was Master of Peterhouse when the poet Thomas Gray was a student then a Fellow there; Gray wrote that Whalley hated him, and had described him publicly as "a kind of atheist".