He was born in the town of Beverley in Yorkshire, attended Richmond School, and matriculated at Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1816.
[1] Beverley was born into a Quaker family, but in 1836-1837, in the Beaconite Controversy, he was one of the figures who followed Isaac Crewdson in resigning from the Society of Friends.
As the Quakers did not practise baptism, he was baptised by the Brethren at Oxford in October 1838; Henry Bellenden Bulteel performed the service.
The book contains criticism of natural selection: It is to be observed that the two grand principles of the theory are avowedly metaphors.
Neither are they only now and then, and by way of illustration, introduced, though even that would scarcely be admissible in handling the great revelation of the existence and origin of beings; but they occur in almost every page [in On the Origin of Species], to the exclusion of other terms — so that from first to last we are led by a metaphor at every step, as the poor belated traveller is sometimes led by Will-o’-the-wisp into the fatal morass.