Robert Thyer

Educated at Manchester Grammar School, he won an exhibition in 1727 to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he graduated as a BA on 12 October 1730,[1] and was later elected FSA Returning to Lancashire, Thyer was appointed as librarian of Chetham's Library in February 1732, and continued in post until 3 October 1763.

A close friend of John Byrom, he was also on good terms with the Egertons of Tatton Park, Cheshire (his wife's first husband, John Leigh (who died in 1738), was a relation of the Earls of Bridgewater); Thyer was a legatee under the will of Samuel Egerton, M.P.

Some of Thyer's manuscripts went to the Chetham Library, and many of his letters, as well as a specimen of his verse, were printed in Byrom's Remains.

[1] He was working with papers left by Butler to William Longueville, patron and literary executor, and now in the British Library (Add.

Thyer was also one of the scholars who supplied notes to Thomas Newton for his edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost.