The son of a schoolmaster, Maurice was educated at the Wesleyan seminary at Bristol before entering University College, Oxford in 1774, aged 19 (B.A.

[1] Maurice, an English divine and scholar, noted particularly for his studies of the antiquities of India, was born about 1755 at Hertford, where his father was then head-master of the Christ's Hospital school.

After his father's death the family was impoverished by an unfortunate marriage of the widow, and his education proceeded irregularly till Dr. Parr, on opening his school at Stanmore, was prevailed on to receive him as a pupil, and treated him with great generosity and kindness.

After taking his degree of B.A., he was ordained by bishop Lowth, and held for some time the curacy of the large parish of Woodford, in Essex, which in 1785 he resigned for a chapel at Epping, in order to obtain greater leisure for study.

The irreligious spirit of the French Revolution, alarming Maurice's mind, induced him to remodel his first work after it was nearly completed, and to devote a considerable proportion of it to dissertations on the Hindu mythology.

In 1798, earl Spencer presented him to the vicarage of Wormleighton, in Warwickshire; next year he was appointed assistant librarian in the British Museum; in 1800 bishop Tomline obtained for him the pension that had been held by the poet Cowper; and in 1804 he received from the lord chancellor the vicarage of Cudham, in Kent.