William Cleaver

William Cleaver (1742–1815) was an English churchman and academic, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, and bishop of three sees.

William Cleaver, who was the headmaster of a private school at Twyford in Buckinghamshire, and his wife Martha Lettice Lushden.

At Bangor in 1802, he cautioned an old servant who let apartments against a stray lodger who the bishop thought might be no better than a swindler.

This suspicious personage was Thomas De Quincey, who mentioned the incident in his English Opium-eater.

Among his writings were De Rhythmo Graecorum, 1775, and Directions to the Clergy of the Diocese of Chester on the Choice of Books, 1789.