Francis Thompson, vicar of Brough in Westmoreland, NW England, who died in 1735; William's date of birth is not known.
[1] William Thompson studied at Queen's College, Oxford, which his father had also attended, and graduated with a Master of Arts in 1738, afterwards becoming a fellow of the college.
[2] Thompson became rector of Hampton Poyle with South Weston in Oxfordshire.
[4] He is best known for the long poem Sickness (1746), which discusses various illnesses including melancholy, fever, consumption, and variola.
[5] Other poems include Epithalamium, Nativity, and Hymn to May, as well as a panegyric to Alexander Pope.