The Rev. John Whitaker was born in the year 1736, at Manchester; this naturally induced him to write the history of that town, a work which raised its author to a considerable elevation in literary fame. He became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, and retired on this living acquired for the college by purchase from the Earls of Buckinghamshire, heirs of Sir John Maynard. Soon after Mr. Whitaker’s arrival in Cornwall he married a lady, heiress of the Tregennas, a family long distinguished in Cornwall, and known throughout England by the fame of one of its members, a lawyer, a wit, and a man of letters, in the reign of Charles the Second. Mr. Whitaker died in November 1808, aged 73, and is buried in the chancel of the parish church with this simple memorial: John Whitaker, B.D. Rector. Buried Nov. 14th, 1808, aged 73. He left two daughters, one of whom is married to Richard Taunton, esq. M.D. through whose kindness and liberality Mr. Hals’ manuscripts have been placed in the Editor’s hands for publication. Mr. Whitaker stands deservedly high in the estimation of the whole literary world, as a man of superior talent, and as an able and brilliant writer in the various departments of theology, politics, biography, general history, and topography; besides these, he has left sermons and opuscula, which, collected from the British Critic, and from similar repositories, would fill several volumes, all able, but strongly marked by impressions indicating the predominance of fancy, and of an unshakeable determination to support every opinion once entertained, without any reference to the solidity of the foundation on which it may repose; thus stamping a character of dogmatism, which in theological works would seem to be far better suited to a Church claiming infallibility, than to one owing its very existence to appeals made from authority to the exercise of private judgment. In biography Mr. Whitaker, carried away by imagination and feeling, has wasted the powers of his mind to “make the worse appear the better reason, to perplex and dash maturest counsels,” in an elaborate and learned effort to vindicate the character of one among the most unprincipled and abandoned females recorded in history, because she was beautiful in her person, and finally paid the forfeit of her crimes in a manner perhaps too protracted and informal, and because the blind chance of birth had placed her in the highest political office of her native country.