George Dyer

George Dyer (1755-1841),was first an Anglican, then a Baptist, then a Unitarian (though he ceased to attend any particular congregation after the mid-1790s). He was educated at Christ’s Hospital, London, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a B.A. in 1778.  After a year as a tutor at Dedham, Dyer returned to Cambridge to assist Robert Robinson at St. Andrew’s Street, receiving a grant from the Particular Baptist Fund in 1780-1 that allowed him to pastor the new Baptist congregation at Oxford, from the summer of 1781 to June 1782. He resigned and became a tutor at John Collett Ryland’s Baptist academy in Northampton. He remained there until 1785, when he returned to the Cambridge area, preaching on weekends and operating a small school in Swavesey. He moved to Cambridge in 1788, working on his first book and moved once again in the circles surrounding Robinson and St. Andrew’s Street. In 1792 he left for London, where he continued his career as a writer, but no longer served in any capacity as a dissenting minister. He became a poet and primarily an antiquarian after that. Among his writings are Inquiry into the Nature of Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles (1789); The Complaints of the Poor People of England (1793); Dissertation on Theory and Practice of Benevolence (1795); Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Robert Robinson (1796); An Address to the People of Great Britain on the Doctrine of Libel (1799). His major work was his History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge, 2 vols. (1814).  See also his Academic Unity; being the substance of a general Dissertation contained in the Privileges of the University of Cambridge, as translated from the original Latin, with various additions.  With a Preface, giving some account of the Dissenting Colleges in the United Kingdom, and of the London University (1827).  For a detailed examination of Dyer's life as a tutor and minister among the Baptists and Unitarians, see Timothy Whelan, “George Dyer and Dissenting Culture, 1777-1796.” Charles Lamb Bulletin N.S. 155 (2012), 9-30.