William Cleaver
1742 -
15 May 1815

Family

William Cleaver was the eldest son of the Rev. W. Cleaver, a school master, and the brother of Euseby Cleaver, Archbishop of Dublin.

Education

Cleaver graduated B.A. from Magdalene College, Oxford, in 1761, was subsequently appointed Fellow of Brasenose College, and took his M.A. in 1764. He served as principal of Brasenose from 1785 until 1869.

Church Appointments and Service

He held the vicarage of Northop in Flintshire, and was made prebendary of Westminster in 1784. Three years later he was elevated to the bishopric of Chester. In 1800 he was transferred to the See of Bangor, and in 1806 to that of St. Asaph.

Noteworthy Publications

In 1775 Cleaver published De Rhythme Graecorum, and in 1789 Directions to the Clergy of the Diocese of Chester on the Choice of Books.

Footnote

Cleaver is generally remembered as the Bishop of Bangor referred to by De Quincey in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

"As a bishop he is commended for benevolence, for discrimination in the exercise of patronage, and for encouraging among his clergy, by the erection of parsonage houses, that residence of which he did not set the example." -- DNB 4: 479