Samuel Horsley

Samuel Horsley (15 September 1733 – 4 October 1806) was a British churchman, bishop of Rochester from 1793. He was also well versed in physics and mathematics, on which he wrote a number of papers and thus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767; and secretary in 1773, but, in consequence of a difference with the president (Sir Joseph Banks) he withdrew in 1784.

Entering Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1751, he became LL.B. in 1758 without graduating in arts. In the following year he succeeded his father in the living of Newington Butts in Surrey. In 1768 he attended the son and heir of the 3rd Earl of Aylesford to Oxford as private tutor; and, after receiving through the earl and Bishop of London various minor preferments, which by dispensations he combined with his first living, he was installed in 1781 as archdeacon of St Albans.

Horsley now entered on his controversy with Joseph Priestley, who denied that the early Christians held the doctrine of the Trinity. In this fierce debate, Horsley's aim was to lessen the influence which Priestley's name gave to his views, by pointing to (what he claimed were) inaccuracies in his scholarship. Horsley was rewarded by Lord Chancellor Thurlow with a prebendal stall at Gloucester; and in 1788 Thurlow procured his promotion to the see of St David's.

As a bishop, Horsley was active both in his diocese, and in parliament. The effective support which he afforded the government was acknowledged by his successive translations to Rochester in 1793, and to St Asaph in 1802. With the see of Rochester he held the deanery of Westminster.