Walter Moyle (1672–1721) was an English politician and political writer, an advocate of classical republicanism.
Contents
Life
He was born at Bake in St Germans, Cornwall, on 3 November 1672, the third, but eldest surviving son of Sir Walter Moyle, who died in September 1701, by his wife Thomasine, daughter of Sir William Morice. Walter Moyle the Elder had been High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1671, and was the son of John Moyle, the friend of Sir John Eliot.
After having been grounded in classical learning, probably at Liskeard grammar school, he matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on 18 March 1689, and a set of verses by him was inserted in the university collection of poems for William III and Mary II, 1689; but he left Oxford without taking a degree. About 1708 he contributed towards the erection of new buildings at Exeter College opposite the front gate and stretching eastwards, and his second son was a fellow of the college. On 26 January 1691 he was specially admitted at the Middle Temple, and took up the study of constitutional law and history. At first Moyle frequented Maynwaring's coffee-house in Fleet Street and the Grecian near the Temple, but to be nearer the realms of fashion he removed to Covent Garden, and became a regular companion of the wits at Will's.
Moyle sat in parliament for Saltash from 1695 to 1698. He was a zealous Whig, with a keen desire to encourage British trade, and a strong antipathy to ecclesiastical establishments.
Moyle was married on 6 May 1700 to Henrietta Maria, daughter of John Davie of Bideford, Devon. They had two sons and one daughter. She died on 9 December 1762, aged 85, and was buried at St. Germans on 15 December. Moyle died at Bake on 10 June 1721, and was buried at St German's Priory on 13 June. A monument was placed to his memory at the end of the north aisle, near the chancel.
Works
Moyle speculated in his retirement from public life, in 1698, on forms and laws of government. He once had the intention of compiling a history of Greece, and later he went into ecclesiastical history. In the autumn of 1713 he finished a new library at Bake, and began to stock it. He was a student of botany and ornithology, making collections on the birds of Cornwall and Devon and was described as the ″Father of Cornish Ornithology″ by Roger Penhallurick in 1978. He helped John Ray, as is acknowledged in the preface in the second edition of the Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum, and promised to send William Sherard a catalogue of his specimens for insertion in the Philosophical Transactions. Books in his study were full of notes. His library and manuscripts were destroyed by fire, at Bake, in 1808.
After Moyle's death Thomas Sergeant edited the Works of Walter Moyle, none of which were ever before published, 1726, 2 vols. It contained in the first volume:
Essay on the Constitution of the Roman Government.
A Charge to the Grand Jury at Liskeard, April 1706.
Letters to Dr. William Musgrave of Exeter.
Dissertation on the age of Philopatris, a Dialogue commonly attributed to Lucian.
Letters to and from Tancred Robinson, Sherard, and others.
The second volume comprised:
Remarks upon some Passages in Dr. Prideaux's Connection.
Miracle of the Thundering Legion examin'd, in several Letters between Moyle and K—— [i.e. Richard King of Topsham, near Exeter].
This collection was followed in the subsequent year by a reprint by Edmund Curll of The Whole Works of Walter Moyle that were Published by Himself, with an account of his life and writing by Anthony Hammond (1668–1738). It contained, in addition to some works already mentioned: