Thomas Shaw (divine and traveller)
Thomas Shaw (1694–1751) was an English cleric and traveller.
Life
He was born about in Kendal, Westmoreland. From the grammar school of his native town, he went to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he took his master's degree in 1719. On entering holy orders, he was appointed chaplain to the factory at Algiers. He became a Fellow of his college in 1727, in his absence.
On his return, in 1733, Shaw took his doctor's degree, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1740, on the death of Henry Felton, he was nominated principal of St Edmund Hall, with which he held the Greek professorship, and the vicarage of Bramley in Hampshire, till his death in 1751.
Works
The first edition of Shaw's Travels in Barbary and the Levant was printed at Oxford, in 1738. Richard Pococke commented unfavourably on parts of the work in his Description of the East (1745), and Shaw published two supplements in vindication, which were incorporated in the edition of 1757.
References
- Watkins, J., An Universal Biographical and Historical Dictionary. New ed. 1821.
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Shaw, Thomas (1694-1751)". Dictionary of National Biography. 51. London: Smith, Elder & Co.