William, a learned antiquary and naturalist, born at Pendene in Cornwall, of an ancient family, Feb. 2, 1696. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took his degree as master of arts. In 1720 he was ordained as priest; instituted in 1722 to the rectory of Ludgvan in Cornwall; and in 1732 was presented to the vicarage of St Just, his native parish. In the parish of Ludgvan are rich copper works, abounding with mineral and metallic fossils, of which he made a collection, and thus was led to study at large the natural history of the county. In 1750 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society; and in 1753 he published in folio, at Oxford, his Antiquities of Cornwall, a second edition of which was published at London, 1759, with the title of "Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of Cornwall: consisting of several essays on the ancient inhabitants, Druid superstition, customs, and remains of the most remote antiquity in Britain and the British isles, exemplified and proved by monuments now extant in Cornwall and the Scilly Islands; with a vocabulary of the Cornu-British language." His next publication was Observations on the ancient and present state of the islands of Scilly, and their importance to the trade of Great Britain, Oxford, 1756, 4to. In 1758 appeared his Natural History of Cornwall, Oxford, folio. He presented to the Ashmolean Museum a variety of fossils and antiquities which he had described in his works; for which, and similar benefactions, he received the thanks of the university, and the degree of LL.D. He died Aug. 31, 1772, at the age of seventy-seven, leaving two sons. Besides his other literary connections, he had a particular correspondence with Pope; and there is still extant a large collection of the poet's letters to Dr Borlase. Besides the works above mentioned, he contributed many curious papers to the Philosophical Transactions.