Heathcote, Ralph, Dd

Heathcote, Ralph, D.D.

an English divine, was born in 1721, and died May 28, 1795. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge; took orders, and in 1748 was made vicar of Barkby, near Leicester; assistant preacher of Lincoln's Inn in 1753; succeeded his father as vicar of Sileby in 1765; became rector of Sawtry- all-Saints, Huntingdonshire, in 1766; a prebend in the collegiate church in Southwell in 1768: and in 1788 vicar-general of Southwell Church. Besides works on other subjects, he wrote Cursory Animadversions upon the Middletonian Controversy in general (1752): — Remarks upon Dr. Chapman's Charge (1752) A Letter to Rev. T. Fothergill (1753): — Sketch of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1785, 8vo): — The Use of Reason asserted in Matters of Religion (1755, 8vo; and a defense of the same, in 1756, 8vo): — Discourse on the Being of God, against Atheists, in two Sermons (being the only ones of his twenty-four Boyle sermons which he published, 1763, 4to). Dr. Heathcote wrote several articles for the first edition of the General Biographical Dictionary, and assisted Nichols in editing a new edition of the same, published in 1784, 12 vols. 8vo. — Alibone, Dict. of Authors, 1, 814; Rose, New Genesis Biog. Dict. 8:241; Gentleman's Magazine, 65, 66, 71. (J. W. M.)