headed ‘Admonition to Cambridge,’ is preserved with these letters; it is reprinted at p. 26 of the ‘Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain,’ mentioned below, as an ‘Admonition to Windsor.’ A practical joke was arranged at Cambridge, in which Cruden was knighted with mock ceremony by a Miss Vertue and others, and he took the frolic seriously; the fees he paid were kisses to all the ladies present. He appointed Mr. Impey, an undergraduate of Trinity College, Mr. Richardson of Emmanuel College, and a ‘celebrated beauty,’ Miss Taylor, to be his deputy-correctors for Cambridge; one of their duties was ‘to pray for support and deliverance to the French protestants.’ From Cambridge Cruden went to Eton, Windsor, and Tunbridge, and in December following visited Westminster School, where he appointed four boys to be his deputies. Of all these visits he gives accounts in a pamphlet (occasioned by the earthquake at Lisbon and the war with France), which he published at the beginning of 1756, and entitled ‘The Corrector's earnest Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain;’ it was dedicated to the Princess Dowager of Wales. Six years later, in 1762, he was the means of saving from the gallows an ignorant seaman named Richard Potter, who had been capitally convicted for uttering (although, as it seemed, without criminal intent) a forged will of a fellow-seaman. Cruden visited him in Newgate, prayed with him, instructed him with good effect, and then, by earnest and repeated importunity, obtained the commuted sentence of transportation. Another of his many pamphlets recorded (1763) the history of the case. For a short time afterwards he continued to visit daily the prisoners in Newgate, but without much result. Against Wilkes, whom he heartily abhorred, he wrote a small pamphlet, which is now very rare. In 1769 he paid a visit to the city of his birth, and there lectured in his character of corrector, and also largely distributed copies of the fourth commandment and various religious tracts. To a conceited young minister, whose appearance did not commend itself to the corrector, he is said to have gravely presented a small book for children, called ‘The Mother's Catechism, dedicated to the young and ignorant.’ A ‘Scripture Dictionary’ was compiled by him about this time, and was printed at Aberdeen in two octavo volumes shortly after his death. Many prefaces to books are said to have been also his work, but of these no record has been preserved. On the authority of Chalmers a verbal index to Milton, which accompanied Bishop Newton's edition in 1749, is also assigned to him. Of his ‘Bible Concordance’ he published a second edition in 1761, which he presented to the king in person on 21 Dec., and the third, which was the last issued by himself, appeared in 1769. Both of these contain his portrait, engraved from a drawing ‘ad vivum’ by T. Fry, which gives him a very winning countenance. He is said by these two editions to have gained 800l. He died suddenly, while praying, in his lodgings in Camden Passage, Islington, very shortly after his return to London from Aberdeen, 1 Nov. 1770. When found dead he was still upon his knees. He was buried in the burial-ground of a dissenting congregation, in Deadman's Place, Southwark, which now appears to be included in the brewery of Messrs. Barclay & Perkins. He bequeathed one portion of his savings to Marischal College, Aberdeen, to found a bursary of 5l. per annum, which still preserves his name in the list of the benefactors of his university. Another portion was left to the city of Aberdeen to provide for distribution of religious books to the poor; but as this bequest does not now appear in the list of existing charities belonging to the city the money was probably intended for immediate distribution and not for a ‘mortification.’ His biblical labours have justly made his name a household word among the English-speaking peoples; his earnest, gentle, and self-denying piety commanded in his later days, in spite of his eccentricities, the kindly and compassionate toleration, often the admiration, of his contemporaries. It is probable that his habits in later life improved his mental condition.
[Life by Alex. Chalmers (who in his boyhood heard Cruden lecture at Aberdeen), reprinted with additions from Kippis's Biog. Brit. of 1789, and prefixed to an edition of the Concordance published in 1824 (frequently reprinted in later editions). The various pamphlets published by Cruden himself; Nelson's Hist. of Islington, 1811, pp. 392–400; Rawlinson MS. C. 793, in the Bodleian Library, containing Cruden's Letters to the Earl of Derby; Addit. MS. 4041, Brit. Mus., Letters to Sir H. Sloane; and 32557, Correspondence of Dr. Cox Macro, bought in 1881 at Mr. Crossley's sale.]
CRUDEN, WILLIAM (1725–1785), Scotch divine, was the son of Alexander Cruden, beadle at Pitsligo. He graduated M.A. at Aberdeen in 1743; became minister of Logie-Pert, near Montrose, in 1753; and was elected minister of the Scotch presbyterian church in Crown Court, Covent Garden, London, in 1773, in succession to Thomas Oswald. He died on 5 Nov. 1785, aged 60, and was buried in the Bunhill Fields cemetery.
