WHATELEY, RICHARD (1787-1863).—­Theologian and economist, s. of the Rev. Dr. Joseph W., b. in London, and ed. at a school in Bristol, and at Oxf., where he became a coll. tutor.  Taking orders he became Rector of Halesworth, Suffolk.  In 1822 he delivered his Bampton lectures on The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Religion.  Three years later he was made Principal of St. Alban’s Hall, in 1829 Prof. of Political Economy, and in 1831 Archbishop of Dublin.  As head of a coll. and as a prelate W. showed great energy and administrative ability.  He was a vigorous, clear-headed personality, somewhat largely endowed with contempt for views with which he was not in sympathy, and with a vein of caustic humour, in the use of which he was not sparing.  These qualities made him far from universally popular; but his honesty, fairness, and devotion to duty gained for him general respect.  He had no sympathy with the Oxf. movement, was strongly anti-Calvinistic, and somewhat Latitudinarian, so that he was exposed to a good deal of theological odium from opposite quarters.  He was a voluminous writer, and among his best known works are his treatises on Logic (1826) and Rhetoric (1828), his Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte (1819), intended as a reductio ad absurdum of Hume’s contention that no evidence is sufficient to prove a miracle, Essays on some Peculiarities of the Christian Religion (1825), Christian Evidences (1837), and ed. of Bacon’s Essays with valuable notes, and of Paley’s Evidences.

WHETSTONE, GEORGE (1544?-1587?).—­Dramatist, one of the early, roistering playwrights who frequented the Court of Elizabeth, later served as a soldier in the Low Countries, accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s expedition to Newfoundland in 1578, and was at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586.  He was a trenchant critic of the contemporary drama, contending for greater reality and rationality.  His play, Promos and Cassandra, translated from Cinthio’s Hecatomithi, was used by Shakespeare in Measure for Measure.

WHEWELL, WILLIAM (1794-1866).—­Philosopher, theologian and mathematician, s. of a joiner at Lancaster, where he was b., ed. at Camb., where he had a brilliant career.  He became Prof. of Mineralogy at Camb. 1828, of Moral Theology 1838, was Master of Trinity from 1841 until his death, and he held the office of Vice-Chancellor of the Univ. in 1843 and 1856.  W. was remarkable as the possessor of an encyclopaedic fund of knowledge, perhaps unprecedented, and he was the author of a number of works of great importance on a variety of subjects.  Among the chief of these may be mentioned his Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1833), History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), Essay on