William Bingley

William Bingley (January 1774 – 11 March 1823) was an English cleric, naturalist and writer.

Life Bingley was born at Doncaster, and left an orphan at an early age. In 1795 he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.A. in 1799, and of M.A. in 1803. Whilst an undergraduate he travelled in Wales in 1798. He made the first rock climb there of Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, with Peter Bailey Williams, the first British and documented climb of its kind.

For many years after ordination Bingley served the curacy of Christchurch, Hampshire. In 1816 he was the minister of the Fitzroy Chapel, Charlotte Street, London; he was engaged in its ministry at the time of his death. He died in Charlotte Street, 11 March 1823 aged 49, and was buried in a vault under the middle aisle of Bloomsbury Church. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society, and led a quiet life. In 1817, when the manuscripts amounted to 6,000 pages, he had to explain the delay to subscribers. Thirty copies of a small portion of it, The Topographical Account of the Hundred of Bosmere, were printed for private circulation.

Bingley's dictionary of Musical Biography appeared anonymously in 1814; it was reissued with his name on the title-page in 1834. At Christchurch he published (1805), from the originals in the possession of a Wiltshire lady, three volumes of Correspondence between Frances, Countess of Hereford, and the Countess of Pomfret, 1738-41. Most of the copies of the second edition were destroyed by fire. He also wrote a sermon on the Economy of a Christian Life (1822), and a handbook to the Leverian collection.