William Borlase (2 February 1696 – 31 August 1772), was a Cornish antiquary, geologist and naturalist. From 1722, he was Rector of Ludgvan, Cornwall, where he died. He is remembered for his works The Antiquities of Cornwall (1754; 2nd ed., 1769) and The Natural History of Cornwall (1758), although his plans for a parish-by-parish county history were abandoned. He was a member of the prominent Borlase family.
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Life and works
Borlase was born on 2 February 1695/6 at Pendeen, of an ancient family originating at St Wenn. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, from 1713, and in 1719 he was ordained. In 1722 he was presented to the rectory of Ludgvan, and in 1732 he obtained in addition the vicarage of St Just, his native parish. The garden of the Rectory (now known as Hogus House) was established by Borlase; during the reign of Queen Victoria the garden was further developed by a successor, Arthur Boscawen, and was known for its fine collection of trees and shrubs.
From the 1740s Methodism became influential in west Cornwall, including in Borlase's parish of St Just, and he opposed the movement in his capacity as a parish clergyman. He sought to ensure that his curates were not sympathetic to Methodism; in 1766 he wrote that he would take no curate who had "leaned to or encouraged the Methodists or their teachers".
Borlase was not, however, the magistrate "Dr Borlase" described in John Wesley's journal as acting against Methodist preachers. Pool identified that man as William's elder brother, Walter Borlase, who was both a magistrate and an LL.D. at the time; William was never a magistrate and did not receive his doctorate until more than twenty years later. The Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland likewise identifies Walter Borlase as the local magistrate who issued warrants under the vagrancy laws for the arrest of Wesley and other Methodist preachers suspected of being Jacobites. Wesley later expressed admiration for William Borlase's scholarship after reading his Antiquities of Cornwall in 1757.