LE VAVASSEUR DIT DURELL, DAVID (1729-75), Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Son of Thomas Le Vavasseur dit Durell and Mary, sister of Jurat Charles Hilgrove. Born in St. Helier’s 1729, and baptized in the Town Church 21 November. He matriculated at Oxford from Pembroke College 1747, took his B.A. 1750, and his M.A. 1753. He became Tutor of Hertford College, and in 1757 at the early age of 27 was made Principal. This was quite irregular, as by the Statutes the choice was confined to Westminster students of Christ Church, but no one seems to have challenged it. All through his Principalship he quietly ignored out-of-date Statutes to the great advantage of his College. He took his B.D. in 1760 and his D.D. in 1764. In 1765 he became Regius Professor of Greek, and in the same year was elected Vice-Chancellor of the University. In 1767 he became Prebendary of the Twelfth Stall at Canterbury, and was presented to the valuable Chapter living of Ticehurst in Essex. In the following year he became involved as Vice-Chancellor in a controversy that attracted nation-wide attention. The Methodist movement had reached Oxford, and six undergraduates of St Edmund Hall were accused to him by their Tutor of holding prayer-meetings in their rooms, in which they indulged in “the absurdity of extempore prayer”, and of “venturing to dispute their Tutor’s opinions in his lectures on the Thirty-Nine Articles”. In March 1768 Durell as Visitor of the Hall held a Public Inquiry, and solemnly expelled them from the University. A flood of pamphlets poured from the press. In one Sir Richard Hall remarked:- “It is to be hoped that, as some have been expelled for extempore praying, we may hear of others being expelled for extempore swearing”. Some commended Durell. Horace Walpole had no pity for the “sanctimonious rascals”, and when Boswell said to Johnson, “I am told they were good beings”, replied, “A cow is a good thing in a field, but we turn her out of a garden”; but the general opinion was that Durell had acted unjustly. In 1770, as he was travelling to Jersey by France to avoid the long sea passage, he was arrested at Carteret as a spy, but after a short detention he was set free (Messervy’s Journal). He was an ardent advocate of a new translation of the Bible. He published The Hebrew Text of the Parallel Prophecies of Jacob and Moses with translation and notes together with the Samaritan-Arabic Version of those passages and Four Dissertations on points connected with these Prophecies, 1763, and Critical Remarks on the Books of Job, Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Canticles, 1772. He died in Oxford 16 October 1775, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter in the East under the shadow of St. Edmund Hall. [Hamilton’s Hertford College; Dic. Nat. Biog.; Ollard’s Six Students of St. Edmund Hall.]
(Biographical Dictionary of Jersey)
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