Background
John Vardill was the son of Capt. Thomas and Hannah (Tiebout) Vardill, was baptized on July 5, 1749. He was born in New York City, where his father, a native of Bermuda, was a ship owner, and at one time port warden.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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clergyman educator playwright poet
John Vardill was the son of Capt. Thomas and Hannah (Tiebout) Vardill, was baptized on July 5, 1749. He was born in New York City, where his father, a native of Bermuda, was a ship owner, and at one time port warden.
John graduated from King's College in 1766. At the commencement of 1769, he received a master's degree.
While studying theology, was attached unofficially to the college as a tutor. One of his students was John Parke Custis, stepson of Washington. Vardill was an assistant to Dr. Samuel Clossy, the professor of anatomy; he taught "Languages and other Branches of Science, " and was a great favorite of the president, Myles Cooper. When he was about to go to England for ordination, the governors of the college voted him a hundred pounds for his services, and elected him a fellow and professor of natural law. In the meantime he had brought himself into public notice as a controversialist, having had a part in writing "A Whip for the American Whig", and other essays in connection with the controversy between William Livingston and Thomas Bradbury Chandler over an American episcopate.
On December 7, 1772, in the New York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury over the signature "Causidicus" he attacked the Rev. John Witherspoon's Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica and Other West-India Islands, in Behalf of the College of New-Jersey, through which, Vardill claimed, "the Youth of North-America were to be lured by the Charmer's Voice in to the Bosom of Nassau-Hall. " He was also the author in 1773, over the signature "Poplicola, " of broadcasts against the non-importation agreement and in favor of receiving the tea shipments. These appeared in Rivington's New York Gazetteer. He was ordained deacon, April 4, 1774, and priest the following day in the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, by Richard Terrick, Bishop of London, and was made M. A. at Oxford, June 28, 1774. On December 6, 1774, following the death of the Rev. John Ogilvie, he was unanimously elected assistant minister of Trinity Church, New York, although on December 1, he had been attacked anonymously in the New York Journal as "a poetaster, the tool of a party, a newswriter, a pamphleteer, a paltry politician, who will forever keep a spirit of dissension among you".
Such of his verses as have survived bear out these accusations, although a rejoinder praising his "universally known and acknowledged" abilities and his "most engaging sweetness of disposition" appeared in the same paper for December 22, 1774. Vardill remained in England, however, to promote the granting of a charter making King's College a university, a project which the Revolution prevented. He continued writing for periodicals in defense of the government, under the name of "Corrol'nus, " for which he received thanks and promises of patronage. By correspondence he nearly won over to the Crown with promises of judgeships two members of Congress, "but the negotiation was quashed by the unexpected fray at Lexington in April 1775". "In consequence of these and such like services and to give the Loyalists at New York a Proof of the Attention and Rewards which would follow their Zeal and Loyalty", he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity in King's College, and the appointment was announced in Rivington's New York Gazetteer, December 8, 1774, although the royal warrant was not granted until sometime later.
Vardill never returned to America, but spent the years 1775 to 1781 as a spy in the service of the Crown. In a memorial which he addressed to the commissioners on Loyalists claims, November 16, 1783, he recited the precise nature of his services and, while admitting that he had been paid for his services in England, claimed compensation for the salary he had never received from King's College and Trinity Church, New York; the claim was not allowed. He was given an office at 17 Downing Street, close to that of the Prime Minister, and spent his time mainly in spying on American sympathizers in England. When the Abbe Raynal visited London bearing letters from Franklin in Paris, and when Jonathan Austin came over as Franklin's confidential agent, Vardill found the means to examine their correspondence without their knowledge; on another occasion he induced a New Yorker named Van Zandt, who had come over on business of Congress, with letters from Franklin, to become a British spy. Vardill was in Dublin in 1785 and 1786, but little is known of him until 1791, when he was given the living of Skirbeck, Lincolnshire.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Vardill was married and had a daughter.