Background
He was son of Thomas Peter Romilly of London, by his cousin Jane Anne, second daughter of Isaac Romilly.
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Joseph Romilly
Edit ProfileEducation
He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1809, became a scholar of the college, and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1813 as fourth wrangler.
Career
He was elected Fellow in 1815, and proceeded Master of Arts in 1816. He took holy orders, but he never held any preferment, except that he was rector of the family living of Porthkerry, Glamorgan, from 1830 to 1837, and chaplain to Thomas Musgrave, Archbishop of York, who had been a friend at Trinity. In 1821 he joined the committee for promoting a subscription in the university to aid the Greeks in their war of independence.
He was one of the party who successfully opposed the petition which it was planned should be presented in 1829 against Catholic emancipation.
He opposed Christopher Wordsworth, then master of Trinity, on the question of Connop Thirlwall"s dismissal in 1834. On 23 March 1832 he was elected registrary of the University of Cambridge after a competition with Temple Chevallier, and remained in this office until 1861, when he retired.
His major work as registrary was the arrangement and cataloguing of all the university papers. He died suddenly at Yarmouth, of heart disease, on Sunday 7 August 1864, and was buried in a vault in Christ Church, Barnwell.
From 1832 till his death he kept a diary, which has been used by the authors of the of Adam Sedgwick.
lieutenant contains nearly as much about Sedgwick as about its author An edited version has been published as Romilly"s Cambridge, 1832-1842: Selected Passages from the of the Review Joseph Romilly, Fellow of Trinity College and Registrary of the University of Cambridge (2009), edited by John Patrick Tuer Bury.
He also edited Graduati Cantabrigienses, 1760–1856, which was published at Cambridge in 1856.
