Background
Born at Chipping Ongar, Essex, in 1748 or 1749, he was son of the Review Thomas Velley of the town.
Born at Chipping Ongar, Essex, in 1748 or 1749, he was son of the Review Thomas Velley of the town.
He matriculated from Saint John"s College, Oxford, on 19 March 1766, and graduated Bachelor of Civil Law in 1772.
He became lieutenant-colonel of the Oxford militia, and was made Doctorate.C.L. of the university in 1787. He resided for many years at Bath, and devoted himself to botany, and especially to the study of algæ, collecting chiefly along the south coast. Jumping from a runaway stage-coach at Reading on 6 June 1806, Velley fell and suffered concussion, from which he died on 8 June.
Velley"s annotated herbarium, illustrated by dissections and microscopic drawings of grasses and other flowering plants, and especially of algæ, in eight folio volumes, was purchased from his widow by William Roscoe for the Liverpool Botanical Garden.
Sir James Edward Smith in 1798 gave the name Velleia, in his honour, to an Australasian genus of flowering plants.
