Crust, Todd and Mills, solicitors of Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire

John Hymers was born in Ormesby, North Yorkshire, in 1803, the son of Thomas Hymers (1763-1834), a farmer, and his wife Esther Parrington (1767-1831), daughter of the vicar. He had an older sister and brother (twins), Thomas and Esther, a younger sister, Jane, and a younger brother, Robert Hymers (b.1807). John Hymers went to school at Wilton-le-Wear and Sedburgh and then went to St John's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, becoming second wrangler in 1826. He became fellow and then tutor at St John's and became fellow of the Royal Society in 1838. He was a mathematician, whose publications were largely about calculus, conic sections and equations theory. In 1841 he took a doctorate in divinity and became Lady Margaret professor and in 1848 he was elected president of St John's (Dictionary of National Biography; Scott, Hymers College, chpt.1).

John Hymers was a man who made college life his home for the first part of his life. His mother, father and two of his siblings died in the early 1830s prompting him to go on a grand tour of Europe, which he followed with several years in college, preferring to remain unmarried. However, he slowly became disillusioned with the incursion of the university into the independent life of the colleges and in 1852 he left St John's for the rich college living of Brandesburton in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He tried to return soon after but St John's refused him his old post with the result that he spent the rest of his life in an isolated Yorkshire parish. However, it was a living that provided 1500 per annum, a sum that he regularly spent on books, paintings, railway shares, railway travel and on setting up a local school and library. The church gradually became ruinous and accounts of his value as a parish priest are not flattering (Scott, Hymers College, chpt.1).

...