William Hayley, in profile to the right in blue coat, white waistcoat and frilled cravat, blue flower in his button hole

William Hayley (1745-1820), poet and writer, second son of Thomas Hayley and Mary Yates of Chichester. He went to Eton in 1757 and entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1763 although he left without taking his degree. He married Eliza, daughter of Dean Ball, one of his guardians in 1769 and they settled at Eartham in Sussex. In 1786, the couple separated and nine years later, he married Mary Welford (see lot 103) from whom he also separated after three years of marriage. Hayley lived a secluded life at Felpham, near Eartham where he died in 1820. His close friends included Cowper, Romney, Southey and Jeremiah Meyer. He published works on the lives of Milton (1794) Cowper (1803) and Romney (1809). Two of his volumes of poems were ridiculed by Byron in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and Southey wrote of him 'Everything about that man is good except his poetry'.
For other portraits of Hayley by Engleheart, see G. C. Williamson and H. L. D. Engleheart, George Engleheart 1750-1829, London, 1902, illustrated opp. p. 18 and R. Bayne-Powell, Catalogue of Portrait Miniatures in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Cambridge, 1985, p. 77.