Edward Tatham (1749–1834) was an English college head, clergyman and controversialist, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1792 to his death. Life Born at Milbeck, township of Dent, in the parish of Sedbergh, then in Yorkshire, and baptised at Dent on 1 October 1749, was the son of James Tatham of that parish. He was educated at Sedbergh school under Dr. Wynne Bateman, and was the Tatham who was admitted at Magdalene College, Cambridge, as sizar on 11 May 1767; but the entry does not give the Christian name of either father or son, and he presumably never went into residence. He entered as batler at Queen's College, Oxford, 15 June 1769, and graduated B.A. 1772, M.A. 1776. Tatham took deacon's orders in 1776 and priest's orders in 1778, and the curacy of Banbury was his first charge. The fire at Queen's College in 1779 destroyed his books and some of his manuscripts, and he seems to have moved to Banbury. On 27 December 1781 he was elected to a Yorkshire fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, and became its acting tutor, proceeding B.D. in 1783 and D.D. in 1787. On 6 November 1787, Tatham was elected sub-rector of Lincoln College, and on 15 March 1792 he was unanimously elected Rector. To this post was attached the rectory of Twyford, Buckinghamshire, with a right of residence at the rectory of Combe. He made improvements to the rectorial houses at Twyford and Combe, about ten miles from Oxford, and he is described as a contributor to the improvements at the college, presumably to the front quadrangle, which he gave incongruous battlements. Tatham preached about 1802 a famous sermon, two hours and a half long, in defence of the disputed verse in St. John's first epistle (v. 7). Tatham concluded the discourse by leaving the subject to the learned bench of bishops, ‘who have little to do and do not always do that little.’ Usually at open war with his fellow members of the Hebdomadal Council, he vehemently opposed the views advocated by Cyril Jackson and the new examinations which had been instituted through his influence at the university. He issued in 1807 an ‘Address to the Members of Convocation on the proposed New Statute for Public Examinations,’ and it was followed by several pamphlets of a similar kind, including ‘Address to Lord Grenville on Abuses in the University’ (1811), and ‘Oxonia Purgata: