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William Henry Coombes

British priest

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 24, 2024
Entity authorityQ8011946 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Henry Coombes (8 May 1767 – 15 November 1850) was an English Roman Catholic priest, theologian and writer.

Life

He passed his early years at Meadgate, Somerset, England, the property and for many years the residence of his uncle, William Coombes (d. 18 April 1822), of Douai College, Grand-Vicar of the Western District. Young Coombes went to Douai at the age of twelve, was ordained in 1791, and during the French Revolution escaped (October, 1793) from Dourlens to England.

He was a doctor of theology and co-operated with Bishop Douglass at Old Hall seminary as professor and vice-president. From 1810 he served the mission of Shepton Mallet till 1849, when he retired to Downside monastery, where he died.

Works

His chief works are:

"Sacred Eloquence; being Discourses from the Writings of Sts. Basil and Chrysostom, with the Letters of St. Eucherius of Lyons" (London, 1798);

"Escape from France; with an account of the English Poor Clares from Aire, and a narrative of the sufferings and death of Pius VI" (London, 1799);

"Life of St. Francis de Sales, from the French of Marsollier" (Shepton Mallet, 1812);

"Spiritual Entertainments of St.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Henry Coombes” is british priest. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Henry and Coombes, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1767, 1850, 1822, 1791—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, William, Henry and Coombes is the immediate research focus.
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Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q8011946. The first chronological checks are 1767, 1850, 1822 and 1791.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “William Henry Coombes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.