Gilbert Walmisley
English lawyer
Gilbert Walmisley or Walmesley (1680–1751) was an English barrister, known as a friend of Samuel Johnson.
Life
Walmisley was descended from an ancient family in Lancashire. He was born in 1680, and was the son of William Walmisley of the city of Lichfield, chancellor of that diocese from 1698 to 1713, and M.P. for the city in 1701, who married in Lichfield Cathedral on 22 April 1675 Dorothy Gilbert, and was buried in the cathedral on 18 July 1713. He matriculated as commoner from Trinity College, Oxford, on 14 April 1698, but did not take a degree. In 1707 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, and became registrar of the ecclesiastical court of Lichfield. He was probably a near relative of William Walmisley, prebendary of Lichfield from 1718 to 1720, and dean from 1720 to 1730.
Walmisley, ″the most able scholar and the finest gentleman″ in the city according to Miss Seward, lived in the bishop's palace at Lichfield for thirty years; and Johnson, then a stripling at school, spent there, with David Garrick, ″many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions such as are not often found.″ He was ″a whig with all the virulence and malevolence of his party,″ but polite and learned, so that Johnson could not name ″a man of equal knowledge,″ and the benefit of this intercourse remained to him throughout life. He endeavoured in 1735 to procure for Johnson the mastership of a school at Solihull, near Warwick, but without success. A tribute to his memory was paid by Johnson in his ″Life″ of Edmund Smith.
Walmisley died at Lichfield on 3 August 1751, and his widow died on 11 November 1786, aged 77.
The public source identifies “Gilbert Walmisley” as english lawyer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gilbert, Walmisley and English.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5561269. VIAF identifies the subject as 7286407. The Library of Congress control number is nr96004293. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1680, 1751, 1698 and 1713.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gilbert Walmisley” 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.