John Hewitt Jellett

Who was John Hewitt Jellett?

John Hewitt Jellett was a college head, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. He was also a priest in the Church of Ireland during the Victorian Era.

Jellett was the son of Rev. Morgan Jellett and his wife Harriette Townsend, daughter of Hewitt Baldwin Poole Esq. of Mayfield, Co. Cork by his wife Dorothea Morris. He was born at Cashel in Tipperary, Ireland on Christmas Day 1817, and educated at Kilkenny College and at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he became a fellow in 1840. He graduated B.A. 1838, M.A. 1843, B.D. 1866, and D.D. 1 March 1881. He had been ordained a priest in 1846. In 1848 he was elected to the chair of natural philosophy, and in 1868 he received the appointment of commissioner of Irish national education. A year later the Royal Irish Academy elected him president, a position he held from 1869 to 1874.

In 1870, on the death of Dr. Thomas Luby, he was co-opted a Senior Fellow, and thus a member of the Board of Trinity College. Mr. Gladstone's government in February 1881 appointed Jellett provost of Trinity; in the same year he was awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society.