Life

He was the son of John Yeates, a turner, of Snow Hill

Snow Hill

Snow Hill may refer to:in Antarctica* Snow Hill Island, Antarctica, where the Swedish Antarctic Expedition explorers over-wintered in 1902in the United Kingdom* Birmingham Snow Hill station** Snowhill, the development project adjacent to the station...

, London, where he was born on 9 October 1768. He was at first apprenticed to his father, but, showing no taste for the trade, was allowed to pursue studies in Latin and Hebrew. At the age of fourteen he appears to have been employed as secretary to the Society for Promoting Constitutional Information, a radical association which numbered Sir William Jones (1746–1794) among its members, but he can have held this post only a short time.

Following a plan which he had formed of rendering the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 into biblical Hebrew, he got into communication with Joseph White

Joseph White (professor)

Joseph White was an English orientalist and theologian, Laudian Professor of Arabic and then Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford.-Early life and career:...

, who, shortly after his appointment to the professorship of Hebrew at Oxford, got Yeates a bible clerkship at All Souls' College, Oxford; he matriculated there on 22 May 1802, but never graduated. Though he worked for many years at this translation, and received encouragement from the continent as well as in England, the only portion of it ever published was a specimen which appeared in the third annual report of the London Jews' Society.

From about 1808 to 1815 Yeates was employed by Claudius Buchanan

Claudius Buchanan

Claudius Buchanan was a Scottish theologian, an ordained minister of the Church of England, and an extremely 'low church' missionary for the Church Missionary Society....

 to catalogue and describe his oriental manuscripts brought from India; and for much of this period he lived in Cambridge, where the University Press published (1812) his ‘Collation of an India Copy of the Pentateuch;’ the copies of this work were presented by the press to Yeates. He also, through Buchanan, obtained employment from the Bible Society

Bible society

A Bible society is a non-profit organization devoted to translating, publishing, distributing the Bible at affordable costs and advocating its credibility and trustworthiness in contemporary cultural life...

, and superintended their editions of the Æthiopic Psalter and the Syriac New Testament.

After Buchanan's death he was helped by Thomas Burgess, bishop of St. David's, who procured for him the secretaryship of the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

, and in 1823 the post of assistant in the printed book department of the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, which he retained till his death.

He died on 7 October 1839.

Works

In 1818 he published a work called ‘Indian Church History,’ compiled chiefly from Assemani

Assemani

Assemani is a family of Lebanese Maronites that included several notable Orientalists:* Giuseppe Simone Assemani * Stefano Evodio Assemani , nephew of Joseph Simon* Giuseppe Luigi Assemani , brother of Joseph Simon...

 and the reports of Buchanan and Kerr, and containing an account of the Christian churches in the East, with an ultra-conservative history of their origin. The same year he produced a ‘Variation Chart of all the Navigable Oceans and Seas between latitude 60 degrees N. and S. from Documents, and delineated on a new plan;’ and in 1819 a Syriac grammar, the first that ever appeared in English. He was also employed by the publishers of Caleb Ashworth

Caleb Ashworth

-Life:Ashworth was born at Clough-Fold, Rossendale, Lancashire, in 1722. His father, Richard Ashworth, who died in 1751, aged eighty-four, was a lay preacher among the Particular Baptists; he had three sons—Thomas, Particular Baptist minister at Heckmondwike; Caleb; and John, General Baptist...

's ‘Hebrew Grammar’ to revise the third and subsequent editions. In 1830 he published ‘Remarks on the Bible Chronology, being an Essay towards reconciling the same with the Histories of the Eastern Nations;’ in 1833 ‘A Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Pyramids;’ and in 1835 ‘Remarks on the History of Ancient Egypt.’ His astronomical publications involved him in financial difficulties, which the Literary Fund helped him to meet.

Reference