He was ordained in 1818, and was appointed vicar of Cowley, Oxford, in 1823.
Oldham wrote other satires, notably one "addressed to a friend about to leave the university," which contains a well-known description of the state of slavery of the private chaplain, and another "dissuading from poetry," describing the ingratitude shown to Edmund Spenser, whose ghost is the speaker, to Samuel Butler and to Abraham Cowley.
Whether the national hieroglyphic system of the Hittites expressed the same Indo-European language as, according to Hrozny, their cuneiform does, we do not know, as further attempts to elucidate it made by Campbell Thompson 11 and Cowley," while in themselves very interesting experiments, do not seem to take us further than previous attempts by Sayce and others.
After a good deal of time spent in these preliminary and unofficial negotiations, the question of a treaty of commerce between the two countries having entered into the arena of diplomacy, Cobden was requested by the British government to act as their plenipotentiary in the matter in conjunction with Lord Cowley, their ambassador in France.
The house in which the poet Cowley spent the last years of his life remains, and the chamber in which he died is preserved unaltered.
