Following his death the house became home to his son the poet William Hayley from 1774 to 1800.
Joseph Wright depicted a theme suggested to him by the myth described in William Hayley's poem "An Essay on Painting", in which a woman sketched around the outline of the shadow cast by her departing lover in lamp light against a wall... "Inspired by love, the soft Corinthian maid, Her graceful lover's sleeping form portray'd..." (William Hayley 1778).
:This was also the name of his great uncle William Hayley (priest) a 17th-century Dean of Chichester and a contemporary architect b.1797 at Thornhill, West Yorkshire.
William Shakespeare | William Laud | William Blake | William | William III of England | William Morris | William McKinley | William Howard Taft | William Ewart Gladstone | William the Conqueror | William S. Burroughs | William Shatner | William Faulkner | William Randolph Hearst | William Wordsworth | William Tecumseh Sherman | William Hogarth | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | William Penn | William Jennings Bryan | William Gibson | William Wilberforce | William James | William Makepeace Thackeray | Fort William | William Hanna | William Hague | William III | William Hurt | William Walton |
He is succeeded as Poet Laureate of Great Britain by writer and police magistrate Henry James Pye (who has just retired as a Member of Parliament) following William Hayley's refusal of the office.
, and Dinah Hayley, the daughter of William Hayley, Alderman and MP for the City of London.