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Author: Bayfield, Elizabeth Gertrude

Biography:

BAYFIELD, Elizabeth Gertrude, formerly PETIT (1768-1832: ancestry.co.uk) 

She was born 8 Feb. 1768 at Royston, Herts., the daughter of Ann (Harvey) and Peter Petit (1720-88), Vicar of Royston since 1755. They had at least ten children. Her father was learned, had been educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and had written The Hebrew Guide (1752). A few months after Elizabeth’s birth he was made Vicar of Wymondham and the commissary of Norfolk, and she was raised in Norfolk. She married John Wolsey Bayfield (d 1839) on 29 Apr. 1791 at St. Mary, Newington, London; she is identified on the marriage certificate as of “the city of Norwich.” He was a lieutenant in the 23rd Regiment of Foot and her poems record his many absences on military duty. Of their four (possibly five) children, just two were alive at the time of their mother’s death—a son, Henry Wolsey Bayfield, who rose to the rank of admiral in the Royal Navy and surveyed the St. Lawrence river, and a daughter, Helen Elizabeth, who married Sir Gregory Osborne Page Turner in 1818 although they separated acrimoniously. One of her poems laments the early death of another son. By the time Elizabeth came to write her will in 1830, she had been separated from her husband “for upwards of twenty years” and she left her estate to her surviving children. She provided that anything going to her daughter or a granddaughter “shall be for their sole and separate use, independent of any present or future husbands.” Bayfield likely also published a novel, A Winter at Bath; or, Love As It May Be (4 vols, 1807), but no copy appears to have survived. Her Gleanings from Zimmerman (1806) to which she added "An Ode to Retirement" is also rare. Her Fugitive Poems has an extensive subscription list, and the first poem, “Address to Subscribers,” is by Mary Cockle (q.v.; also from Norfolk) who contributed one other poem to the book. Several of Elizabeth’s poems had previously appeared in a periodical, the British Neptune. She died in Marylebone on 3 Mar. 1832, aged 61, with her children erecting a memorial tablet to her. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Aug. 2020; Bury and Norwich Post 11 May 1791; EN2 243-4; DCB 4 Aug. 2020) AA and contributions from SR

 

Other Names:

  • Mrs. Bayfield
 

Books written (1):

London: for the author by Warde and Betham, Lindsell, Longman and Co., Vernor and Hood, 1805