Author: Bedingfeld, Thomas
Biography:
BEDINGFELD, Thomas (1760-89: ODNB)
His parents were Edward Bedingfeld and his wife Mary Swinburne, Catholics who had married at York on 21 Mar. 1754. Edward Bedingfeld (b 1730), who corresponded with Thomas Gray and William Mason (qq.v.), was the author of A Hymn to the Blessed Virgin (1796; 9 pages). Thomas, the second son, was born at York on 18 Feb. 1760; according to his father’s journal, he was baptised at home on the day of his birth. He was educated at the University of Liège and studied languages before entering the law offices of John and Thomas Davidson in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1780. There he worked with another law student, George Pickering (q.v.). In 1783 they were joined by James Ellis (q.v.); all three wrote verse. In 1784 Bedingfeld moved to London to study conveyancing at Lincoln’s Inn with Matthew Duane, a Catholic antiquary and numismatist with law offices in both London and Newcastle. Duane died in 1785 and Bedingfeld then worked with Duane’s nephew, Matthew Bray. As a Catholic, Bedingfeld could not be called to the Bar but he became a chamber counsel in 1787. He died in London on 5 Nov. 1789; he seems to have been unmarried at the time of his death. A letter signed “Alboin” (probably Ellis) and dated 10 Aug. 1800 was published in the Monthly Magazine on 1 Oct. 1800 and states that his collection of poems had been “surreptitiously printed.” This dates Bedingfeld’s posthumous collection of poems to about 1800. A second letter, published in the Monthly Magazine on 1 Mar. 1801, explains a literary hoax where Bedingfeld and Pickering claimed to have translated verse from Lapland. Their “Lapponian Poetry” is printed in Poetry, Fugitive and Original. (ODNB 1 Nov. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 1 Nov. 2023; Bedingfeld Papers, Catholic Record Society [1909]; [James Ellis], “Introductory Memoir” in Poetry, Fugitive and Original [1815]; Richard Welford, Men of Mark Twixt Tyne and Tweed [1895]; Monthly Magazine 1 Oct. 1800, 208 and 1 Mar. 1801 141-42; Edward Bedingfeld papers, Huntington Library) SR
Other Names:
- T. B--g--d, of the Inner Temple
- T. Bedingfeld