Author: Bellamy, Daniel
Biography:
BELLAMY, Daniel (1717-88: ODNB)
He was the son of Daniel Bellamy the elder, a lawyer and writer who was born in 1687, and his wife Martha Meller (1683-1769). His parents had married in St. Andrew’s, Holborn, London, on 9 Oct. 1712 and he was baptised in the same church on 1 Oct. 1717. Martha had been a governess and she was later to run several girls’ boarding schools including one at Kingston Upon Thames. He was educated at St. Paul’s School, London, where in 1737 he was paid £2 as a “porter” or poor boy. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge (matric 30 Apr. 1736, MA per literas regias 1759). In 1739, while at Cambridge, he published The Modern Receipt; or, A Cure for Love, written with James Carrington. He was successively curate at Kingston upon Thames, vicar at St Albans, Hertfordshire; rector at Hedgerley, Buckinghamshire; and vicar at Kew with Petersham. He married and his wife’s first name was Frances but no records for her or the wedding have been located. He collaborated with Daniel Bellamy the elder in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1739-40) and later edited his father’s Ethic Amusements (1768), but sermons were his priority and early in his career he began collecting material for his Family Preacher (1776) which includes sermons by Carrington, then chancellor of Exeter. He published an ode to the dowager Princess of Wales in 1768. The preface to his 1771 birthday poem for George, Prince of Wales, states that it was co-written with the author of the forthcoming Economy of Beauty, John Cosens (q.v.). He died on 15 Feb. 1788 and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne’s, Kew, where his mother is also interred. His will, proved on 15 Mar. 1788, names his wife Frances as inheritor and executor and makes no mention of children; likely they had none. (ODNB 27 Mar. 2023; CCEd; ACAD; Admission Registers of St. Paul’s School [1884])