Author: Beresford, Hamilton Sydney
Biography:
BERESFORD, Hamilton Sydney (1791-1847: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 4 July 1791 at Ripon Cathedral, Yorkshire, the son of Benjamin Beresford (q.v.) and Sydney Hamilton of Killyleagh Castle, Co. Down, Ireland. They had eloped but later married at St. Katharine Cree church, City of London, in 1780. He was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge (matric. 1815, BA 1820, MA 1824). He won both the Chancellor’s Medal 1816 and the Seatonian Prize 1824 with the poems listed here but later never managed to fulfil his early promise. He was ordained deacon (1819) and priest (1820) and was Curate of Grey Abbey, Co. Down, Ireland (1819-22). In Ireland he married a cousin, Elizabeth Hamilton, also of Killyleagh Castle, in Dec. 1819, initially against the wishes of her family. They went on to have four children, with the first two being born in Ireland. In 1822 they went to England where he was variously curate at Linkhorne, Cornwall (1822-24); Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (1831-39); and Holy Trinity, West Bromwich (1841). After the death of his wife at Cheltenham in 1834, he married Louisa Brown on 1 June 1836 at Bolney, Sussex. He was appointed Chaplain to the English congregation at The Hague in 1844 but probably never took up the appointment. He died on 20 May 1847 at Islington and was buried at St. Mary’s, aged 55. Louisa Beresford survived him and died at Tunbridge Wells in 1894. (ancestry.co.uk 16 Nov. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 16 Nov. 2022; Saunders’s News-Letter 9 Dec. 1819, Cheltenham Chronicle 26 June 1834; OJ 11 June 1836, 29 May 1847; GM Sept. 1847, 328; O’Donoghue; G. E. Biber, The English Church on the Continent [1845], 53) AA