Author: Best, John Richard
Biography:
BEST, John Richard (1806-1885: findmypast.co.uk)
A prolific author in several genres including novels, his biography is complicated by his changes of name (he used, successively, John Richard Best, John Richard Beste, and John Richard Digby-Beste), his father’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, and his family’s frequent residence in Europe. He was the second son of Henry Digby Best (or Beste) who took holy orders in the Church of England but converted to Roman Catholicism in May 1798. His mother was Sarah (Sealy) Beste of Nether Stowey, Somerset. Burke gives his date of birth as 26 Apr. 1806; he, like his elder brother Henry Kenelm Best, may have been born in Bath where the family lived for some years. He was educated at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire but he also travelled abroad with his parents: they moved to France in 1818, to Italy in 1822, and back to England in 1827. His elder brother died suddenly in 1820 and John Richard became his father’s heir. On 12 Jan. 1830 he married Harriott Mary Rosamond Best of Baglake Manor, Dorset, at Naples; they had four daughters and six sons before Harriott’s death in childbirth in 1848. In 1850 at Marylebone he married Marian D’Oyly Meredith (her birth name was Bird and she had been twice widowed). The family home was at Botleigh Grange, Hampshire, where he served as a justice of the peace. By the time of his death on 8 Aug. 1885 at 2 Piazza della Zecca Vecchia, Florence, eight of his children and his second wife were dead. (Marian died at the same address in Florence on 30 Mar. 1885). Death notices stated that he died “fortified by the last sacraments.” A surviving son, Kenelm Digby Beste, was a priest at the oratory in Brompton; he served as executor for his father’s will which left an estate of £2009. (ODNB [for Henry Digby Best] 24 May 2023; ancestry.co.uk 24 May 2023; findmypast.co.uk 24 May 2023; Tablet 15 Aug. 1885; Burke)