Author: Bousfield, Henry Newham
Biography:
BOUSFIELD, Henry Newham (1803-71: Hamilton)
He was baptised on 18 Mar. 1803 at Newark upon Trent, Nottinghamshire, the twelfth child of Edward Bousfield (1762-1832), a successful brazier, and his wife Mary Holland (1768-1832), who had married in 1789 and went on to have fourteen children, four of whom died in infancy. He attended Magnus Grammar School, Newark, entered Queen’s College Cambridge in 1826 (BA 1832), and then went into the Established Church. He fell in love with an “exquisitely polished” Charlotte but she died before they could marry (Newark) and he married Ann Mackley (1801-68) on 18 Apr. 1835 at All Hallows, Gedling, Nottinghamshire. There was no issue. He went on to a large number of curacies in Whatton, Nottingham, Melksham, High Wycombe, Thwing, and Colchester before finally coming to London in the 1860s where he was first Curate at All Saints, Kennington, then at St. Mary’s Spital Square, before serving at St. Bride’s, Fleet Street (1868-71). He died, unnoticed, on 15 June 1871 at 7 Palgrave Place, Temple Bar, and left an estate of under £50. His failure to fulfil the early promise (albeit sometimes drearily religious) of the poems Newark (1826), The Power of Gold (1830), Chauntry House (1832, 8 pages), and an announced but unpublished Poems, Sacred and Miscellaneous (1830); constant movement to different curacies; failure to secure promotion; and lack of wealth at death, all remain unexplained. (ancestry.co.uk 3 Jul. 2021; CCEd 3 Jul. 2021; Crockford’s Clerical Directories 1858-1874; Saint James’s Chronicle 18 Apr. 1835; John B. Hamilton, Glad for God: A History of the Bousfields of Newark and Bedford [2003]) AA
Other Names:
- H. N. Bousfield